Page 12 of The Golden Receiver

I made a snap decision.

In less than a minute, I’d grabbed my practice bag, still unzipped, and left the locker room. I stopped outside the door and looked up and down the hallway. Kieran was nowhere in sight. I inhaled, and I smelled him. Layered underneath all the other smells of the practice facility—chemical cleaners and sweat and a thousand other things—was the smell of musk and oak. I closed my eyes and took a deeper breath, focusing only on his scent. I’d only done this a few times, tried to find someone by smell alone. It had always been members of my pack, and always because Kali wanted us to train our natural abilities.

I was grateful for it now.

I followed his scent out of the building and down a path toward the main part of campus. I found him in the shadows of a building about halfway between the training facility and Karloff Hall. That acrid smell was stronger, almost drowning out all the other smells. It was like the time Serena came home really drunk in high school. I could barely pick out her scent under the smell of liquor. It told me the disappointment went deep, so deep that it was almost an intrinsic part of him now. I hated it.

I took a few steps toward him, and when he didn’t look up, I cleared my throat. I had to remind myself that he was human. He didn’t have my amazing sense of hearing or smell to alert him to my presence. He didn’t move when I cleared my throat, so I did it louder. Only then did his head snap toward me.

His facial expression changed as he turned. For half a second, I could see the disappointment etched into all of his features. Then it was gone, replaced by irritation. His sapphire eyes clouded over, and his thick brows furrowed. His thin lips flattened even thinner, and the expression sharpened his already too sharp jawline. “What do you want?” he snapped at me.

I didn’t get it.

I’d come after him. I’d noticed that he was upset, and I’d gone to check on him. Why was he being such an asshole?

“I wanted to see how you were?” I could have sounded more decisive. “After the depth chart. I know you were⁠—”

“Did you come to rub it in?” he demanded. Whoa. Aggressive. I opened my mouth to defend myself, to point out that I had no plans on rubbing any of it in and was honestly just trying to be nice, but he barreled on. “Tease me for riding the bench? Mock the fact that the human can’t fucking hack it⁠—”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I interrupted. It was a serious question. What the hell was wrong with him? Why was he attacking me for coming after him, for checking on him? It wasn’t like he was swimming in friends. God forbid one person notice he was upset and check on him.

The furrow of his brow deepened. Seriously, it was like a crater at this point. A family of incredibly small animals could set up their home in there. Then, his face relaxed.

It was astounding how different his face looked when his jaw wasn’t tensed. “Gave up a lot to be here,” he admitted. “Thought it’d be a big chance to make a name for myself, maybe get noticed. Instead,” his jaw tightened again, “I’m going to waste away on the fucking bench.”

“It’s only the end of the first week,” I pointed out. “You can work harder.”

The furrow in his brow was back. I wondered if he’d have a wrinkle there when he got older. Probably, because most of the time I’d seen him over the past few weeks, his brow was furrowed in some way.

“Work harder? You realize that I’m only human, right? Not exactly a fair competition.”

I groaned. “Seriously? You’re going to play the human card?”

“What the fuck does that mean?” he snapped.

“I mean you’re faster than a lot of people on the team. If being a monster was a complete edge, you’d be at the bottom of the depth chart, not around the middle,” I pointed out. Maybe competition was tougher against the monsters, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t have a chance to make a name for himself. If that was important to him, which it seemed to be. I couldn’t even judge him for it. Why had I wanted my starting position? To make a name for myself. To break a few school records, maybe. To prove that I could do it.

To maybe, one day, be the first monster that played at the professional level.

So, really, how could I judge him for being butthurt over the fact that he wasn’t going to be starting? I wasn’t even sure I could safely say that I wouldn’t be just as disappointed. (I could safely say I wouldn’t have stormed out of the locker room, but maybe he just wasn’t good at handling his disappointment.)

He didn’t look moved at all by my attempt at a motivational speech. I shouldn’t care. I knew that. I shouldn’t care that he wasn’t moved by my attempts to be kind to him. I shouldn’t bother trying to cheer him up. He was a bit of an asshole, and that was becoming clearer by the moment. I shouldn’t keep trying, but I knew myself better than that.

For some reason, he intrigued me. Maybe it was the fact that he smelled so good. Maybe it was the fact that I could relate to his desire to make something of himself on the football field.

Whatever it was, I wanted to help.

An idea popped into my head. “I could train with you.”

The suggestion was past my lips before I’d even thought it out properly. It wasn’t the first time I’d done something like that. If anything, I was less likely to think an idea through before I said it out loud than anything. Impulsive was what Kali called it, and she’d called it that most of my life. I was used to it.

Kieran wasn’t used to it. I knew that. He raised an eyebrow at me. “With you?”

“Yeah,” I told him, even though I wasn’t all that sure about the idea. “I run every morning before practice.”

“You said I was already pretty fast,” he pointed out in the flattest voice I’d ever heard. “How is running going to help?”

“Stamina. Training. Reflexes,” I listed.