Page 24 of Dirty Hit
“Coach had us in film,” he says. “I skimmed between plays.”
I just stare at him. I know how brutal those sessions can be; I’ve seen enough exhausted players dragging themselves out of the lecture hall next door.
“That’s… more effort than you were putting in before I came along,” I mutter, mostly to myself because if I look too pleased about it, he’ll twist it again.
“Maybe you’re just very motivating,” he says, almost lazily, and my stupid body remembers yesterday like it was five minutes ago. I know it shows, because his gaze flicks up and I see the exact moment the memory hits him, too.
“Let’s start with Marbury,” I say, and my voice comes out a little sharper than I planned.
Teaching is easiest when I forget who’s sitting across from me. It’s muscle memory. Once I drop into it, my voice evens out and my hands start moving while I talk, sketching outlines in the air the way I do in class. With him, I’m stiff and braced for some crude innuendo or a wrong answer designed to make me flustered; but the longer he listens, the more I relax.
“You can’t just say‘the Court did this because it felt like it,’” I tell him at one point, tapping on a sentence he wrote. “Even if that’s arguably true, you have to connect it to doctrine, to precedent; show you know the steps, even if you think they’re bullshit.”
He tilts his head, eyes tracking where my pen is. “So, basically, you want me to do a nice little dance,” he says. “Pretend the emperor’s clothes are very real.”
“I want you to show your work,” I say. “Judges love pretending they’re neutral. You have to speak their language.”
He smirks. “You could just say ‘kiss their ass,’ you know.”
“Their language,” I repeat, forcing my tone back to dry. “We’re not writing fan mail here.”
He watches me with this odd little look. “You’re kind of intense about this. It’s just an essay.”
“It’s a grade,” I say. “Which rolls into a GPA. Which keeps you eligible. Which keeps scouts happy. None of that is ‘just’ anything.”
He leans back a little, chair creaking under his weight. “You this serious about all your students, or am I special?”
It’s bait. I hear it, and I still step right into it. “I’m this serious about all my students. I’m not wasting my time on someone who’s not going to try.”
He stares at me for a second, like he’s trying to decide if I mean it. Whatever he sees must pass some internal test, because his mouth softens.
“You’re good at it,” he says suddenly. “Teaching. Bossing me around. Making chaos make sense.”
“I’m just doing my job,” I mutter, eyes dropping to the page.
“And doing it well,” he says, easy and genuine. “Relax. I like it when you boss me around in this context. I’m not gonna kill you at the dining table.”
My head snaps up. “That’s not funny,” I say, and my voice comes out thinner, because some part of me is suddenly back in his cottage doorway, looking at a man bleeding out on the floor.
“It’s kind of funny,” he says.
“It’s really not,” I insist, and that tremor back; the one that tells me I’m a step away from losing my grip.
He sees it and lifts his hands in this mock surrender that somehow doesn’t feel mocking at all. “All right. No murder jokes at study time. Understood.”
I shake my head and look back down, but my mouth twitches despite myself. His ridiculous way of phrasing things has been getting under my skin since day one, and even when I want to argue, there’s a part of me that finds it… not charming, that’s the wrong word, but familiar in a way nothing here usually is. That scares me almost as much as everything else.
The session keeps going. We move from Marbury to later cases, from judicial review, to levels of scrutiny, to procedural due process in disciplinary hearings. He quizzes me right back sometimes, pushing me to justify my explanations. Instead of feeling threatened, I just dig deeper, because that’s how I’vealways handled being pressed: more detail, clearer structure, more effort.
At some point, without me noticing exactly when it happens, my shoulders drop an inch. I lean back, instead of perching on the edge of the chair. My hands move as I talk and my foot taps under the table in that restless way it does when my brain is fully engaged.
I’m distracted enough that I don’t realize my guard is down until his foot brushes against my ankle.
The contact is light, barely more than a graze, but it shoots straight up my leg like a live wire. My whole body goes taut. I feel that almost-forgotten ache flare back to life low in my belly, the equal parts dread and want that have been my constant companions since yesterday, and it pisses me off how easily he flips the switch.
I look up, pulse thudding in my throat, and he’s just… watching me, eyes dark and amused and knowing. He can already see which way I’m going to fall.
“You know what I like about you, Lane?”
