Just Like This (Albin Academy #2) - Cole McCade Page 0,88

of the mattress at Chris’s hip. “Is that what you’re so afraid of? Breaking the rules?”

With his hand still resting on Chris’s ankle, Rian felt the moment Chris tensed again. “I’m not breaking any rules,” Chris said quietly.

“Maybe not,” Rian murmured. “But someone is. Because whether it’s against the rules of the school or general rules of society, no one’s allowed to hurt you the way someone has been. Decent people don’t do that to others. And if someone’s going to be punished for that, it won’t be you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Chris retorted with a sharp edge, “because no one’s hurting me.”

Rian closed his eyes, breathing in deep and straightening, pulling his hand back to rest on the footboard. When he opened his eyes, Damon was watching him, clearly troubled, and Rian didn’t have to ask to guess why. Chris was already shutting down—and clearly lying. Unless he was somehow doing that to himself, but...how? How was he bruising himself that way? Why was he dehydrated and exhausted unless he was deliberately depriving himself?

What could push him to harm himself that way?

Rian shook his head slightly, helplessly; he didn’t quite know what to say now, and Damon knew Chris better than Rian did. Damon was closer to him, had forged that familial, almost fatherly bond with him as part of the football team. Rian was probably as useless here as he was anywhere else, a presence of moral support and nothing more. He’d been deceiving himself thinking that he and Damon had come together like Chris’s parents, when really...

Damon was the only one who had that role, here.

Rian was just...aching to have that feeling of closeness back, and grasping desperately and pathetically at whatever straws he could.

Damon gave Rian an odd, questioning look, before turning back to Chris. He studied him thoughtfully for several moments, then said without preamble, “We’ve contacted your parents.”

Chris had started to take a bite of his sandwich, looking like he’d rather chew on raw nails but so obviously trying to put on a pretense of normalcy—but he spluttered around the mouthful he’d been sinking his teeth into, letting it drop from his lips with several bits still clinging and half-tethered to the sandwich.

A sandwich he dropped messily back to the plate as he strangled out, “What? Why?”

“Because their son is in the infirmary, dehydrated and exhausted and beat to shit,” Damon said firmly. “And they have a right to know. Don’t you think they’d be worried about you?”

“I don’t want to worry them!” Chris flared. “That’s why—”

He cut off short, flushing guiltily and pressing himself back against the mattress, the pillows. Rian leaned forward, hands gripping tighter at the cool metal railing.

“Why what, Chris?” he pressed. “What are you doing to keep from worrying them?”

“Nothing,” Chris said a little too quickly, a little too desperately, and he fumbled for the bottle of orange juice sitting on the tray, fingers shaky on the cap. “I’m just trying to stay out of trouble like I’m supposed to. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”

“Except I don’t think it is,” Rian said softly. “You know why kids come to Albin, don’t you?”

Chris smiled a touch bitterly, twisting at the cap without really opening it, squeezing it so tight his knuckles turned stark and ridged. “Little juvenile delinquents, huh. Bet you’re wondering what I did that was the last straw, aren’t you?”

“I’m not. And I don’t think Dam—Mr. Louis is, either.” Rian shook his head. “I worry about every last one of the boys here. I don’t think they’re bad kids. I think they need their parents, not us, but we’re all they have so we’re doing our best. And if we can give them a safe space to work through their growing pains, that’s...something. But I’ve looked at your records, your intake files...there’s nothing there. Nothing about problems you’ve caused, nothing you’ve done to create a scandal...nothing at all. You’re just... Chris. And you have a perfect disciplinary record. So I have trouble understanding why your parents would want to hide you away here.”

“Guess they didn’t put that part in my records,” Chris said reluctantly. “Probably so people wouldn’t treat me any different. I’m an alumni baby. My dad graduated from here, and his dad, and his dad before. I guess my great-grandfather got some lady pregnant way back when and they sent him here to shape up, and he came out such a fine, upstanding citizen that now everyone in my family thinks we gotta go here if