Chapter Two: Pressure

Jiles' POV

I woke up with a splitting migraine. It sat right behind my eyes and pulsed with every heartbeat, like something was trying to claw its way out of my skull. I pressed the heel of my palm against my forehead and sat up slowly, my jaw tight.

I had barely slept. Training ran late last night. Longer than usual. Harder than usual. Everything had been harder ever since I got the call that my grandfather was coming back, which meant expectations, pressure, and no mistakes.

I dragged a hand through my hair, already irritated, and rummaged through the shelf for anything to kill the headache. I found nothing.

"Get me a fvcking Advil!" I said out loud to whoever was at the door.

There was a pause outside, then movement. The door opened and instead of a maid, my running coach walked in with his usual air of confidence.

"Mr. Ashford."

"Get out." I turned my back on him.

"No medication before training. You know the protocol. Your Spanish tutor arrives at six-thirty."

That was how it had always been. One hour running, then Sensei Kwon for martial arts, then Castillo for Spanish, then school. Every morning mapped out to the minute. My grandfather's design. The sessions had doubled since his return date was confirmed.

There was no point arguing with him, so I simply just slipped to the bathroom and slammed the door harder than necessary.

I skipped all my training that morning. I knew it would stir up trouble, but when hadn't I gotten into trouble even when I did everything right?

I got outside of the house once I was done dressing up for school, reaching for my car when the sound of tyres on pavement made me stop.

A black Rolls-Royce Cullinan rolled through the open gate. Staff appeared from nowhere, the way they always did when a certain kind of car arrived.

The door opened, and my mom stepped out.

My pulse halted. My heart actually skipped, like I was still stupid enough to react that way.

"Mom?"

She looked up, dressed in a long coat with her hair pinned back. Her eyes found mine across the distance, and something in her expression shifted.

I walked toward her, aiming for a hug, but her palm connected with my cheek the second I was a step away.

I stood there with the sting spreading across my face. Her eyes were level and cold.

"Excuse us," she said without breaking eye contact.

The staff scattered.

"Do you have any idea," her voice hardened, "what your grandfather is going to do to you if he caught sniff of what I've been hearing?”

I stood there, my palm still on my cheeks, taking in what she had to say.

Her eyes didn't leave mine. "I gave you twenty-four people in this house whose only purpose is to make sure you become something worth talking about. Private coaches. The best trainers in the country. Chefs. And every morning I get reports of tantrums, fights with your coaches, broken things, and a boy who cannot get out of his own head long enough to perform. The regional championship is in six weeks, Jiles. Six weeks. You are captaining a team that needs you present. Your grandfather will be in those stands, watching every single thing you do on that ice."

My shoulders slumped. "Mom, the training has been doubled. It was hard to keep up with everything."

"You will not interrupt me." She pointed her index finger at me. "You will never be great at this rate. I don't know how many different ways I can say that to you. You have everything he had, and you waste it being sentimental.”

"I don't want to be like him."

Her expression changed for just a second, something flickering behind it before it went still again.

"Then you should have thought carefully about what that really means." She turned to leave.

I clenched my fists. "I'm just seventeen,"

She turned back fast. "You're eighteen years old, Jiles. Eighteen."

We held each other's gaze, longer than we should have. Then she walked inside.

My vision blurred slightly, but I blinked it away before anything fell. My nanny appeared at the top of the steps, moving quickly, her face arranged into that particular softness.

"Jiles…"

I walked to the car.

"Jiles, please…"

I pulled out of the compound without acknowledging her. When I reached school, the migraine had settled into a dull pressure.

The usual happened when I walked through the entrance, but I didn't look at any of it. I was almost at my classroom when something hit me between my shoulder blades. The smell reached me first.

For a moment I didn't move. Everything inside me went somewhere past anger. It didn't have a name. It just sat there.

I turned around slowly.

She was standing in the middle of the hallway. Small. Oversized cardigan. Glasses slightly crooked. Her tears washed down a dirty off my face revealing a pale line of skin underneath, but her glasses didn't get me to have a better look.

Then she spoke. "I'm so sorry."

The accent was unmistakable and out of place, and somehow that was the detail that registered before anything else.

She turned and ran.

The corridor filled with murmurs, but my eyes stayed on the space she had just occupied. Behind me, I heard my friends arriving, and that made me look away. I didn't want company right now.

I pushed past them without explanation and went to the principal office to get a new blazer.

I didn't bother explaining anything as she handed me a new one. I took the blazer and turned to leave. Then I paused.

I turned around.

"When did this school start admitting British students?"

She blinked. "Sorry?"

"British. When did that start?"

She folded her hands. "That's just one student. She was enrolled about four years ago. Her guardian brought her in. He wanted her around American students, from what I understood."

I looked at her for a moment. "Can I see her file?"

"Mr. Ashford, your classes will be starting shortly…"

"My grandfather will be back in the States soon. I could put in some good words for you."

She held my gaze for exactly two seconds, my expression remained the same. She stood up eventually and went to the cabinet.

She placed the file on the desk and I opened it. My eyes went straight to the passport photo from enrollment. The girl in it wasn't wearing glasses and her skin was lighter. Closer to what I had seen in that brief second.

She looked younger and I stared at the photo for a moment longer than I intended to.

I frowned slightly.

So the glasses weren't real. Or maybe they were. But the darker skin was clearly not. I stared at it longer, then closed the file and set it back on the desk.

"Thank you," I said and walked out.

My friends were waiting outside in the hallway. There were three of them. Tyler, Cole, and Ricky. They looked at my new blazer.

"You need to do something," Ricky said. "The girls won't stop talking. They all know it was Naomi's setup but that's not the point anymore. If someone that low could egg you and walk away, they need to understand that kind of errand should be refused even if it costs them."

I thought about it.

He wasn't wrong. Perception was its own kind of leverage in this school and I had always understood that better than anyone. If I let this sit, the silence would get interpreted as something it wasn't.

I thought about her accent. The apology that had come out of her and the file photo.

And somehow, I was intrigued to know more about her. But I also did not tolerate people overestimating what they were allowed to do around me.

"Tell someone where we are. I have a feeling she will come."

And she did.

I saw her before she saw me.