Should I be worried?
I held the text from Gavin up to show Zeke the following Monday, sharing a smile with him before I texted back that everything was fine. Gavin sent back a GIF of a suspicious Homer Simpson, which Zeke laughed at before I tucked my phone away.
We had a plan.
It wasn’t the most foolproof plan, and there would undoubtedly be roadblocks along the way that we couldn’t see now. But we had talked through what was most important, who would need to be talked to, and in what order.
First, we’d break the news to Gavin.
We invited him over for dinner tonight, and I didn’t blame him for being suspicious at the fact that the invitation came from both of us. The most he’d seen us get along was when we went to the museum together, and he most certainly still thought that was my idea and that Zeke had only come along to hang out with him.
My stomach turned just thinking of what his reaction might be, but Zeke promised it would all work out — even if he was upset at first. In the end, we were siblings, twins, and we would make it through.
Once Gavin knew, we’d work on the team — starting with Coach Sanders.
We still hadn’t hashed out the exact details on how that conversation would go. I suggested we lead with asking to have different roommates, to show that even though we were in a relationship, the team still came first, and we wanted to respect the rules as much as we could.
Zeke hated the idea — unsurprisingly — and thought we should stay roommates to spare the other guys on the team from having to be around us when we wanted to hang out outside of practice.
We thought Gavin could be the tie breaker, and would likely have even more suggestions on how to break the news to Coach and the team.
“I’m going to catch an Uber to the grocery store,” I said, slinging my duffel bag over one shoulder. “I don’t think the campus market will have everything we need.”
“And I’m on cleanup duty.” Zeke stood abruptly and saluted like a soldier before I punched him in the gut and made the breath oof out of him.
He glanced around us, making sure none of the other guys were paying attention before he briefly reached out and squeezed my hand.
“It’s going to be okay,” he assured me, reading right through the nerves I was trying to hide. “Gavin will understand. And if he doesn’t, we’ll handle it. Together. Okay?”
I sighed, but smiled at knowing he would be there every step of the way. “Okay.” Then, a smile curved on my lips. “This is kind of cute, you know. Us being all domestic — me shopping for dinner, you cleaning up for guests.”
“Next thing you know, we’ll have shows we only watch together.”
“Sounds so lame,” I said, but I smiled still before lowering my voice. “I can’t wait.”
Zeke squeezed my hand with a grin once more before dropping it, clearing his throat as he looked around. His eyes found mine again, and I knew without him saying a word what he wanted in that moment.
To kiss me.
But he resisted, offering me a wink instead before he turned for the locker room door.
Before he could take three steps, we both jolted at our names being called.
“Novo, Collins,” Coach Sanders said, his voice deep and commanding.
We followed the sound of his voice to where he stood in the doorway of his office, his expression unreadable other than he certainly wasn’t calling us in for praise.
He didn’t say anything else, either — just stood there waiting, an unspoken demand to get our asses in his office stat.
Zeke and I shared a look before we dropped our bags on the nearest bench and jogged over, Zeke taking one chair as I took the other.
Coach shut the door behind us, pulling the blinds on the window closed, and then circled his desk to plop down in his own chair.
A pregnant pause hung between us, Coach swallowing as he looked at where his hands were folded together on his desk. He opened his mouth to speak, shut it again, and then lifted his gaze to glare at each of us.
Shit.
He knows.
Panic zipped through me at the same time Zeke’s hand shifted on his armrest — just an inch, enough for me to know that he was mentally trying to calm me. He couldn’t grab my hand in real life, but he wanted me to know that he was right there, that it would be okay.
Breathe, I could hear him say in my head.
And so I forced the best inhale I could muster, letting it out with shaky restraint.
“I’ve got to be honest,” Coach finally said. “I’m so goddamn mad I could flip this fucking desk and knock both of you out with it.”
The knot in my chest tightened, and I was thankful I was sitting with my hands tucked under my thighs so Coach couldn’t see the way they shook in that moment.
“To have two of my most promising freshmen pull some stupid shit like this…”
He shook his head, and I swore he was breathing smoke when Zeke cleared his throat and said, “Sir, we can explain.”
“Explain?” Coach cut him off with a sardonic laugh. “Oh, please. Please explain how either of you think cheating is in any way excusable as a college athlete or a student period.”
Zeke’s mouth hung open, and we both frowned in confusion together, my head tilting to the side as I tried to figure out what the hell Coach was talking about.
