CHAPTER 8

Axel's POV.

I stood by my kitchen windows, watching rain streak the glass, when my phone buzzed against the marble counter.

Dad.

I let it ring four times before answering. If I ignored him, he'd call the building manager, send his assistant to my door, or freeze my card to force me to pick up.

I answered and raised the phone to my ear.

"Hello."

"You're making a spectacle of yourself, Axel," my father’s voice came through, crisp and cold. "I just received a call from someone at the State athletic department. Why is my son's name being passed around like a common circus performer?"

I gripped the counter until my knuckles turned white.

"I was playing a scrimmage," I said, keeping my voice as flat as possible.

"You are wasting your time," he snapped. "You ran away from home to play children's games in a run-down public university. I gave you six months to get this foolishness out of your system, Axel. The quarterly shareholder meeting is next month. Your sister is already shadowing the board, and you are running around in shorts with boys who have no future."

"It's not foolishness to me," I muttered. My throat tightened as I spoke.

"It is an embarrassment to this family," he said coldly. "You have no business associating with those people. You don't need a sports scholarship. You don't need these ridiculous scouts watching you. Pack your things this weekend and come back to the city. I have an office prepared for you on the fourteenth floor. You will start in asset management on Monday."

"No," I said.

Silence stretched across the line. My father wasn't used to hearing no, especially from his only son.

"What did you say?" His voice dropped.

"No." My heart pounded as I forced the word out. "I'm staying here. I'm finishing the season."

"Axel, don't test my patience. You don't have the stomach for the real world, and you certainly don't have the discipline to make it on your own. You're an awkward boy who can barely look his own relatives in the eye, and you think you can build a life without my backing?"

He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. He stated it like a fact, reminding me that outside basketball, I was broken.

"Goodbye, Dad," I said.

Before he could speak again, I pulled the phone from my ear and tapped the red button.

Silence filled the room. My chest heaved, and my hands shook so badly I nearly dropped the phone.

An awkward boy who can barely look people in the eye.

I hated that he was right. I hated that every time I tried to speak to someone, my brain froze and my tongue felt like stone.

I looked around the dark, empty condo. The high ceilings, the designer furniture, the absolute dead quiet. I couldn't breathe in here. The walls felt like they were pressing in on me from every side.

I shoved my phone into the pocket of my rain jacket, grabbed my keys and a bottle of water, and headed out into the cold night.

***

The rain had turned from a light drizzle into a steady, freezing downpour.

The streets near campus were mostly empty, streetlights reflecting off puddles on the road. The wind cut through my clothes, but I barely noticed. The cold rain against my face was the only thing that kept the panic from clawing its way up my throat.

I walked without a destination, my hands shoved deep into my pockets, my boots splashing through water.

Then, two blocks away from the campus perimeter, I heard it.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

A basketball bouncing on wet concrete.

I stopped on the sidewalk under a streetlight, turning my head toward the public park.

The outdoor court was surrounded by a sagging chain-link fence. Cracked pavement and puddles covered the ground, while a single floodlight on a wooden pole lit the court.

Inside the court, a lone figure was moving.

It was Ethan.

He wasn't wearing a jacket. He had on a soaked gray sleeveless hoodie and black basketball shorts that were clinging to his shivering legs. His brown hair was plastered flat against his forehead, water streaming down his face in steady sheets.

He stood at the cracked free-throw line, his chest rising and falling as his breath misted in the cold air.

He gathered the wet ball with trembling hands, bent his knees, and shot.

The ball hit the back of the rusted metal rim and bounced away into a puddle near the baseline.

"Fuck!" Ethan’s voice tore through the sound of the falling rain, completely furious.

He dragged his feet through the puddles to retrieve the ball, his shoulders slumped with exhaustion. He scooped it up with both hands, turned, and trudged back to the line.

He set his feet again.

Clang.

"Fuck! Fuck!"

He kicked the metal pole under the backboard. The loud clang of his sneaker hitting steel echoed into the night.

He leaned forward, placing his hands on his knees, his head hanging low. A violent, ragged cough tore through his chest, shaking his entire body. He stayed like that for nearly thirty seconds, coughing into the crook of his wet elbow, his breath coming in wheezing, painful gasps.

He was going to get sick. He was going to destroy his body before the first game of the season even arrived.

Coach said he would revoke his scholarship.

The memory of the locker room flashed behind my eyes. The way Coach had grabbed Ethan’s armband. The look of utter terror and humiliation on Ethan’s face. It was my fault. If I hadn't thrown that stupid pass, if I had just taken the layup myself, Coach wouldn't have singled Ethan out. Ethan wouldn't be standing in the freezing rain trying to shoot himself to death.

My feet moved before my anxiety could stop me.

I pushed through the rusted gate of the court. The sound of the groaning metal cut through the rain.

Ethan’s head snapped up instantly. He wiped the rain from his eyes with the back of a bruised hand, squinting through the dark toward the entrance.

"Who's there?" He shouted, his voice hoarse as he dropped into a defensive crouch, ready to fight.

I stepped out of the shadows, walking slowly into the dim yellow glare of the floodlight.

Ethan froze.

Rain poured between us, dripping from my jacket and splashing against his soaked sneakers.

His eyes widened in shock before narrowing with hatred.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" He breathed out, his chest heaving. He straightened up, tucking the basketball firmly under his left arm. "Are you stalking me now, Mercer?"

My throat closed up instantly.

The familiar panic surged through my veins. My palms turned clammy inside my pockets, and my heart began to pound against my ribs like a trapped animal. I had to force my jaw to unlock, forcing myself to look at him instead of staring at the pavement.

