All Chapters of Puck Me, One More Time: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Ken's POV"No, Coach Dan. Come on." I stepped forward before the coach could fully turn away because the way things were going, Liam had run out of words and someone needed to fill that gap right now. "Liam is not that type of guy to go streaking. They are clearly lying against him. You can ask any…""Save your side of the story for Ms. Scott when this gets to her." Coach Dan cut me off with both his words and his hand as he already had his palm up, pointed directly at my face. It was more of the universal gesture of someone who had made their decision and was not entertaining further input. Then he turned to the rest of the pool and clapped his hands together twice. "As for everyone else…get back to swimming. Back to swimming, come on. Move it."The pool slowly returned to noise around us. Students drifted back to what they had been doing, some more reluctantly than others — the ones who had been watching the most closely, taking their time about it and stealing last looks before tur

Ken's POVThe restroom was right there as it's barely thirty steps from the pool edge. And so, the moment Liam disappeared through the entrance I was already moving after him. I could not have known the reason exactly if someone had stopped me to ask. I just knew the look on his face when he turned to leave and I was not going to stand in the pool and let that walk away without checking on it.I pushed through the entrance and the noise from the pool fell behind me immediately, replaced by the quieter echo of the tiled space inside. Liam was already at the far end, standing with his side to me, one leg crossed slightly over the other, I guess looking at nothing in particular with that expression he must have got when his head was somewhere his face was not ready to go."Hey." My voice came out lower in here, the space pulling it down naturally. "Are you okay?"He turned at the sound of it, finding my eyes as I moved toward one of the rooms further in. Something in his face adjusted wh

Liam's POV"Liam."Coach Dan's voice came in from the entrance and I straightened up against the wall immediately, keeping my shoulder blades flat. Also, keeping my expression as neutral as I could manage while my heart was doing something completely unreasonable inside my chest.He looked around the restroom slowly — not frantically, just the quiet, observational sweep of someone who had walked into a space and was taking stock of it. Whether that was just habit or whether he was actually looking for something specific, I could not tell. But the guilty conscience sitting in my chest was doing its best to read everything as suspicious."Everybody has already changed." He said, having his eyes settle on me. "What are you up to?""Nothing." I kept my voice steady. Or as close to steady as I could get it right now. "I will be out in a second."He held the look for just a moment in that neutral, unreadable expression coaches kept in rotation for exactly these kinds of situations. And then

Liam's POV"What was that sound?" Coach Dan was fully turned back around, having his eyes on me while the question sat in the restroom air like something that needed an answer immediately and I was not going to pretend otherwise.There was no time to think. None at all.Then, I pulled my palm from my lips and placed it back flat against the wall behind me while my defense instincts doubled up. "Something… dropped." Although I ended up stuttering without meaning to, the words arriving before the sentence was fully ready. I knew the moment they left my mouth that it was not enough as it was too short and too bare. It all felt like the kind of statement that raised more questions than it answered. So I pushed forward before the silence could fill in the gap. "So it really scared me."Coach Dan looked at me.Then he looked around the restroom — at the floor, at the space on either side of me, at the general absence of anything that could have plausibly fallen and produced that specific so

Liam's POVI shook my head slowly because even though I could already guess it was going somewhere that Ken had been building toward for the last five minutes, I still wanted to hear him say it. "What?" I whispered back.He dropped his voice down to something low and deliberate, still careful about the volume, his hands moving with that quiet confidence that had been dismantling my composure piece by piece since we got into this restroom.There was a beat of silence between us — not awkward, just full. The kind that happened when two people were standing close enough to feel each other's warmth and neither of them was in a rush to break what was sitting in the air."Like watching you lose control." He said it simply without any buildup or even performance. Just the words landing clean and warm in the space between us.I held his gaze for a second after that. Because there was something about hearing it said out loud directly, without dressing it up… which settled into my chest differe