Chapter One
Thorin
“Man, this feels like being back on the bench outside of Mr. Zebroski’s office waiting for him to assign us to oversee another round of mutton busting.”
Glancing over at Wylde confirmed he did look as nervous as he had our sophomore year when we’d let our competitiveness get the best of us during a game of Yuki-Ball and wound up hurting one of our classmates.
“You just had to go there, didn’t you?” I muttered, heaving a sigh as I shook my head at him.
“If there were an adult version of that moment, this would be it.”
“So, the question now is, what did you do, and why am I being dragged into it?”
“Wouldn’t a better question be: why do you always assume it was something I did?” Wylde asked, an unruly lock of chestnut hair hanging in his eyes, the same way it had years ago.
This bench was no more comfortable than that one had been. Then again, neither was the memory it brought up from back then. Back almost twenty years ago when we’d been all of sixteen and I’d wanted nothing more than for him to remove himselffrom my sphere of existence and find someone else to annoy with his golden retriever personality and mossy, beseeching gaze.
Whipping bean bags at him during Yuki-Ball, my sole goal was to knock the adorably bewildered look off his face as he ducked, dodged, leaped, crouched, and spun his way past the maze of barricades that had been erected on the gym floor. While our class had been divided into teams for what was basically an indoor mix of a snowball fight and capture the flag, the only one I’d dialed in on was him. In my mind, it was a game of one-on-one that I wasn’t going to let him win.
But had he noticed that I’d declared war against him?
Of course not.
Every time I went after him, he just shot me this look like he didn’t understand why he was my target, while I kept missing like there was an invisible force field around him or some kind of shield of protection.
He winked at me when he captured the flag, slowly smirking in that hesitantly flirty way of his that always caught me off guard and left me wondering if he knew what he was doing to me.
Confusing.
The older we got, the more he confounded the hell out of me. Every time I thought I knew what his intentions were, he turned around and flipped the script on me. Being around him was like having one foot in quicksand and the other in a mud puddle. I was either sinking or slipping, and I didn’t like the feeling of either.
When that new round of Yuki-Ball started, I redoubled my efforts to keep him away from the flag, only to have him spin at the last minute, my beanbag cracking JimmyGreen so hard he staggered, arms windmilling before he hit the ground, clutching his cheek and nose, where the beanbag had smacked him.
At barely five feet, he was the smallest person out there, and so not the target I’d been aiming for when I’d thrown it that hard. He wasn’t the only one on the floor either. Wylde’s recklessly evasive spin had sent him slamming into another of our classmates. I couldn’t remember his name, but he was rolling around clutching the back of his head, while Wylde stood there with a red flush spreading across the bridge of his nose.
One look at our gym teacher’s face and there was no doubt we’d earned ourselves a trip to the principal’s office.
Knee bouncing up and down, I turned to shoot a glare down the bench at Wylde, stunned to see those inquisitive green eyes trained on me. “Do you have to show off everywhere you go?”
“Been told I have a knack for it,” Wylde shot back.
“When you see whoever it was that fed you that line of bullshit again, tell them your ego doesn’t need feeding.”
“Had to do something to avoid those fastballs you were chucking at me. Nice job picking Draven off. That was some phenomenal throwing right there. The look on his face when he spun around and caught one right on the chin was priceless.”
The snicker slipped out before I could rein it in and, of course, it came just as Mr. Zebroski stepped out of his office.
“I’m glad you find it amusing to have sent two of your classmates to the nurse’s office,” Mr. Zebroski said, scowling at us. “Now get in here so I can deal with you two before the next mess lands on my doorstep.”
Resigned, we trudged past him, and I could have sworn I heard the man mutter ‘I’m getting too old for this shit’.
“Let’s cut to the chase, gentlemen,” Mr. Zebroski said, “because I’ve already heard all about what took place in gym class, and the way you two interrupted a history lesson with an inspired, though heated, debate on who was responsible for the Lincoln County War. While I can appreciate your enthusiasm, your competitiveness is getting out of hand and affecting your classmates, which we can’t have here, so I’ve got a special assignment for the two of you. Since you’ve proven that you excel at teaming up to cause chaos, let’s see how you fare when tasked with keeping it from taking place.”
“I-I’m a little behind on a few assignments, Sir,” Wylde replied. “I-I don’t really know if I can fit another one into my schedule right now.”
“You’ll figure it out, or you’ll both spend the next two weeks in detention after school, which I’m sure will interfere with your training time for the upcoming junior rodeo.”
Shit. Score one for Mr. Zebroski. Growing up in a small town was awesome, but one of the disadvantages of everyone knowing everyone was the way our lives intertwined. Mr. Zebroski wasn’t just the principal of the high school; he was also the vice president of the high school Junior Rodeo Association and a member of the fair board. Whatever this assignment was, there was no way we were getting out of it. One glance over at Wylde, and the “oh, shit” look on his face, and I could tell he knew it too.