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Chapter 1
Chapter One: Quiet Courts
The old town courts sat behind the high school, cracked like dry earth in summer. Rowan Maddox pushed a broom across the baseline, scooping up maple leaves and grit. He had told himself it was just a part-time job while he figured things out, the kind you hold for a season and then let go. Two years later, he was still here every morning, the chain-link fence rattling in the breeze, his breath fogging when the dawn was cold enough to sting.
He could still feel the weight of a racket in his hand, could still see the arc of a serve as if his eyes were trained for it forever. Most days he kept that to himself. The kids who drifted onto the courts after school knew him as the quiet guy who handed out balls and fixed nets. The parents knew a bit more. The parents whispered his name the way you whisper a song you can’t get out of your head.
He sighed and rolled the chalker across the doubles line, a white seam appearing in its wake. It was easy work. Easy didn’t mean painless.
A car door thudded shut on the other side of the fence. The director of the community academy, Monica Alvarez, stood there in a windbreaker, her hair pulled back, a clipboard pressed to her chest. Rowan straightened, squinting into the pale light.
“You always here this early?” she asked.
“Beats sleeping in.”
She smiled. “I have a favor to ask.”
He leaned the broom against the net post and waited. People always led with small talk and then tiptoed up to what they really wanted. He had noticed that since the scandal. They wanted something from the famous failure that wouldn’t require looking him in the eye.
“I’d rather you ask it straight,” he said.
Monica nodded. “The academy wants to place a private coach with one of our juniors. A special case. Jasper. We think you’re the right person.”
Rowan stared at the clay. The chalk line he’d just drawn seemed to glow.
“I don’t coach,” he said.
“You do,” she countered, “without calling it that. I’ve watched you with the kids who hang around here.”
“That’s different.”
“It is,” she agreed. “But this—this could be good for you too.”
He started to shake his head, and then she said the thing she’d avoided until now.
“It’s Jasper Locke.”
The name hit like a hard serve. Adrian Locke’s kid. Adrian, who had stood across the net from Rowan at the International Open semifinal, the one that still lived in the back of every headline about him. Adrian, who had looked at him across the net after match point with something between pity and disgust.
Rowan felt his throat tighten. “No.”
“Rowan,” Monica said gently, “just meet the kid.”
He looked at his broom. The leaves he had gathered swirled apart in a gust, as if the court itself didn’t want to hold them. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, where headaches started and never really left.
“Tomorrow,” he said, against his better judgment. “Tomorrow I’ll meet him.”
