Page 9 of Sneak Attack

Every word pierced my chest like an arrow dipped in venomous poison.

He was right. About almost all of it.

I had never stopped caring about Marley. She never let me. I’d also never stopped caring about him. Never stopped following his career that wasn’t mine to enjoy. Never stopped cheering for his success at Vanderbilt and then with the Steel, even though he was supposed to leave Marysville and go to Tennessee instead.

But that was before we killed his girlfriend.

CHAPTER4

COLE

What in the hell was I doing?

I didn’t need to be here. I needed to be around Eden Barclay like I needed to be sacked by a three-hundred-pound defensive lineman. Nothing good would come from being this close to her.

Nothing good would come from her being in town, especially right as my season was starting.

Eden’s family flew from town as soon as everything went to shit. She left me to fumble my way through it without the one person who I’d needed the most.

Now she was standing there, gripping that fucking old wrought-iron railing like her life depended on it, stealing all my hatred for her with her simple beauty that’d only gotten better.

This was a mistake.

All of it. Stomping across my parents’ front yard as soon as I’d flung my truck into their driveway. Knocking on this door. Stepping inside. Inhaling a light floral scent that shouldn’t have had my gut tightening.

“Stay the hell away from us,” I told her, and I’d meant me. My family.

She laughed then, cold and brittle, and it whipped across the space between us. “I’ve already told Selma I would. You’re the one here.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

I’d figured Selma had seen her or had spies in the woods out back to see when Eden pulled into town. Those were the only two options for her to accuse me of seeing her this morning.

“She didn’t tell you.” Eden’s words were a whisper, surprised with more than a hint of pain in her voice.

And fuck her for that pain.

“When did you see her?”

“Yesterday. She and Jasper were leaving the park and I…”

She kept talking but it was all muffled as soon as Jasper’s name came from her lips. Of course she’d known about him. Hell, the entire country knew Jasper, and our town adopted him as soon as Selma birthed him. If it took a village to raise a child, we had an entire country behind us. I knew exactly what she and everyone else thought, mostly because I let them all believe what they wanted.

Selma had an Instagram page dedicated to happy family pictures. I was never seen with anyone else. The entire country assumed we were together.

It was all fucking fake.

Frankly, it made it easier. I didn’t have to worry about women since I’d lost the urge to date long ago. Everyone thought I was some kind of hero for stepping up and claiming my kid, or not thinking I had some meaningless one-night stand.

The media continued to use me as the golden boy with the small-town, down-home morals and values who could throw a football into a receiver under double coverage when it mattered most. It all fit the narrative.

Except it was a lie.

Because I was broken. Battered—and the woman who did most of that damage?

Still looking at me like she was terrified I was going to lose my shit on her any moment.

“This was a bad fucking idea,” I grumbled.

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