Chapter 5 THE FOOTBALL GOD

IVY's POV

Everyone at Ashridge knew Jace Holloway. But I kept wondering if anyone actually knew him.

I had been watching him for three weeks, not because I wanted to, but because I needed to map where he would be so I could be somewhere else. The school's version of him was simple, too simple. Captain, quarterback, golden boy. Son of Richard Holloway, whose name was on three buildings and probably half the decisions that mattered here. That version moved through hallways like space adjusted itself for him. Like attention was just something the world owed him automatically.

What I had noticed didn't fit that version.

The way he rolled his shoulders before class, like something inside him tightened between periods and he had to physically reset it. The way his jaw locked on certain days, especially after phone calls outside the athletics building. He would come back from those calls different, not obvious to anyone who wasn't looking, but I was looking anyway, and I could tell it was the kind of silence that meant something had landed wrong.

He was smart in class, not the kind that performed it, but the kind that actually thought, then still looked slightly surprised when a teacher agreed with him. Like he had grown up being told his value lived somewhere else entirely, and intelligence was something he hadn't fully learned to trust in himself yet.

He laughed with Marcus and Tyler in the hallway. Sometimes it reached his eyes, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes it looked like something he was doing because silence would have felt worse.

I wasn't supposed to notice any of this.

Tuesday afternoon I was in the library reading Gatsby when the door opened and Jace walked in alone. Practice bag over his shoulder, hair still damp from the field. He went to the far table, dropped into a chair, and pulled out his own copy of Gatsby.

The library was almost empty, just a few students scattered around and the librarian behind her desk. Enough quiet that everything felt sharper than usual.

I looked up without meaning to.

He was actually reading. Not performing it, not pretending for anyone. One hand flat on the table, his jaw still slightly tight like it never fully relaxed anymore. Earlier that day I had passed the athletics building and heard him on a call. I only caught the end, just "yes sir," but it stayed with me longer than it should have. There was something in the way he said it that didn't sound like respect exactly. It sounded like practice. Like something repeated until it stopped being a choice.

I should have stopped noticing things like that.

I closed my book, put it in my bag, and stood up.

He looked up as I moved. For a second, his expression changed, just a flicker of surprise, like I wasn't part of the version of the library he expected. Then something else slipped in underneath it. Something tired. Not dramatic, not obvious, just ~ there, in the way his focus didn't quite settle properly before he covered it again.

Then it was gone. His face reset into the version everyone knew.

"Library," he said, like he was registering something slightly out of place.

"It has books," I said. "That is what it is for."

I walked out before the moment could become anything else. I didn't look back. I kept my eyes forward all the way to the bus stop, even though I could still feel that second sitting somewhere behind me, refusing to disappear properly.

On the bus home I stared out the window and told myself not to think about it.

Three weeks ago, Jace Holloway had just been someone I moved around. A problem of space, nothing more. But somewhere between the library and the bus stop, that stopped being true, and I didn't like how quietly it had changed.

So I pushed it down. I had other things. A mother working double shifts, A grandmother's scholarship that felt less like hope and more like pressure. A bruise on my hip from Tyler's shoulder. A note in my bag with a red arrow pointing at my body like it was something to inspect.

Those were the things that mattered. Not him.

The bus dropped me at my stop and I walked home. My mother was asleep on the couch in her scrubs. I covered her with a blanket, heated rice, ate standing at the counter, and did my homework like normal life was something I could still fully step into.

But later, when I lay in bed, I kept seeing his face. That one second before he closed off again. That small crack in something carefully built.

I kept hearing "yes sir" in my head.

And I hated that it stayed. I hated that I noticed it at all. I hated even more that I couldn't make it stop.

Because that was the problem now. Not just everything happening around me.

But the fact that I was starting to see him differently at all.