Page 92 of Only Between Us

“No. It’s not even a heart. The shapes just happen to come together that way, like this.” I use her finger to trace it out. Then press her palm to my chest, just for the sake of feeling it there.

“Oh. I see it now.” Her throat works through a swallow. “All this ink and you never got one for her? Eight years is a long time.”

“Back-alley hookups, Pip. Which were soon followed by severalcome to Jesustherapy sessions that ended in very stern advice from my therapist not to sleep around without serious feelings involved. She screwed me up so badly, I couldn’t recognize myself for months. I’m grateful nothing ever possessed me to get one for her.”

“I still can’t believe she did that to you.”

“The worst part is that I decided to quit football forher. Or the eventuality of her, and our family. That concussion scared the hell out of me. I was convinced I’d done lasting damage. That I’d have all these kids one day and could never… I don’t know. Play catch in the yard with them without seeing double. That I’d forget things about them that I shouldn’t. I thought I was doing the right thing for us by retiring, but she… she called me a coward for it. And then had an affair.”

Siena shakes her head in disbelief. “You thought you’d marry her one day?”

“I thought there was a chance. I’d never been close to proposing or anything.”

“After eight years together?”

“I think my heart knew something I didn’t.” Siena hums a thoughtful sound. “She was never right for me. Made me feel like my identity was football, and nothing else—it’s all we ever talked about when we were together, and the minute I couldn’t play anymore, she made it clear exactly how little I mattered beyond my roster status. I lost my value the second I chose to give it up.” I really didn’t want today to be about this but there’s so much relief in letting out these words. In the soft way Siena looks at me while I do. “I’ve spent the past couple of years unpacking that mess of a relationship. Trying to convince myself that there’s more to me than football, that I could have the things I wanted outside of the game—the things I quit for. But I’ve come up short on all fronts. I like to think I’m better than this, but it really makes me wonder.”

Siena swallows. “Wonder what?”

“Was she right about me?”

I feel stupid the moment the question flies out. Because as much as I’d like to pretend it’s rhetorical, that I know better than to believe something like that, I haven’t exactly been thriving since that relationship ended. And the only woman I’ve wanted since keeps finding ways to put me at arm’s length.

Siena hangs her head, buries her face in her hands. “God fucking damn it, Brooks. I’m going to kill her.”

Chapter30Siena

Brooks tells me all this matter-of-factly, but there’s pain in his eyes that tangles a heavy knot in my chest, aching even after he stop speaking.

Now you go.

There has to be something you like about me.

I thought he was kidding around, fishing for compliments, being a flirt. But it all thunks into place for me now. The reason he’s been so fixated on this comeback, running himself down and pushing his body past its limits. The reason he’d been so desperate for me to agree to our scheme. This woman—what she did to him—has put it in his head that he needs this career in order to thrive. In order to be wanted, and worthy of the love and the family he’s dreamed of.

Turns out, after years of struggling in lonely silence, I’ve stumbled upon my twin soul. Collided with him on a football field where I’d felt like my dad was leading me on the anniversary of his death. Underneath all the charming smiles and casual bravado, Brooks is just a man who needs the validation of knowing he’s worth liking. Loving.

Just like me.

It’s tragic, really. That Brooks would feel anything like I do, when he doesn’t deserve to. When he’s sogood.

Tragic that I’d find what could very well be my other half in someone who’s set on following his joy across the country, where I can’t follow. Not with my mom here, the family business, my best friend raising her kid on her own.

I think it’s plenty fair for me to guard my heart against the inevitability of our goodbye, the way our lives are literally moving in different directions. But it’s not fair to guard it at his expense. He’s an amazing guy—everything I’d want under different circumstances—and he deserves to know it. Deserves everything he wants out of life, and then some.

“Listen closely, Brooks.” I sit up, then take him by the shoulders and heave him upright. His eyebrows draw together. “That woman is a sociopath. I’m sorry, but someone needs to say it.”

He barks out a shocked laugh. “What?”

“Your ex is a sociopath,” I enunciate. He begins to laugh again but I shake my head. I’ve never been more serious. There are times that call for eloquence and poetry, and this isn’t one of them. This is a man in need of cold, hard facts. “She’s deficient in a way that’s truly worrisome for the general population. Public menace levels of idiocy. That’s what it must be, if your career is all she saw in you.”

Brooks’s gaze swings to either side of me, like he expects someone to appear and explain what the hell’s gotten into me.

He’sgotten into me. Every sweet gesture. Every time we’ve lapsed into shared, uncontrollable laughter. I crave his company when I’m alone.

Achefor it.

“You want to know what I see in you? What I like about you?” My eyes devour his gorgeous face—the dark features, the scar. His casual smile and the way his eyes are tight, trying to play it off but silently telling meyes, I need to know. “You make me laugh more than anyone I know, and you don’t take yourself seriously—but you’re serious when it matters. You’re open with your feelings in such a brave,enviable way. In a way that’s so hard for me to do, but feels easier with you. The fact that you’ve been calling me out on my baggage for weeks, without once making me feel weak or stupid, or like I’m wrong for feeling the things I do—the fact that you evennoticedit, and took the time to ask? You’re attentive, and so damn…kind.”

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