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“If you’re so smart, you figure it out,” Jude replied and pushed past me. He climbed onto the bus with a burst of energy meant for the other players. I watched him closely, staring at him as if I’d find the answers to all my questions that way.
“I have all sorts of questions for you, Coach K!” Forrest exclaimed as he passed by me to climb on the bus. “So many questions!”
“Good,” I murmured. Good, because I desperately needed the distraction before I started to spiral.
CHAPTER 25
Theo
BABY KENNEDY: We’re going to win!
WYATT: We’re going to wiiiiiiin!
BABY KENNEDY: Fuck yeah, we’re going to wiiiiiin!
WYATT: THEO!
WYATT!
BABY KENNEDY: Say it! Say the word, Theodore Daniel!
FINE!
We’re going to win!
BABY KENNEDY: And when we do, we’re going back and getting those tattoos we said we’d get.
WYATT: Whoa. Hold on.
BABY KENNEDY: You promised!
I’m game.
BABY KENNEDY: Hell yes!
Fucking nuggets.” Wyatt’s groan from across the room made Jude and me bust out laughing.
Away games sounded a lot cooler than they actually were. Sure, there was the charter flight and the nice hotel. But there was also hauling bags, listening to the same directions more than a dozen times, and trying to organize seventy-some college guys, who acted as if they’d never gone on vacation before.
By the time we’d collapsed in our assigned room for the night, we were all tired to the point of stupidity—like agreeing to Jude’s Jurassic Dino Nugget tattoo idea. Granted, it was a cool tattoo. I didn’t need any convincing. Wyatt did, though, not that I could tell if he was genuinely upset at the idea or just overly tired.
“You both suck!” Wyatt whisper-shouted from the other side of the room. We were crammed four to a room, which meant sharing a bed with Jude while Wyatt shared one with Max. Unfortunately, Max was a little too serious for our shenanigans, so we ended up having most of our conversations via text in the dark.
“All of you suck. Shut the hell up, and go to sleep,” Max snapped. He let out an angry huff as the bed creaked from him tossing onto his side, facing away from Wyatt.
Breakfast & tattoo planning?
BABY KENNEDY: No one invite Max.
WYATT: Pretty sure Max would fuck you up for trying to invite him.
BABY KENNEDY: Challenge accepted.
Wyatt mirrored the sigh I let out. Poor Max. Jude and his damn challenge-accepted mentality were going to drive Max up a wall. Not everyone was equipped for Jude’s larger-than-life personality. I made a silent promise to keep Jude preoccupied so he’d leave Max be.
BABY KENNEDY: Night, my Jurassic homies.
Unfortunately, being exhausted didn’t mean my mind cared about sleeping. It was stuck on the man down the hall. In all the time he’d been back, I’d never seen Rhodes so stressed. Even before we left campus, he never stopped moving. He checked names against the travel rosters, counted equipment cases, made sure nobody got left behind, answered questions every five minutes, and kept the entire schedule on time. Every time I looked up, someone needed him.
