Page 64 of Breakaway

He brushes his lips over my forehead. “Thank you for telling me.”

“I don’t talk about her often enough.” My smile goes wobbly again. “Dad doesn’t like to. I think it still hurts too much.”

“You know, it would feel weird to make out under the gaze of Edward Cullen,” he quips.

I laugh wetly. Three times in a row now, his thoughtfulness has taken me aback. Asking about my mom. Checking that I still want to be called “Red.” And now this—knowing exactly when I need humor to keep from spiraling.

“We go way back,” I say. “I started reading Twilight in the hospital. It was the series that made me fall in love with reading.”

“Well, that settles it,” he says. “We need to do a book swap. I’ll read Twilight, and you can check out Lord of the Rings.”

I reach over to the bookshelf next to my bed; my well-worn copies sit right in the middle of the top shelf. I take out the first one and flip through it. If he reads it, he’ll see all the passages I highlighted. I’ve read hundreds of books since, and I know the series isn’t perfect, but I still adore every single word. “You probably won’t like them. The books are nothing like what you usually read.”

“I like the movies,” he says. “And you’ll like The Fellowship of the Ring.”

“Fine,” I say. “But if I bail because there isn’t enough romance, don’t—”

“Bug?” Dad calls. “Are you home?”

My heart drops straight through to the floor.

“Closet,” I mutter, shoving at Cooper. “Go.”

He shuts himself in my closet at the exact moment Dad knocks on my door.

Chapter 35

Cooper

Since I started hooking up, I’ve been shoved unceremoniously into closets twice—once because the girl I was hooking up with had a boyfriend she neglected to tell me about, and once because her strict parents would have flipped if they saw she had a boy in her room. I’ve hidden underneath the bed, underneath the covers, and on one memorable occasion, clung to the terrace like Romeo fucking Montague. And those are just the times I didn’t get caught. I still wince whenever I remember getting hit on the ass with a well-aimed slipper while I ran out of a house in nothing but my underwear. That grandmother had some arm.

But until now, I’ve never taken hiding so seriously. I’m barely even breathing in case Coach hears it. I’m not that worried about what will happen to me if I get caught—I just want to save Penny the embarrassment, especially after she was so honest with me about her mother.

“Penelope,” he’s saying, “I thought you went back to the dorms.”

“I did,” she says. I watch through the slats in the door—it’s a shutter-style wooden door, which means I have a sliver of a view, but that makes it even more likely Coach will notice that something is up—as she holds up the lab report data sheet. “I forgot this, I had to come back for it.”

“I hope you didn’t walk all the way from campus,” he says. “Mia still picked you up, right?”

“Yeah.” I watch as she runs her hand through her hair. “I took a cab here. I need this for something due tomorrow and I didn’t want to cut your date short. How did it go, by the way?”

As if in reply, a woman calls, “Larry? Is everything okay?”

“Be down in a moment, Nikki,” Coach says. He’s blushing, which I’ve never seen him do. I didn’t realize he was even capable of it.

“Oh,” Penny says. She’s also blushing furiously. “That’s, um, great, Dad. I’ll grab an Uber back to campus.”

“I can drive you,” he says.

“No, it’s cool,” she says quickly. “You should enjoy yourself.”

“I hope you’re still focusing on school,” Coach says, gesturing down to the book in her hands. “I don’t want you reading too much of that stuff, Pen.”

Indignation erupts through me. Penny crosses her arms over her chest, hugging the book. “I’m still doing everything I need to do for school.”

“You won’t become a physical therapist unless you buckle down. You know that.”

A physical therapist? I didn’t even know that was Penny’s plan; she’s never mentioned it. I’ve been wondering why she’s putting herself through a biology degree when her passions so obviously lie elsewhere. Now I see why, and unfortunately, I get it. She wants to make her dad happy, even if that means studying something she’s not interested in. Wanting to make my dad happy is why I’m at McKee right now instead of possibly in the league already.

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