Author: Tiffany Reisz

Left knee. Right knee. Right knee. Left knee.

Kingsley kept bouncing, kept breathing.

Just to elicit an “ohhh” from the audience and maybe to impress Stearns a little, Kingsley popped the ball into the air and bounced it off the top of his head and back to his knee. He popped it up again and let it rest a second on the back of his neck before sending it up again and back to his knee.

Right knee. Right knee. Left knee. Left ankle. Right knee.

“So can you actually play soccer, King?” Christian asked. “Or do you just play with your balls all day.”

“I can play,” Kingsley said without elaborating. He could do more than play. Back in Paris, he’d been the best in the school. He’d already been scouted by the Paris Saint-Germain Football Club and had every intention of joining them as soon as he came of age. But that was before the accident, before Maine. “The problem is, no one else here can play against me.”

“Sorry. We’re all Americans,” Christian teased. “We play real football.”

Kingsley laughed. Left ankle. Right ankle. “You should be sorry. I had an entire team on me once trying to keep me from the goal. Still made it.”

“Really?” Derek demanded. “A whole team?”

“Felt like it,” Kingsley said, grinning. “But what does it matter? None of you know how to play. So I’ll just play with myself.” He winked at Christian and for a few minutes the conversation was peppered with nothing but masturbation jokes.

Right knee. Right knee. Right knee. Left.

Oohs. Ahhs. Teasing. Laughter.

“I know how to play.”

In the shock of the silence that followed, Kingsley dropped the ball.

The twenty assembled students collectively turned their heads toward Stearns.

“You can play soccer?” Kingsley picked the soccer ball up off the ground. Stearns’s words had stunned everyone so thoroughly that not a single person teased Kingsley about dropping the ball after nearly ten minutes of juggling.

“I went to school in England.” Stearns slipped off his jacket and started to roll up his sleeves.

Kingsley could only stare at him, at his forearms he slowly unveiled with each turn of his cuff.

“But…you play piano.” Kingsley had no idea what that meant, only that he’d assumed a musician could not also be an athlete.

Stearns didn’t answer. He crossed his arms over his chest and waited. Everyone remained silent. Kingsley could feel the tension, the waiting expectation in the air. He didn’t know what to say, what to do. Stearns raised an eyebrow, and in his steel-gray eyes, Kingsley noted something he hadn’t seen before—amusement. Not only did Stearns clearly know how uncomfortable he made Kingsley, but he enjoyed it, too. The amusement annoyed Kingsley. Beyond annoyed him, it pissed him the hell off. Who was this guy who delighted in making people uncomfortable? What kind of sadist was he?

Stearns raised his blond eyebrow a millimeter higher. A smile played upon the corner of his perfect lips.

“School in England, oui?” Kingsley asked.

“Oui,” Stearns said. The eyebrow inched even higher. The smile spread over his entire mouth.

“That would explain your pretentious accent.”

A gasp rippled through the crowd. Kingsley realized he must have been the very first student to ever talk back to Stearns. If only, perhaps, because Stearns never seemed to talk to anyone.

“And who are we to talk pretentious accents?” Stearns asked, employing an exaggerated faux French accent. The accent sounded just like Kingsley’s natural way of speaking. He could speak English without his French accent, but it exhausted him so he seldom bothered trying. Especially since girls swooned over his French accent. Too bad Stearns seemed immune to its charms.

“Très bien,” Kingsley said. “Can you play as well as you talk?”

“We can find out. Drop the ball.” Stearns took a step forward.

“We don’t have a field.”

“Make one up.”

Kingsley glanced around. They really didn’t need a field, as they didn’t even have teams. With two players all they really needed was a goal.

“The trees…” Kingsley nodded toward two trees at the end of the field. “That’s our goal. I’ll try to score. You try to stop me.”

“You said you scored with an entire team on you. Surely you can score against only me.”

“Bien sûr.” Of course he could. Offense had been his forte.

“Then drop the ball.” Stearns took another step forward. The assembled students took a step back.

Kingsley couldn’t believe quite believe this was happening. The entire school watched in awed silence.

He dropped the ball.

At first Kingsley was afraid he’d been conned. Stearns didn’t move a muscle, only stared at him. Kingsley lifted his left foot in readiness to kick the ball.

Stearns beat him to it.

The ball sailed across the field, and out of instinct and training, Kingsley went after it. Stearns stayed right next to him, right next to the ball. Kingsley thought this game would be a lock. No pianist, no matter how tall or intimidating, should be able to give him any competition. But Stearns had the longer legs, the concentration and some incredible athletic ability of his own. Shoulder to shoulder they ran down the field. Just when Kingsley thought he had control of the ball, Stearns would kick out his foot and take possession again. Kingsley had never played with someone so aggressive before—aggressive and calm. A terrifying combination. Terrifying but also exhilarating. He’d never been this close to Stearns before. He could hear his breathing—loud but slow. He could smell the scent of his skin—winter tinged with heat. In the middle of such a vicious volley for the ball, there was no reason Kingsley should notice that Stearns had unusually dark eyelashes for having such pale blond hair. But he noticed. He noticed everything.

