Length8h 41m
About this audiobook
Clams.
A paper boat of fried ones, going greasy in his hand at the edge of a plaza, while eight blocks of the main street sit shut down under white canopies and salt-crusted banners flapping in the coastal wind.
His brother called it a PR move. *Show your face, Coach. Let them see you're not some desk jockey from the city who's going to make them run suicides for fun.* Theo laughed, clapped Noah on the shoulder, said fine, the festival it was.
Standing here now, he is less sure.
Families with toddlers strapped into wagons. Retirees in wide-brimmed hats. A rotating spit of something that smells like pineapple and pork. Teenage girls taking selfies in front of the bronze statue the whole festival is named for.
He pulls his collar tighter and scans for the school booth. It is halfway down the block: royal blue canopy sagging at one corner, hand-painted sign, and a folding table that is about to become the single most consequential piece of furniture in his life.
What follows: sawdust and a slammed door, a playbook he cannot follow, the grain of a truth that keeps splintering, a fourth-down gamble, a splinter he cannot dig out, a panic in a press box, and an auction block in a school gymnasium.
*This isn't about his sexuality, it's about his conduct!*
*He lied to us!*
*Did he? Or did he come here to do a job and do it well?*
*I've been wanting to do this for a while.*
He thinks about Declan in the truck, in the workshop, in the forty seconds between the coin toss and the kickoff. He thinks about him at two in the morning with the playbook open and nothing on the page. He has stopped calling it a distraction, stopped calling it a phase, stopped calling it anything other than what it is, and he is not going back to the old vocabulary. Not for the board, not for the town, not ever.
Audiobook details
Rating★★★★ 4.2 (2K)
Includes Goodreads, Amazon, StoryGraph
GenreRomance, Biography and Memoir
Length8 hrs 41 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateSep 15, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Dedication
2Prologue
3Chapter 1 - The Table I Never Meant to Break
4Chapter 2 - The Sawdust and the Slam
5Chapter 3 - The Playbook I Can’t Follow
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6Chapter 4 - The Grain of the Truth
7Chapter 5 - The Fourth Down Gamble
8Chapter 6 - The Splinter I Can’t Dig Out
9Chapter 7 - The Press Box Panic
10Chapter 8 - The Auction Block
11Chapter 9 - The Brother’s Shadow
12Chapter 10 - The Garage Confession
13Chapter 11 - The Drill That Broke Us
14Chapter 12 - The Investigation Begins
15Chapter 13 - The Midnight Decision
16Chapter 14 - The Spatula and the Promise
17Chapter 15 - The Scholarship Dream
18Chapter 16 - The Toolbelt Unlocked
19Chapter 17 - The Parents’ Answer
20Chapter 18 - The Pep Rally Plot
21Chapter 19 - The Light in the Dark
22Chapter 20 - The Aftermath Audit
23Chapter 21 - The Suspension Order
24Chapter 22 - The Black Moment: The Lie Wins
25Chapter 23 - The Emergency Call
26Chapter 24 - The File Goes Public
27Chapter 25 - The Town Meeting
28Chapter 26 - The Final Drive
29Chapter 27 - The Bench We Built
30The End
31About the Author
32Also by Quinn Mercer
33Acknowledgements
34A Note from the Author
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