“You deserved it.” Braeden let go of Con, and he fell on his ass.
“Back to the game!” the ref demanded, and everyone started moving around.
A couple guys hauled Con off the field and sat him on the bench.
Before walking back to the sidelines, I gave Trent a look.
“I know,” he said softly. “I know.”
I wanted badly in that moment to reach out and touch him. Just to give something tangible to what always seemed to be between us. We couldn’t, not just then.
It actually kind of hurt.
It hurt way more than anything Conner’s mouth could spew.
We parted ways. As we walked, I felt the invisible tether between us stretching, but it didn’t break.
Romeo clapped me on the back. “Nice save, Drew.”
“Thanks,” I said, watching Con dabbing at his nose with a towel. Though in that moment, it didn’t feel like a save.
Sure, I kept Trent from taking a hard hit to the midsection, a totally illegal hit considering he already got rid of the ball.
But…
Maybe I kind of understood why Trent wanted me to just stay away. I had this tingly feeling on the back of my neck now.
Like maybe I’d just made everything worse.
Trent
Before the game…
All the Omega members were gathered, changing before the game, laughing and giving each other shit just like always. It was a good time, but I sort of felt like I was viewing it all through a window, like an outsider looking in.
But I wasn’t an outsider. I was the president. I was the leader of these men.
I didn’t want to be.
Not anymore.
In fact, I was sort of embarrassed I had to be here—with them.
I’d changed in the past few years here at Alpha U. Most of my changes happening within the past year. It was a natural progression of life, growing from a youth into an adult.
For me, it felt like more.
I guess I always used to feel like I was renting the space inside my skin. Like I was borrowing it or it wasn’t really mine. I was the football player, the jock. I was the frat boy, the playboy, the college student who knew what he wanted.
I was who everyone saw when they looked at me. I met their expectations—no, I exceeded them.
I’d always been a good friend, the kind who listened and faded into the background. The wingman. The sidekick.
Things started to change. There was a gradual shift inside me. I fought that shift for a long time. But eventually, a crack in a foundation spreads and then everything sitting on it is in danger of sinking.
My foundation didn’t just crack. It shook. It experienced an earthquake…
And it was that earthquake that rebirthed someone new.
The real me.
I no longer rented space inside my skin.
I owned it free and clear.
I wasn’t completely changed, but I wasn’t the same either. Maybe a hybrid? A combination of the past and the present, which would carry me into the future.
Like every new build, the walls and plaster would take time to settle. I was new, and I still felt scared.
I was resolved.
Not resolved to accept life, but resolved to live it.
As I stood here in the locker room, surrounded by men I once considered my brothers, I realized my circle was getting smaller. Not because four men in this group ruined it for everyone, but because I no longer needed to be here.
After today, after I dealt once and for all with Conner and the three other guys who attacked me, I could phase out of the fraternity. I could hand over the reins to Jack and not look back. It was time.
This wasn’t an experience I regretted, because it brought me to where I stood today.
“You’re late!” one of the members hollered and snapped me back to the here and now. I looked up. It was Daniel.
I think of all the four guys who jumped me that night, it was him I was most disappointed by. There are some people you just expect better from, so it royally sucks when they turn out to be a lot skeezier than you thought.
Daniel and I rushed Alpha Omega together. We went through Hell Week together. We even had a couple classes together back in the day when we were still taking basics. He’d been a friend. We partied together, drank together. We were brothers.
And then he held me down and whispered things like, “People like you belong in hell,” while I was beaten.
Conner was a real shit-bag. But somehow, Daniel seemed worse.
I guess because with Conner, you always expected something like that, but not from someone you thought was your friend.
He’d avoided me since that night. I only ever saw him during frat events and meetings. I saw him once on campus, and he physically crossed the street to get away from me.
I liked to sometimes think it was because he was ashamed of what he did. But I knew the truth was because he thought I was disgusting.
So how come I was the disgusting one, but he was the one who acted out of his own disgust?
Daniel was looking a little rough around the edges and a little dazed and confused. His short, dark hair was mussed, and he was gripping a paper in his hand like his life depended on it.