JORDAN –
The second morning at Thornfield Academy bled gray through stained-glass windows. Jordan Blake hovered at the varsity locker room threshold, watching the grotesque ballet of boyhood play out in sweat-slick bravado and hollow laughter.
The air reeked of Axe body spray, sour gear, and something coppery underneath. James, she reminded herself, the name coiling tight. You're James Blake now. Back straight. Voice low. Eyes forward. Never down.
That mantra had kept her stitched together for exactly forty-eight hours since the gates clanged shut behind her.
"Blake!"
Coach Myers erupted from the equipment cage, voice gravel-dipped in authority. A jersey landed against her chest. Number fourteen. It smelled of bleach and every boy who came before her.
"Second day, first chances. Don't make me regret letting you on the team."
The jersey struck her chest binder like a warning shot, right over the elastic lies that flattened her truth into something palatable. Underneath, her father's compass dug into her sternum like a secret trying to claw out.
"Nice arms for a sophomore." Dawson Matthews cracked his towel like a whip, letting it cut the air inches from her ribs. "Bet you still can't hold your stick right, pretty boy."
Pretty boy. The words stung, but they meant he'd bought the lie. Voice lessons, posture drills, months of compression—just convincing enough to earn insults instead of questions.
She opened her locker on autopilot. "Guess we'll find out on the field."
The locker room erupted—hoots, howls, carnivorous laughter. Omar Carter crowed, "Oh snap, Blake's got teeth!"
For a single moment, Jordan felt the drug of belonging. Even if the acceptance was borrowed, built on false paperwork and duct tape masculinity.
Then the air shifted.
Elijah Cole didn't enter spaces—he commandeered them. Practice gear clung like custom armor, damp hair art-directed. He moved like carved legacy, and everyone else shifted unconsciously, making space.
Jordan hated him cleanly, violently. Hated how the other boys straightened when he walked by, how those storm-gray eyes seemed calibrated to detect fractures in armor.
"Move."
One word. No edge, no volume. Command. The locker room parted like scripture.
Of course his locker was next to hers.
She dropped her head, focused on cleat laces like red wires. Her pulse thundered you don't belong here and she prayed her fear wasn't as loud as it felt.
"You left handed?" Soft, almost curious. Like a lion wondering how the antelope got in the enclosure.
The stick. Her lacrosse stick leaned carelessly on the left side of her locker—flashing neon for anyone paying attention. And of course he was.
"Ambidextrous. Keeps defenders guessing."
Elijah crouched beside her without ceremony, space shrinking until it felt suffocating. She could smell him—clean soap, expensive, understated. The kind worn by boys who'd never used bar soap from gas stations.
Her skin crawled with awareness. Every micro-adjustment she'd drilled into James Blake's performance felt suddenly too loud, too readable.
He plucked a water bottle from his bag and tossed it with effortless accuracy. It smacked her palm before she could think, fingers curling with reflexes too fast, too fluid.
Another tell.
"Try to keep up today, James."
The name rolled off his tongue like a secret he wasn't supposed to know. Like a dare wrapped in velvet. He said it like he didn't believe it, testing the taste on his teeth.
Across the room, someone else was slipping in his own skin.
Teddy Phillips stood near the equipment cage, sandy hair catching fluorescent light. Jordan recognized him from yesterday's registration—the boy who'd offered to show her the dorms, talked lacrosse tryouts. But now she saw what she'd missed: the way his voice dipped too low on certain words, posture held too deliberately casual. The laugh tight and timed at jokes that landed sharp.
He was pretending too.
Their eyes locked across half-dressed bodies and cologne-soaked bravado. For a flash, she saw recognition—or maybe curiosity. Like he could read the stitches in her mask the same way she felt his.
"Blake! Phillips! Second string defense!" Myers's voice cracked like thunder. "Let's see if y'all got something I can use!"
Outside, the field spread emerald and pristine, each grass blade trimmed with surgical precision. A battlefield dressed in prep school polish.
The scrimmage hit like a car crash—pads slamming ribs, sticks cracking like broken promises. Jordan moved through it like she'd been born in motion, hands catching passes like breath, footwork slicing through defenders with surgical intent. Years of shadow-practice in stolen twilight fields made her sharp, efficient, lethal.
Teddy held the line beside her like a human anchor, steady and broad-shouldered. His presence softened the brutality just enough to keep her breathing. But when someone looked, his natural rhythm stiffened, turned calculated.
"Nice save, Phillips," she called after he cut off a pass with precision.
His smile lit up real for a half-second before the mask snapped back. "Thanks, Blake."
But he said her name like it had flavor, rolling it around to see if it tasted like a lie.
Water break. Elijah approached like a riptide—calm surface, deadly underneath. Those storm-gray eyes locked on her like they were designed for dissection.
"Your form's too clean." Not unkind. That was the worst part—how gentle he was when being dangerous. His hand reached out, fingers brushing hers to correct her grip.
No calluses. No scars. Skin soft where a real boy's should've been worn raw. He felt the secrets under her fingernails.
She jerked back like his hand had gone radioactive.
"Been practicing."
His eyes sharpened like a scalpel. "Alone?"
Everything about Elijah Cole said he never asked questions unless he already knew the answer.
Myers blew the whistle—sharp as a gunshot. Jordan bolted for the field, but felt Elijah's gaze on her skull. Cold, precise, scalpel-sharp. He'd seen something.
By the final whistle, her lungs were razors and jersey clung like unwanted skin. But she'd made it. Speed and strategy had earned her a roster spot—barely.
Elijah's questions still echoed. Teddy's too-long looks lingered. The role of James Blake was proving harder when stage lights kept shifting and the audience knew too much.
But speed had always been her currency. On the field, she wasn't a lie—she was velocity. James was fiction, but this was real.
She just hoped speed would still be enough. Enough to stay ahead of the past clawing up behind her, the ghosts that hadn't stayed buried. Not her mother's blood on kitchen tile. Not the look in her father's eyes.
Because Jordan Blake had never been allowed to slow down.
And James Blake couldn't afford to.
The compass pulsed against her chest, each heartbeat a silent metronome counting down until collapse. It had always pointed north.
But tonight, it was pointing straight into the fire.
And Jordan—James—was going to run straight through it.
The final whistle split the air. Jordan bent double, hands braced on her knees, lungs burning like she'd swallowed the sun. Sweat dripped into her eyes, stinging worse than the hits she'd taken.
Across the field, Elijah Cole was still watching her. Teddy too. Both of them seeing too much.
She yanked her helmet off, feeling the compass dig into her sternum like a reminder and a warning. The game was over, but she could already feel the next one waiting.