“Sir?” Zeke asked.
Coach sniffed, pushing back in his chair long enough to pull two paper-clipped stacks of paper out of his desk drawer. He plopped them on the desk, looking at us expectantly while I frowned even more.
The stack on top was recognizable — the first page of Zeke’s economics essay, complete with his name and email at the top of it. But when Coach tilted it to the side to reveal my essay from last semester beneath it, I just shook my head.
“I don’t understand.”
“Professor Marks delivered these to me this morning,” Coach calmly explained. “He regretted to inform me that my star receiver, Zeke Collins, had plagiarized a teammate’s paper.” His eyes snapped to mine then. “Our kicker — Riley Novo.”
My jaw unhinged, and I was already shaking my head and ready to defend when Zeke beat me to it.
“That’s ridiculous! I didn’t—”
“Be careful with what you say next, son, because I’ve got a lot of proof in these pages.” Coach held up his paper and thumped it against his hand, face red as he waited for Zeke to rethink what he was about to say.
“Zeke,” I managed when he fell silent. “Tell him.”
Zeke swallowed, his face going ashen. And when he didn’t speak…
Bile rose in my throat.
“You didn’t…” I whispered.
Zeke looked at me, his eyes wide as he shook his head. “I didn’t, I swear. I mean… I read yours, yes. And I… I might have taken inspiration from some of the points you made but—”
“Inspiration?” Coach asked, and then he unclipped Zeke’s paper, followed by mine, reading a paragraph on one and then the other that were worded differently, but said practically the same thing.
I squeezed my eyes shut, sinking down in my chair in disbelief as Coach stared back at us and waited.
“Sir, Riley had nothing to do with this,” Zeke said. “She’s been tutoring me all season and has done nothing but try to help me. It was me who procrastinated on the paper, and she tried to help by—”
“By letting you copy hers?”
“No!” I defended, tears springing to my eyes. I hated that they were there, hated that emotion was getting the best of me in a situation where tears would only make me look worse. “Coach, I swear, I only let him see mine so he could get some ideas on how to craft his. I… I never thought…”
Those words were cut off by my erratic breathing, by my throat closing in around that very cold truth.
I never thought Zeke would do this.
I never thought he would copy my paper, that he’d put both our spots on the team and our scholarships in jeopardy.
I never thought he’d betray me.
My silence lingered as I digested it all, as I tried to wrap my brain around the truth all while it argued with me that it couldn’t possibly be.
Zeke wouldn’t do this.
His words surfaced so loud in my mind it was like I was back on that night of my birthday, my hands in his on our couch as he poured his heart out to me about the night of the accident.
I would never intentionally hurt you.
And I believed him — I think I knew even when I hated him that he would never…
But…
He did.
I shook my head, still not able to grasp it as Zeke took over.
“Sir, I promise you, this was never my intention,” he said, his voice smooth and calm. “I read her essay, yes, but I didn’t intentionally copy it. I wrote my own. There might have been an area toward the end that I…”
His voice faded, and I remembered how I’d teased him, how I’d told him to get his essay done so he could join me in the shower that morning.
He rushed through the end because he wanted…
I closed my eyes, unable to finish the thought as I held back the tears threatening to fall.
“I’ll rewrite it,” Zeke said. “I’ll start over. I’ll—”
“Do you not understand how serious this is?” Coach asked, leaning over his desk and looking at Zeke like he had a leg growing out of his forehead. “You’re both lucky sonofabitches that Professor Marks is a good friend of mine and came to me with this information instead of the Dean. You should be kicked off the team. You should have your scholarships revoked. You should be expelled.”
I choked on a sob, covering my mouth as my eyes welled with tears against my will. Coach glanced at me with not even an ounce of pity before he shook his head and sat back in his chair, folding his hands across his stomach as another spell of silence washed over us.
“You will rewrite the essay. By Friday,” he added, eyes hard on Zeke. “And Novo, you will be assigned to a new roommate immediately.”
I sniffed, unable to look at him or Zeke, unable to believe this was even happening. “Yes, sir.”
Coach sighed. “You’re also both suspended for the last two games of the regular season.”
Everything inside me begged for me to cry out, to scream and protest and remind him that the outcome of those two games would determine whether we played in a bowl game or one of the bowl games — the two that served as the semi-finals before the national championship.
But I bit my tongue, because I knew he already knew that, knew that it pissed him off as much as it killed us to take two of his best players out of those games.
