Page 73 of Near Miss

He’s good at that. Giving me space.

“Thank you for your help today,” I say, and I mean it. From the very bottom of my heart.

He was more careful with that piece of me today than my father and sister are. “I’m sorry you had to wear the mask all day. It was probably an overreaction.”

“They don’t bother me. We practically grew up wearing them.” He shrugs, like PPE being a regular part of his childhood attire is a normal, pedestrian occurrence.

But my stomach drops and my right ribs twinge—because I wasn’t thinking about him. I wasn’t thinking about how that might have hurt him or brought him back to a place he doesn’t want to be. I swallow. “I’m so—I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think.”

Beckett tosses me a grin, and I think it’s a real one. “It’s okay. I would have told you if it was an issue for me.”

There’s a weight to the way he saysyou—it’s all wrapped up in trust and feelings of safety. Like he can be real with me.

It’s a bit weird, I know it is—that he just spent all afternoon with my father, and we held hands while we watched TV in the dark—and now we’re here, coming home to my apartment and trading all this casual conversation about these very serious things like it’s something we do all the time.

But I don’t think he wants to leave—there’s that restless energy all over him he gets when I think everything that he carries becomes too heavy and he’s trying anything he can to spread the weight around. His thumb taps against his bicep, his shoulders roll back, and his kicking leg bounces up and down.

I don’t want him to leave. I think I like being a person he can just be himself with. “Are you ready for the game?”

“No.” Beckett tugs on the ends of his hair and snorts, dropping back on my couch like even just the idea of it exhausts him. “I’ve been kicking terribly. Blowing up in practice. Philly’s who we beat to get to the championship last year. Division rivals, lots of pressure, and all that. Big expectations on social media. I’venever missed a kick against them, and I can’t fucking stop people from commenting on everything or DMing me to ask when I’m going to try for the record again. It’s not even in my control. I don’t call when a kick happens.”

I tuck my legs underneath me to sit beside him, crossing my arms. “Are you good under pressure?”

“Sure. I used to be.” He says it like he’s referring to this other version of himself—someone he can only just see, a tiny speck in the distance as he sails away from whatever land he used to live on. “I could catch, I could kick. I could make sure a science project got done with shockingly few items available in the house, and I could smooth out a wig like you wouldn’t believe.”

He offers me things like this all the time—little truths of what made him who he is. How he’s given and given and given. Even if he doesn’t see it that way.

I think of little him—not quite an adult, but a parent of the household all the same.

It makes me want to offer him something in return.

I sit up straighter, adjusting so I’m taller than I know this story is going to make me feel. “I’m going to tell you something I don’t tell people.”

One brow kicks up and he tips his head, a wave of chocolate hair curling over his ear.

I sniff. “I mean it. Only six people in the entire world know this story from start to finish. Me. My sister. My dad. Kate. Willa. My psychiatrist, and I’m not even entirely sure he counts because he’s a medical professional.”

Beckett nods. “Okay.”

“The car accident—” I wring my hands together, fingers twisting, and I blink.

“Take your time.” His voice is low.

“This is hard for me. Because it’s not just my story and it’s not simple.” I dig at the seam of my couch cushion. “Growingup, my dad was an alcoholic. I’m not going to bore you with the details of what that was like, just me and Stella and a father who couldn’t really be relied on for much.” And even though it’s been years, a fissure snakes its way through my voice, and I feel myself turning inwards when I say what comes next. “He was drunk when we were in the car accident. My ribs and clavicle were shattered. Stella’s skull was fractured, and her pancreas was essentially shredded.”

I inhale, nothing but choppy breaths. “And by stupid, stupid, stupid luck, his blood alcohol level wasn’t taken until much later when it was below the legal limit again, so there weren’t really any consequences for it.”

Except that there were.

His eyes flash. “But he needed a new liver because of the accident?”

“Sort of. He wasn’t healing the way he should have because of all the damage he’d done to his liver. But he wasn’t sober at the time, and you have to be sober for six months to qualify for the transplant list, and even then, he would have been at the bottom.” I look down, scraping one thumbnail against the other because I’m not sure I can look at him when I tell him this next part. “Stella wasn’t a match. I was.”

Beckett just waits. It’s not quite like the battle of wills between me and Rav. I think Beckett might wait all night.

“And she wanted to be so badly.” I stab my finger into my palm and shake my head. “She understood him in ways I never really have, and the only thing she wanted was for us to be together. I know this makes me ... bad. But I didn’t want to. I wanted him to love us enough to make a change for us, and I wanted him to love me enough that he wouldn’t risk my life and drive me off a fucking bridge. I didn’t want to give him any more pieces of me. He took my childhood and he drove away my mother and he made my sister sad. But I didn’t think I could say no.”

The noise clawing at my throat finally escapes, echoing across my living room. It’s not quite a sob, but it’s something unpleasant. Maybe it’s all the mean, hateful things I think about myself that I try to keep inside. “Who doesn’t want to give their parent something that’s going to help them? Who thinks about withholding it in some sort of twisted ultimatum?”

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