Page 62 of For Three Seconds

I scrunched my nose at that last part.

“Eat, and then we are talking.”

I stop midbite. What he said made me not want to eat. Famous last words, right? I ate my fries and drank most of my milkshake. I was too nervous to eat the actual burger. Gavin had no problem eating; he knew what we were going to talk about, so that probably helped too. My hands started to shake as the silence wore on and I waited for what he would say. I was going to take a sip of my shake, but the drink slipped through my fingers.

“Oh shit,” I screeched when it landed facedown on the car floor. Right away, I bent to pick it up, glad it wasn’t too much that spilled.

I turned my head to Gavin, who looked unfazed, and I grimaced at him. “I’m sorry.”

Then I set the remainder of my drink in the cupholder, grabbed some napkins, and cleaned his precious car.

“Anyone else, Scar, and I would have been fucking pissed,” he said calmly.

“I’m so sorry… It’s all clean now.”

Gavin had stopped eating. He had his seat back, his legs a little spread. “I’m pretty sure you could wreck my car and I wouldn’t give a damn as long as you were okay.”

My breath hitched. God, things were about to get real now, weren’t they?

“I knew you would be at that first party,” he said, and I stopped breathing. “Audrey told me to stay away, but God, Scar, I couldn’t do it. Not after not seeing you for years. I wanted to get a good look at you because I kept telling myself that everything I felt for you was a figment of my imagination That what I dreamed up couldn’t be as good as the reality. Then you were right there, and fuck me, you looked gorgeous, and you were better than anything I could remember.”

My mind was spinning. I felt a sense of betrayal but also a sense of want and belonging.

“Audrey lied to me?” Now I couldn’t help but think about everything that was my life since arriving back at campus.

“I fell for you at twelve, Scarlett,” he said instead. “Confirmed it at sixteen, knew I was fucked for you at eighteen, and now I know that I’m still going to feel this way for the next ten years.”

My head was bent, looking at the spot where I had dropped my shake because the space in the car was too small. The air was getting too heavy, and Gavin was telling me things I couldn’t—I didn’t want to deal with now.

“You picked her over me,” I whispered because if I said it aloud, I would cry, and he would know just how much he had hurt me. His actions had scarred me, and I had barely found the wound.

“You picked her over me too, Scar. Time and time again. You are still picking her over me, over us. You hurt me, Scar, and I was young, and I wanted to hurt you back.”

I flinched at that last part.

“The moment I went out with Gigi and I got to know more of you, I knew I had fucked up, and you would never be with me because she was your friend… The whole time I was with her, I was a better boyfriend to you than I was with her. You might not have noticed since you weren’t with us all the time, but trust me, Scar, she did, and she hated you for it.”

He was right, but I didn’t want to admit it.

“Look at me, Scarlett, please.”

I took a moment just to breathe in and breathe out until it felt like I wasn’t drowning, then I turned my gaze to look at him.

“I’m going to be honest with you because I am tired of going in circles. I need to concentrate on my game, but I can’t do that if we are up in the air. I know by now you know that I have been with a lot of girls.”

My stomach churned at the information.

“I was lonely, Scar. I was trying to fill a void that I didn’t even know was there. Every single time my thoughts went to you. Last year, when one of the coaches was leaving, I thought of Nick. Yeah, he’s good, but the school would have found someone just as talented as he is. I went back home for Christmas, and I saw the for sale sign on your childhood home, and I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. I would never see you again, and that terrified me. I stalked your social media and found nothing. Nobody from school had kept up with you except for Audrey. I know this because I asked around. When I looked up Nick, I saw a picture of you two, and I felt things I hadn’t felt since prom night just by looking at it. You looked so gorgeous, but so fucking sad too. So, I reached out to my coaches, and they seemed interested; then I contacted Nick, and he did the rest.”

I couldn’t even look at Gavin right now while I tried to absorb everything he wanted to tell me.

“Once he got the job, I told Auds to not rent the room to anyone, because I knew I couldn’t approach you with Nick so close.”

“But in Audrey’s house, it was the perfect moment to come and hate fuck me,” I spat.

Gavin let out a tortured laugh. “Even when I hated you for making me want you so bad, to the point it fucking hurt, I was getting something out of it. I got to see you, and that fucking elated me in a way that only football has. I wanted to hate you when I saw you, because you, the one girl who kept rejecting me time and time again, were the one I couldn’t get out of my fucking system. I’m getting drafted, Scarlett—I knew this was my last shot to make us work. For the first time in years, we have a real shot to be together, and I want it Scar. I want that chance.”

While I tried to process what he said, I was still stuck on his words.

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