"I..." My voice sounded tiny, lost under the noise of the rain. I cleared my throat, trying again. "I was walking. I heard the ball."

Ethan let out a sharp, mocking bark of laughter that had zero humor in it.

"Oh, look at that," he sneered, taking two aggressive steps toward me. "The statue speaks. So now that it’s just the two of us out here in the dark, you can talk? I thought you were a fucking mute, pretty boy."

"I'm not a mute," I said quietly, keeping my hands buried deep inside my jacket pockets so he wouldn't see my fingers trembling.

"Right. You're just an asshole who thinks he's too good to answer people in the daylight," Ethan snapped, his jaw tight, water running off the tip of his nose. "What the hell do you want, Axel? Did you come out here to watch me miss free throws so you can go tell Coach I can't shoot?"

"No," I said quickly, taking half a step forward. "No. That’s not... I didn't come here to mock you."

"Then why the fuck are you standing on my court?!" Ethan yelled, his voice cracking from the strain. "Look at you! Standing there like you don't have a care in the world, staring at me like I'm some pathetic stray dog! What do you want from me?!"

"I wanted to apologize," I blurted out.

The words came out before I could stop them.

Ethan blinked, stopping dead in his tracks. The rain beat down on his bare shoulders, his eyes narrowing in total disbelief.

"You wanted to what?" Ethan asked, his tone dripping with skepticism.

"The pass," I said, my voice trembling as I struggled to keep talking. The cold and the fear of having his full attention made it difficult to get the words out. "During the scrimmage. The alley-oop. I didn't throw it to show off. I didn't throw it to make you look bad in front of the scouts."

"Bullshit," Ethan spat.

"It's not bullshit," I insisted, my voice rising just enough to be heard over the wind. "You were open. You had the lane. At my old school, if someone had a clear lane, you threw the ball. I didn't think about how it looked. I just... I wanted you to score."

"You wanted me to score?" Ethan repeated, taking another step closer until he was standing barely two feet from me.

He looked up at me, his lips curling in disgust.

"You think I need you to hand me points, Mercer? You think I need a rich transfer to set me up so I don't look like garbage in front of State?!"

"No," I said, shaking my head helplessly. "You're good, Ethan. You're better than you think you are."

"Don't patronize me!" Ethan roared, slamming his free fist against the side of his own leg. "You don't know shit about me! You don't know how many years I spent waking up at four in the morning while you were sleeping on silk sheets! You don't know what it feels like to have your entire life hanging on whether some old man with a clipboard likes your jump shot!"

"I don't," I admitted, my voice dropping to a whisper. "I don't know what that feels like. But I wasn't trying to hurt you."

He stared at me, his chest rising and falling in violent  jerks. For a second, just a tiny fraction of a second, I thought the anger in his eyes softened into something like exhaustion.

Then his expression hardened, turning cold again.

"Get out of here, Axel," Ethan said, his voice deadly quiet.

"Ethan…"

"I said get the fuck out of here!" Ethan barked, pointing a shaking finger toward the rusted gate. "I don't want to look at you. I don't want to talk to you. I don't want your fake apologies."

I stood my ground,  my heart breaking inside my ribs. I couldn't just walk away. If I walked away now, he would spend the rest of the night out here in the freezing cold, destroying his lungs and his knees.

"You're freezing," I said, looking at his bare arms, covered in goosebumps and shivering violently. "You need to go home."

"I don't have to do shit because you told me to!" Ethan stepped close, his chest nearly against mine. His eyes were bloodshot, his desperation almost frightening. "Leave me alone, Mercer. I mean it. I’m about two seconds away from doing something crazy, and I already have Coach breathing down my neck. If I swing on you out here, I lose my scholarship for good. So if you have any survival instincts in that pretty little head of yours, turn around and walk away."

The threat hung between us.

I didn't move. I couldn't.

Every nerve in my body told me to run back to my empty condo, where nobody yelled at me or made me feel like the worst person on earth. But when I looked at Ethan, his jaw trembling from the cold and dark circles under his eyes, I couldn't bring myself to leave him.

I didn't want him to hate me.

More than anything in the world, I wanted him to look at me the way he had looked at Julian—with trust, with warmth, with that bright, confident captain's smile that made my chest feel like it was going to burst open.

"Ethan," I started, reaching a hand out from my pocket. "Please, just…"

Before I could finish the sentence, Ethan doubled over.

A harsh coughing fit bent him forward, his knees buckling slightly. The basketball slipped from his hands and splashed into the puddle at his feet, sending muddy water up his shins. He clutched his ribs, struggling to catch his breath between coughs.

My heart lurched.

Without thinking, I reached into the deep inner pocket of my rain jacket. I pulled out a sealed bottle of mineral water I had grabbed before leaving the apartment.

I stepped forward, kneeling down slightly to get into his line of sight, twisting the plastic cap open with a sharp crack.

"Here," I said, my voice steady for the first time all night, holding the bottle out toward his trembling hands. "Drink this. Take a breath, Ethan. Please."

Ethan was still wheezing, one hand pressed hard against his chest, staring at the bottle of water in front of his face.

For two seconds, he didn't move.

Then, he looked up.

His eyes were completely wild. The humiliation, the exhaustion, the terror of losing his entire life. It all boiled over behind his pupils in a flash of blinding fury.

He didn't take the water.

Ethan snatched the muddy basketball from the puddle and hurled it at my face with startling speed. Before I could dodge, it smacked me.