They neared the two trees they’d declared their goal. Kingsley swept his foot out, got the ball back and with one elegant kick let it soar toward the trees. No stopping it now. He started to smile.

But Stearns went into high gear. His long legs outpaced the ball’s high, arching flight, and with his hands outstretched, he caught it before it could pass between the trees.

The assembled crowd exploded into impressed laughter and cheers. Kingsley could only stare at Stearns, who held the ball in one hand, quietly smiling.

“You can’t be goalie and defender, too.” Kingsley glared at him.

“Why not? You didn’t set any rules. You simply named the goal and told me to stop you from getting the ball there. Done.”

“It’s not fair.”

“Then we’ll do it again.”

Stearns dropped the ball and bounced it on his ankle and then to his knee.

Right foot. Right foot. Right ankle. Right foot.

Kingsley said nothing, only watched. Stearns wasn’t just good at handling the soccer ball, he was as good as Kingsley himself.

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to play anymore.”

“Because you lost the point?” Stearns asked, kicking the ball back into the air and catching it with one hand. Every move he made seemed designed to dazzle with the sheer effortlessness of it. Kingsley could make magic on a soccer field, but he had to work his ass off for every point. Stearns had barely broken a sweat.

“Because there is no point. You’ll play however you like and win no matter what I do.”

“Possibly. But if you set the rules, I’ll follow them.”

Kingsley shook his head, snatched the ball out of midair and started for the dorm.

“New rule—find someone else to beat.”

Kingsley left the field with all eyes on him as he departed. But he didn’t care about them. He only cared that Stearns watched him. Kingsley didn’t even know where his burst of anger had come from. Stearns was right—Kingsley hadn’t set any rules. But still, Stearns infuriated him. He was perfect. Kingsley had never met anyone smarter, more handsome, more talented... He seemed unreal, like an angel or some sort of mythical creature. Kingsley loathed Stearns for it, for his beauty, his perfection…loathed him, desired him, ached for him all at once. The anger on the field—it hadn’t been anger at all, Kingsley realized, as he reached the dorm room and collapsed onto his bed. It was frustration.

The frustration worsened as the minutes passed and Kingsley replayed the entire scenario in his mind, while he gazed up at the ceiling of the dorm room and counted the cracks in the plaster. It could have been his chance to finally get close to Stearns. After all, Stearns never spoke to anyone but the priests, never consorted with any of the other students. Rarely if ever did he speak to a classmate unless the brave soul spoke to him first. And here Stearns had voluntarily joined him for some soccer. And Kingsley had ruined it.

“You’re good.”

Kingsley turned his head toward the source of the voice. Stearns stood in the doorway of the room.

Shrugging, Kingsley looked back up at the ceiling. His heart pounded in his chest, his breath quickened. He forced himself not to think about the reasons why.

“So are you. You played a lot in England?”

Stearns stepped into the room and came toward Kingsley’s bed.

“I did. But I haven’t played in a long time. I was ten when I left that school.”

Groaning, Kingsley sat up and crossed his legs. “This is why everyone hates you, you know. Because you’re so damn perfect. You haven’t played soccer in seven years and you’re better than me. I was scouted by the Paris Saint-Germain. That’s a professional team.”

Stearns didn’t say anything at first. Kingsley waited and stared.

“Everyone hates me?”

He didn’t sound hurt when he asked the question, but Kingsley immediately wanted to go back in time and take it back. He wanted to take everything back—the display of temper on the field, the angry words, the frustration that drove him closer and closer to the breaking point every day.

“Non, pas du tout,” Kingsley said, exploding into a flurry of French. For some reason, he felt only in French could he apologize effusively enough. “No one hates you. I just said that out of…well, I don’t hate you. I just wish I hated you.”

Stearns came even closer. He sat on the bed opposite Kingsley.

“Why do you wish you hated me?” Stearns leveled a stare at him and Kingsley once again noted the dark lushness of his eyelashes and how they made his gray eyes seem even more impenetrable.

Kingsley sighed. He dropped the soccer ball on the floor between them. Gently, he toed the ball and let it roll toward Stearns. Stearns set his foot on top of it to hold it stationary.

“What are you?” Kingsley asked, not knowing what he meant by the question, but needing the answer.

Stearns seemed to understand the question even if Kingsley didn’t. He sighed and tapped the ball so it gently rolled toward Kingsley.

“Father Pierre, the priest who taught me French, he had a theory about me.”

“Was it that you’re the Second Coming of Christ? If so, I’ve already heard that one.”

Stearns said nothing, only glared at Kingsley with his lips a thin, disapproving line.

“I’m sorry. Seriously, tell me his theory. I want to know.”

“Father Pierre had a photographic memory. He had the Bible committed entirely to memory—French and English. He could recall nearly everything he’d ever read decades after one glance. Amazing.”

“So you have a photographic memory?”

Stearns shook his head. “No, not at all. It’s different for me. If I do something once, do it well, I know how to do it…completely, almost intuitively. If I kick a soccer ball, my body understands the game. I learned the scales on the piano and somehow knew how to play. Father Pierre believed I have photographic muscle memory.”