Page 105 of Near Miss

His brow creases, and he has the audacity to look confused, like he doesn’t understand why she’s answering him and not me. “I asked him if—”

“No,” she interrupts with a sharp jerk of her chin. “Before that.”

He tries again. “How do you feel about—”

“Before that.”

I grip the back of her neck and run my hand along her shoulder, dropping my voice. “Baby, leave it.”

“No.” She doesn’t look at me, and for the first time, I can see why my brother and the other residents are terrified of her. Cheeks that could probably cut through glass, skin, and bone; eyes sharp and lips in this sort of amused smile that somehow doesn’t look like she’s enjoying anything at all.

He swallows. “Near Miss.”

“You know what?” Her smile shifts, and it’s not friendly. “Why don’t I hold on to your little microphone, you go out there, and you see how far you can kick?” She doesn’t wait for him to answer. “Or better yet—why don’t you tell me about a time you screwed up at work. I’ll make up a little nickname to commemorate the occasion, write a news story about it, and I’ll make sure everyone forgets you’re a real fucking person and no one ever says your real name again.”

I don’t like the way he looks at her—eyes narrowed when they sweep over her. I’m about to mouth off to a reporter for the first time in my career and tell him to fuck off, but he turns and starts shoving his microphone in someone else’s face.

“That wasn’t necessary.” I slide my hand around the back of her neck again and press my mouth roughly to the crown of her head. I murmur, “I can see why everyone in that hospital is terrified of you, though.”

Full lips tug into a flat line, and I feel a bit like pressing my mouth right at the precipice of her Cupid’s bow. The rasp of her voice is firm when she says, “You’re worth defending, Beckett.”

I know that, I think,because of you.

“I know,” I answer, the corner of my mouth kicking up. “I have to go play tic-tac-toe with a football against Nowak now. Make yourself comfortable. I’m sure it’ll be riveting. But ... Sunday?”

“Sunday,” she repeats, holding her pinky up, and I take it with mine, pressing it to my mouth before jogging back towards the field.

I win the dumb game, they place balls farther and farther down the field for me, she stays and watches, rolling her eyes when I point at her before each kick, and I think I’m enjoying it for the first time since I became me.

I even enjoy our team meeting Saturday morning. It should probably be more stressful than it is, given who we’re playing tomorrow, but everyone laughs and we toss miniature footballs across the conference table while Coach Taylor talks and makes us watch the same tape until our eyes bleed.

I enjoy the hour and a half of dynamic stretching the conditioning staff make me do, and the deep tissue massage on my kicking leg doesn’t hurt as much as usual.

But it all gets spectacularly fucked up when I’m walking to my truck to leave for the day.

I muted most of my social media over the summer. I didn’t need to see the memes or the messages from everyone in the city telling me how much I let them down, how they wished I’d fallen and broken my ankle when I swung so we’d have to trade for someone else.

It was probably aspirational, but I turned my notifications back on last night, and now my phone won’t stop vibrating in my pocket.

And I want to die a bit when I finally take it out, one hand reaching towards the door of my truck, the other about to throw my phone into the ground and smash it into a million pieces.

Because it’s not just me they’re talking about anymore.

She answers the door after I smack the glass for the fifth time.

I thought about just using the code and opening it, but her privacy was already horrifically violated today, and I highly doubt she’s overly keen on seeing me either.

The horrible irony of the whole thing is that the photos of us are nice. In another world, I’d probably have printed them off, papered my whole apartment with them, and thrown them into the streets so everyone knew Greer Roberts belonged to me.

But we’re in this world and the people of the internet can be fucking cruel.

That reporter posted a photo of us, complete with some stupid headline about the big reveal of why I’m so inconsistent—my priorities clearly aren’t in check and Coach Taylor should find someone more focused. But her hospital badge was on full display, and then he used whatever scrap of brain power he must possess to find out everything he could about her, string a story together that was none of his fucking business, and then he posted all those pictures, too.

Pictures of her and her sister, still bruised but smiling, happy to be alive and to have each other, in side-by-side hospital beds—pictures that look like they were stolen from someone’s social media. Photos of the car accident, which also make me want to die in an entirely different way because seeing the destroyed bridge railing and mangled wreck being brought up from the lake was probably something I could have lived without. A picture of her and her dad, in hospital gowns post-transplant. Anaward she got from some donor recognition program, ironically, for giving the gift of life when she was so young.

Another stolen picture of her in a sports bra after one of those races where they cover you with mud, standing between Willa and Kate, bare stomach and scar, fresh and pink, on display.

And somehow, a copy of the police report that detailed her father’s blood alcohol level. How he wasn’t over the limit when he was tested, but he would have been when the accident happened.

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