Page 34 of Six Wishes

The smile dies on my lips. I obviously don’t want whatever this is with Van to be just a fling. I just didn’t expect him to be so forward with it. Guys, in my experience, are never like that. Maybe because he is a little older than the guys a normally go out with. Not that he is that much older than me, barely six years.

One thought is stuck in my head though, and I am almost afraid to ask him about it. However, since Van’s been so honest with me, I owe him the same.

“What happens when you go back to New York?”

He takes a second to think over how he wants to answer my question, and I respect that.

“I’m not sure if I’ll be able to play professionally again. My knee…” He looks down in between us, and I follow his eyes until I reach the part of his body in question. He’s got a nasty scar going up and down but it seems to have healed really well. Not that I know much about any of that.

“I noticed you limping the other night,” I confess. I didn’t say anything before because I wasn’t sure if he’d be okay with my doing so.

“Yeah?” he gives me a quick but impressed smile. “No one has noticed it so far. My training has been going really well. But I do feel it quite a bit at the end of the day. And I worry that I wouldn’t be able to handle back-to-back games, and training in between.”

I nod in understanding. I can’t imagine how he must be feeling about not being able to continue playing. I mean, I got no clue what I want to do with my life at the ripe old age of twenty-six. But if I did have a passion, I’m thinking that I’d be devastated when it got taken away from me.

“Would you live here?” My heart is beating out of my chest as I wait to see what he says.

“I’d like to see where you and I go from here, Chlo…”

I feel so emotional in this moment. I never expected things to change for the better in a matter of days.

“I’d like that too.”

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