Page 68 of End Game
I pull the door until it can’t get any more open. “And that’s why you’re leaving. Now.”
He storms by me, his shoes hitting the porch. The door bangs shut, putting that precious barrier between us once again. Although, this time, I hate it.
CHAPTER 21
BRANCH
The sky is dark, the stars not even that bright as I stand and look over the lawn and into the water. I’ve dreamed of this place and replayed the things we did here—me, Finn, Poppy, and Layla James—over and over. Standing here again, the magic isn’t as palpable.
With no energy to walk all the way to my car, I slump into a patio chair. If she sees me and wants to come out and yell at me some more, she can. Hell, I might even like it. God knows I deserve it.
The little seed of regret that I woke up with this morning was originally about being careless. I kept thinking of how I really messed up and what this meant for my life and how I wasn’t built for this kind of thing . . . and don’t want it. But now? It’s so much more than that.
I touch the pout of my lip and can feel the crack across the middle. There’s some flaked up blood that comes off on my finger and I flick it into the darkness.
My body aches, my mind is dead, and it’s worse than it is even after a game. Fucking Finn.
“Oh, God,” I groan, filling my lungs with oxygen as I realize I can’t do what I was going to do—call him for advice.
This emptiness, a complete feeling of having no rudder in this storm, is the most unsettling thing I’ve ever encountered. There’s no one to turn to, no one that I care about that will tell me I didn’t completely fuck up this situation because . . . I have. I so absolutely have.
A light upstairs sends a glow across the patio, but my chair is in the shadows. It’s on for a few minutes and I wonder what she’s doing.
I imagine her washing her pretty face and pulling back her hair and putting on the little jumpsuit she wore when I was here before. She’s probably crawling into bed with a magazine of some sort. Then the light goes off.
The darkness feels isolating and I start to feel sorry for myself. How am I, Branch “Lucky” Best, sitting on a fucking porch in the middle of nowhere with a woman inside who hates my guts?
Resting my head against the cushion, I let my muscles relax. It’s only then, when I quiet my head, that I hear it.
My eyes shoot open and I sit up straight, craning my neck from side to side to figure out what it is.
My stomach drops, crashing spectacularly into hell, when I hear her muffled sobs coming from above me. Leaping to my feet, I turn to the windows, but they’re dark. The closer I get to the house, her cries get just a touch louder.
Choking back a lump the size of Texas, I listen to her. Her tears wash away so much bullshit and my own fucked up ego and the situation looks so much different than it did a few minutes ago.
Here I sit, bitching and moaning about how awful this is for me, when it’s her that must be terrified. I could ignore the whole thing, cut her a check at the end of the month, and be done with it if I wanted. She has to live with this. Have her body changed, her life altered, because she’s a damn good person.
Despite the crazy things I’ve done, I’ve never really felt bad for any of it. Women know what they’re getting into with me.
She didn’t do anything. She didn’t ask for this. And she doesn’t deserve it either.
I head to the front door and try the handle, but it’s locked. Each window on the ground floor is latched tight too. I spring over the railing and jog to the back, to a little door that leads into a mudroom from the lake. Flicking the lever, it’s locked.
“Shit.”
Looking up, I see a little balcony off a room that I think is Finn’s. There are four wooden posts that hold it in the air and I grab one and give it a good shake. It’s solid.
“Here goes nothing.”
I grip the wood with both hands and ascend the pole in the same way we do a rope in training. The rough material digs into my hands as I try to keep my sweaty palms from slipping and dropping me on my ass.
The dark night doesn’t help, and I have a hard time seeing what’s ahead of me, but I reach the floor above a little quicker than I anticipate.
Working my hands to grab the edge of the balcony, I pull my weight up, groaning so hard I swear I bust a blood vessel in my face, then I collapse over the handrail and onto the planks.
Sucking in breath after breath, I lay on my back for a second to make sure I’m not dead. I bring one hand inches from my face and feel the warmth of blood trickling down my palm.
“Great,” I groan, getting to my feet. With a press of the lever on the door, I sigh in relief as it swings free.
