Page 106 of Scoring the Player
“If there’s anything you fear, it’s not the ground…” He rubs the goose bumps on my arms. “It’s your walls you’re afraid of losing.”
He doesn’t know that.
He can’t.
“I’m a grown man,” he says, releasing me. “I don’t need you to make decisions for me. If you run, do it becauseyouneed to.”
I hear the clank of his belt buckle, and I swear I feel the floor quake under my feet.
“Don’t go,” I whisper, turning around to face him.
He pauses with one arm through his shirt. “You sure?”
“You can shower first.” I gesture to my bag. “Borrow something.”
His shoulders lower. “It’s okay. You go first. I need to text my GM that I’ll meet the team in Sacramento in the morning.”
I wantto believe it’s no big deal, telling him about my family, but after trying to scrub the feeling off, it still feels like someone’s stolen my skin.
I reach into my bag for a sweatshirt to throw over my tee.
After he showers, he climbs into bed next to me, wearing my T-shirt and shorts.
“You know, pain is nothing to be ashamed of.”
“What?” I ask.
“I have an older brother, and he has a lot of pain. He tries to keep it from us, like it’s an infectious virus.”
I didn’t know he has a brother. And the level of internet stalking I’ve done should get me on a short list for the CIA.
“What happened to him?”
“He was in the Marines.”
“Oh. Are you close?”
“Close in the only way he knows how to be. I’ll never stop trying, though.”
“Yeah, sounds like you.”
CHAPTER 26
SALEM
“My brother and I have matching tats,” I tell him, lifting my T-shirt and showing him the black spider.
“‘Fate bends to courage.’” He reads the inscription. “Are those droplets of blood?”
“Yeah.”
He smiles. “Is your brother’s in the same spot?”
“Mmhmm. When he got back from his first tour, we had plans to visit his favorite restaurants, catch games, and take a road trip.” I lower my shirt. “Looking back, I think we were trying to fit both the years he’d lost and the years still to be lost into the span of a few weeks. And the whole time, I could feel he wasn’t into it, you know? It’s like our life didn’t fit him anymore, and he seemed as lost by that as I did.”
“Mmh.” He hums low, chewing on the inside of his lip. “What was he like?”
“Quiet and serious. He’s like that even now, which is weird ’cause I’d always been the serious one. It flipped, where even stories he’d tell me about his squad mates that were supposed to be funny were delivered with a kind of dead tone.”
