Page 1 of QB Keeper
PROLOGUE
TANNER
I holdthe thick paper in my hand, reading it for the tenth time while standing at my mailbox. I don’t know what I was expecting when I took a quick run down my mile-long driveway this morning, but this definitely wasn’t it.
You are cordially invited to the 40th-anniversary celebration of Bill and Libby Valentine
Saturday, April 2nd at 2 o’clock
1111 Journey Lane, Hope Harbor, Massachusetts 01125
I wish I could say I was excited to celebrate such a huge milestone for my childhood best friend’s parents. Forty years of marriage is a big deal, and their love has always been an inspiration to the people who know them, but the only thing going through my mind as I think about what attending this party would mean isher.
Grace Valentine.
My Grace.
The girl whose anguished cries haunt my dreams every single night.
There was a short time in my life where I held her andnothing else mattered. Not football, not school, not my future. It was just us, learning, exploring…falling.
And then I fucked it all up.
I knew better than to have a secret fling with my best friend’s younger sister. It started as me wanting to protect her, as I had done since the day she was born. I was only three, but our parents always joked that I was Grace’s personal bodyguard. If another kid tried to play with her or touch her toys, little Tanner had no problem letting them know that wasn’t an option. And as we got older, my instinct to make sure she was safe and happy only intensified. I can’t tell you how many douchebags her brother Riggs and I scared off in high school so they’d stay away from her. Wrong? Maybe. But I’d have done anything to protect her heart.
Then I turned around and ripped it out with my own two hands.
What I thought was the right thing at the time ended up being my biggest regret. It’s been five years, and every time I get invited to an event in Hope Harbor, I decline like a little bitch. I make some shit excuse about having practice or workouts so I can get out of them, convincing my family to come visit me in Boston instead. I even had this house built with a fully equipped guest suite so they would feel like it was a little vacation when they came here. For half a decade, everything I’ve done has been for Grace…or to avoid her.
Riggs and I still talk occasionally, but he’s currently playing professional baseball in Florida, so our conversations rarely make it long enough for his sister to come up. Especially since, to this day, he has no idea what happened between her and me that summer.
I don’t want to know what she’s up to now. My guess is that she’s in a relationship, if not married. Girls like Grace Valentine don’t stay single for long. If her beautiful blue eyes and silky blonde hair don’t reel a guy in, her kind heart and amazing sense of humor will. Some lucky son of a bitch isprobably holding her right now. And I can tell you with absolute certainty that whoever he is, he doesn’t deserve her.
No one does.
The day I walked away, I deleted all my social media accounts, drove myself from Hope Harbor back to Harvard, and vowed to stay away for good. I had done enough damage. The least I could do was let her have our hometown as her safe space. Let her chase her dreams in Los Angeles, being able to return whenever her heart missed home, and give her a fair chance at a happy life. Because I knew that without her, that would never be an option for me.
The thick cardstock feels like a brick in my hand as I try to tell myself to stay away. That I’m only invited because Riggs and his parents have no idea that I’m the cause of Grace’s first broken heart. That for one whole summer, she gave me every single piece of herself, and I humiliated her by acting like the way she felt was just some stupid schoolgirl crush. Then I told her she meant nothing to me and walked away while she cried and begged me not to.
I decide right here that it’s time to go back and face the consequences of my actions. I deserve to see how happy and successful she’s become in spite of the way I broke her. That she’s thriving while she unknowingly still carries my heart in her hands.
And she deserves to see how empty my life has been all these years, knowing that I’m the only one to blame.
ONE
TANNER
5 YEARS AGO
“Yo, dickhead! You home?”I yell up the stairs to Riggs. I just got home for the summer, and I didn’t even bother going to my house before I came to see my best friend. My junior year at Harvard is officially over. I had to stay on campus an extra two weeks after finals for meetings with my coach, but now I’m ready to see what kind of trouble we can find back in our hometown. Classes, football, and workouts took up so much of my time during school, that I rarely got a chance to wind down. I was able to save up enough money to not need a summer job, so the possibilities are endless for the next three months.
“Riggs! Where you at?” I yell after he doesn’t answer. He’s probably in his room with his headphones on. I haven’t spoken to him since before finals because we’ve both been so busy, but I know UMass finished earlier than we did, so I assume he’s been home for a while.
“Put your dick away. I’m coming i—” I say, immediately freezing when I see that his room, which used to be decorated in navy blue and gray has been transformed into a pink and white wonderland. Boy band posters hang on the wall, but they aren’t what catch my gaze. Because sprawled out on thebed is Riggs’ little sister, Grace Valentine. Only, the woman lying there with her earbuds in and eyes closed is anything but the cute, awkward girl I remember from last summer.
I shouldn’t notice how long and smooth her legs look in her pajama shorts. I also shouldn’t notice the supple swells of her tits peeking out from the neckline of her tank top. And Idefinitelyshouldn’t notice the way my dick is thickening inside my boxers at the sight of her lying there, still completely unaware of my presence.
As if she can sense me staring like a goddamn peeping Tom, her eyes fly open, immediately landing on me in the doorway. I’m like a deer in headlights, sure she’s going to notice the bulge in my shorts that she absolutely caused, so I’m caught off guard when a giant smile stretches across her face.
