Page 74 of Trip Through Your Wires

Bending down, he sucks the hard bead and I drop my head back against the door, relishing how good it feels. Catchers have a strength in their core that carries an entire team, and he holds me up easily as his mouth works its way back up my body to my neck.

“It’s unreal how much I want you right now.” Cupping my ass with both hands, he spins me around and starts to head for the bed. As we turn, my leg swings out, kicking down a photo on my dresser. It lands with a thud, only to be followed by the unmistakable sound of shattering. I look over, then down, and when I see my piggy bank on the floor in a million pieces, and its contents scattered amongst the rubble, I push against Jake’s chest.

“Put me down,” I scramble to the floor, dropping to my knees, the speed in which I collect the money that I’ve been saving for college, mirroring that of a feral cat eating its first bowl of food in weeks.

“Careful,” he drops down next to me, pushing away the jagged chunks of ceramic, “you’ll cut yourself.”

I dig through the carnage frantically, not caring what damage I do to myself. Cuts will heal. Money is hard to replace. “I need to make sure it’s all here. Four thousand, two hundred, and sixty two dollars, and forty three cents.”

“All right,” he looks over at me, brows furrowed in concern. “We’ll get all of it. But be careful.”

After pushing aside a chunk of faded pink ceramic, he helps me pluck money from the broken pieces. When every cent has been accounted for, I sit back on my knees and stare down at the last fistful of money I collected.

“I’m…sorry,” I shake my head, cheeks hot from embarrassment. “I know it must be weird.”

“Why?” He sits back. “Having money put aside is smart. Rainy days happen more than we think, Sparky.”

“How would you know?” I look up. “You have a new car and a full ride to college. You’ve probably never had a rainy day in your life.”

He runs a hand through his hair and lets out a wry laugh. “Uh, pretty sure I have.”

“Really?” I look at him doubtfully.

He inches over to the bed and rests his back against it. “I have a new car because my parents don’t have to pay for school thanks to my scholarship and wanted me to have something reliable in the snow. But for the record, no, I don’t have to work now thanks to said scholarship, but I couldn’t even if I wanted to because there is no time. Although, one could argue I do work my ass off every day between school and baseball.”

“I’m sorry,” I say for a second time, guilt adding to that shade of red I’m sure my cheeks are right now.

I know how hard Jake works. The way he balances school alongside baseball is admirable. He’s not only the best student on his team, but among the top in his class. Besides, it’s not his fault my dreams were forever changed, while his were coming true. My anger was at the universe, not him.

“Don’t be,” he says with a shrug. “You never have to apologize to me. You know that.”

The two of us grow quiet and I wonder if it’s time to tell him the truth—why I’m bitter and stuck here, working and attending community college, instead of going to a real college like I was supposed to. If I do, then I have to tell him everything, including why I pushed him away. The two are connected. There is no revealing one, without doing so the other.

“That money is not for a rainy day,” I say sadly. “It’s my college savings. This money is for my future.”

“I figured,” he says gently.

“It may not seem like a lot.”

“Don’t do that.” He places a hand on my arm. “Don’t diminish how hard you work.”

Blinking back the tears that threaten, I scoot over to the bed and rest my back against it the same way he is. “Do you know how Ellery and I met?”

“Not the specifics,” he admits. “But it was the day Cruz left for Highland, right?”

I nod. “I’d just learned the future I’d been counting on wasn’t going to happen and I was walking the beach, trying to process everything. That’s when I stumbled into Miss Southern Belle 1989, drunk as a skunk.”

He smiles at my recollection of that day and I can’t help but do the same. “She had all these empty wine cooler bottles scattered around her,” I continue, “and her eyes were red from crying. She looked like this sad, beautiful doll that had been taken off the shelf and broken. You know kids from Cherry Cove and Elmhurst don’t mix, but man, that day it was like the universe was leading us to one another. There was this instant connection—each of us having lost something, only to find out that we’d gained another.”

“That’s how I feel about Cruz,” he confesses. “The connection part. Me and the other guys on the team, we’re cool, and sure, there are guys from home that I am friends with. But when Cruz and I met we clicked. He is my brother. I would do anything for that guy.”

Jake and Cruz are close, there’s no doubt about it. But I never thought until just now, that the bond which connected them might be similar to that which connected Ellery and me. “You know, when you and Cruz met, you probably saved him, the same way Ellery says I did her.”

Jake hikes one leg up and drapes his forearm over his knee. “What do you mean?”

“Well, when you two met, he had just lost Ellery and your bond was instant. Probably helped him more than you know.”

Jake rubs his chin, brows pinched in contemplation. “I never thought about it like that before.”

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