Page 134 of The Third Baseman

“It’s not that simple, Jupiter.” Green eyes swimming in fear shot up to meet mine.

“Why isn’t it?” I snapped, harder than I meant to.

Our first date had changed on a dime. Back and forth her feet went again; my eyes never left her face, and I was about to speak when she cut through the tense silence with a whisper.

“I’m worried…” A single fat tear fell down her cheek and splashed on the floor. “I’m worried that if I say I love you… if I say it, then everything will backfire and I’ll lose you again; that you’ll leave me again,” a loud sob caught in her throat. “The last few weeks have been amazing, and I didn’t want them to end.”

She looked away, and another tear fell.

My heart cracked imperceptibly. I almost brought her into my lap again, but then something stopped me. Whatever it was I wish it would also stop the past which was now hurtling back at light speed to haunt me, right alongside Emerson’s words.

Yep. Pretty sure my ass was about to be bitten. I fucking hated it when Emerson was right.

I took a deep breath and reached out for Marnie’s hand, but she snatched it away before I could touch her.

“You left me on the porch.”

“We were kids, Marn.” I tried to use my best calm voice, the one I used with Grey and Gabriella, because if I stayed calm then I hoped she would too. Or at least lessen the snarl that was now present in her tone.

Suffice to say, from the way she was glaring, it didn’t work.

“We didn’t break up because we were kids!”

I sighed, but it was pointless hoping she’d let this drop. “The reason doesn’t matter. What matters is I love you, and I hope you love me.”

“You loved me the day before you stood on my doorstep and said I was too clingy, that I wasn’t girlfriend material. You loved me the day before you said you didn’t. I never understood it…” she stopped to suck in a breath as her sobbing started up again. “You loved me, and the next day you were drafted and broke my heart, out of the blue… poof. We were broken. You broke us.”

I shouldn’t have avoided this conversation. I should have been honest with her from the beginning that I might have ended it, but she was the one who broke us first.

I was trying to stay calm, but each of her last points was made with an angry prod to my chest, and every one cracked my façade a little bit more, until…

“I broke us up because you lied!” I snapped hard, pushing up from the couch.

She stared up at me, mouth wide open. “Wh... what?”

I stormed over to the kitchen, and took a bottle of water from the fridge. “I knew about CalTech, Marn.”

She blinked several times, and then her arms crossed her chest again. I couldn’t tell if she knew she’d been busted, or genuinely didn’t realize what I was talking about; not that either one made this situation better.

“What does that mean?”

“I found the letter you wrote to M.I.T. that said you no longer wanted your place, and the other one to S.M.H., and the CalTech application. Your dad went to my parents and asked if I was behind it.” Like it was yesterday I remembered how pissed I’d been, how hurt I’d been. But mostly I was pissed because I was getting blamed for something I was adamantly against.

“So you broke up with me?!” she shot back.

“Yes,” I replied simply, because back then it had been that simple. Back then it was the only decision I thought was right.

Since she’d been in New York, I’d gotten used to Marnie’s angry face. I knew when she was pissed because her eye twitched a little, and the tops of her ears reddened. But right now, she surpassed any levels of anger I’d seen before. A tiny vein was pulsing in her temple, and any second there’d be fire shooting out of her nostrils with the way they flared.

And it only served to flick the switch on my own temper.

“Don’t you look at me like that! I wasn’t about to let you give up on your dream, because I wasn’t going to give up on The Dodgers. You would never have let me do that! And look,” I threw my hands in the air, “you went to M.I.T. and you went to N.A.S.A.! FUCKING N.A.S.A., MARN! Just like you always wanted.”

To give her credit, she didn’t even flinch. She just stared at me, her chest heaving and her eyes narrowing.

“Do you know how long it took for me to feel myself, to feel right, to feel whole again? I cried for six months! I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore.” It didn’t come out as a hiss; it was more angry than that. She’d surpassed anger to reach a level where every word was quiet and damaged, dripping with pain.

I was desperate to make it stop, but even more desperate to make her understand.

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