“I expect both of you to still show up and practice as if you were playing, and to support your team through this. If you think I’m upset, I hope you’re prepared to face their wrath when you tell them why you won’t be playing alongside them at tomorrow morning’s practice.”
I just stared at my thighs, hands numb underneath me, a silent tear staining my cheek.
This can’t be happening.
This can’t be…
It was like being flipped upside down on a rickety rollercoaster, how just moments ago I was flying high and smiling and my biggest worry was how my twin brother would react to the news that I was dating his best friend.
And now…
I glanced at Zeke, who met my gaze with pain and guilt and apology written in every crease of his brow. “Riley, I—”
But I looked away, shaking my head as a cold resolve settled over me.
It didn’t matter how my heart broke, how my soul yearned for the one person responsible for the pain I was in to take it away. I wanted to be sad, to be angry, to demand answers — but the truth was simple.
He wasn’t who I thought he was.
“I don’t like dishing out this punishment any more than you like accepting it,” Coach said after a minute. “And I don’t doubt that either of you intended for this to happen. But there are consequences when you don’t think things through — and better they come from me than from someone higher up.”
My eyes lost focus, his voice fading in the background as I went into self-preservation mode.
Consequences.
Zeke said he understood how his actions had consequences after the night of the accident.
Clearly, he lied.
“It’s just two games. Keep yourself on track and we can discuss your role in the bowl game… whichever one we get. For now, keep your mouths shut until tomorrow’s practice. We’ll address the rest of the team then.”
A single nod to each of us was our only dismissal, and I flew out of the office as soon as he gave it, snagging my duffel bag off the bench and ignoring the stares of the last few players lingering as they watched me storm out of the locker room.
Zeke was hot on my heels, calling out my name every step down the hall.
“Riley, please,” he finally begged, catching my elbow when I pushed out into the cold evening air.
“Please, what?!” I screamed, shoving him hard in the chest. I didn’t fight the tears that came now, didn’t back away when I saw him cringe against the savage way I pinned him with those leaking eyes. “You got me suspended for two games. You nearly got me suspended from the university altogether!” I shook my head, nostrils flaring. “How could you? How could you?!”
“I’m… stupid. I didn’t think—”
“No, you didn’t,” I agreed, already turning and storming toward our dorm.
“I’m sorry, Riley,” he croaked, and the pain in his voice was enough to stop me, to make a chill crawl down the length of my spine as I wished with everything that I was that I could go back in time to that day, that I could reverse my role in this nightmare and never give him my paper.
As much as I hated to admit it… I was at fault here, too.
But I trusted him.
And maybe that was my gravest mistake.
“No, you’re not,” I said after a moment, spinning to look at him again with tears blurring my vision. “The only thing you are, Zeke Collins, is selfish. And you always have been. You were that night with Gavin, when you made a promise to him to be his safe ride home and broke it, when you risked his life knowing you weren’t okay to drive just so you could look like the good friend.” I shook my head. “And you are now, saving your ass and your spot on the team all without regard to how it would impact mine.”
It was too far. It wasn’t even a sound correlation, but the urge to hurt him the way he’d hurt me overpowered logic.
I saw the blood drain out of him the more I spoke, felt the venom as I spat it — but I couldn’t stop. Steel walls snapped up around me, barbed wire winding around the top, and I welcomed the loneliness they brought with them like it was home sweet home.
“I don’t know why I ever thought you could change,” I whispered, the words like bullets.
And I left him without waiting to see if they’d hit their mark.
Zeke
I watched her turn, watched her leave, watched her take my entire world with her as I stood shivering in the cold.
I prayed to go back in time, to pull my head out of my ass that morning I’d made what I didn’t even realize was a fatal mistake. I prayed for God to show mercy on me, to make her stop, to make her listen.
To make her believe me when I swore I didn’t mean to hurt her, that I was sorry, that I would do anything to make it up to her.
I prayed for the chance to make it right, for a light to show me the way to redemption.
I prayed for a miracle.
But every prayer was unanswered, God shaking his head and turning his back on me just as Riley had.
And I couldn’t blame either of them.
I’d broken my word.
I realized in that moment that it didn’t matter if I intended to hurt her — the simple fact was that I had. And maybe that was what I was a fool for most, believing that intention had a goddamn thing to do with anything at all.
I broke her trust.
I betrayed her.
And the truth of the matter was simple.
I’d blown my second chance.
I knew without asking that I wouldn’t get a third.
