Page 70 of Fair Catch
She glanced up at me, then back at the painting. “I love it so much, Zeke.”
The way the whisper was pained as it left her nearly sent me to my knees.
“I love it, and I feel guilty for loving it, like it’s not mine to love, like I’m in an affair with someone already promised to another.”
“Because of Gavin?” I asked.
She nodded.
“I can uphold my promise to him,” she said. “But, past that? I can’t… I can’t take his dream.”
“It can be your dream, too.”
“I don’t know that it can,” she whispered, and her eyes found mine once more. “Not without hurting him.”
I frowned, but didn’t have the chance to argue that point before Gavin joined us, rolling up between us with a wide smile.
“Guess who’s got a date Tuesday night with the hot blonde in the corner?”
Riley and I both snapped our attention to said hot blonde, who was laughing and flushing because she had very much heard his declaration.
He didn’t look even a bit remorseful. He just tipped an imaginary hat in her direction before leading us toward the next gallery as Riley and I fell into step behind him with laughs of our own.
But the laugh faded quickly from Riley, and I could see how she was retreating into herself, how there was a battle warring inside her that her brother couldn’t see.
So I reached out and wrapped my hand around hers, letting her know that someone did.
Riley blinked, looking at where our hands touched before she found my gaze. A half smile bloomed on her lips, and she squeezed my hand where it held hers.
Then, Gavin stopped abruptly, whipping around as Riley tore her hand from mine and pretended to admire a wooden ship inside a large glass case.
“I’m hungry. Who’s ready to study the art of the lobster roll?”
Riley
Make a wish.
I stared at the birthday card from my parents, at the birthday cake on the front with candles melting down the sides. There was a fuzzy pink bear getting ready to blow them out, and in glittery script above that bear?
Make a wish.
A little breath of a laugh left me as I thought about what I’d wish for, if I really knew it would come true. Maybe I’d wish to go back to the night Zeke and I crossed all the lines and not pull him back into me after I shoved him off the first time. Maybe I’d wish to go back to when I told him we could keep it casual, that I didn’t want more.
Or maybe I’d just wish for the most impossible thing of all.
For him to be mine.
For there to be some way, some place, some universe that existed where we could be together. Where it wouldn’t be a disaster for me, the only girl on the football team, to publicly date another player — worse, the player I’m rooming with. A place where my brother wouldn’t lose his mind knowing his best friend and his sister had spent more time together between the sheets lately than on the field.
Everything had happened so… quickly.
I didn’t recognize it at first, how fast I fell, how hard I jumped without even a thought of looking back. I went from loathing Zeke one moment and wishing he had never been born to aching for him any second we weren’t together.
And maybe that’s what ate me up most.
He was still the one responsible for putting my twin brother in a wheelchair for life, and yet now, I couldn’t muster up even an ounce of myself to hate him or be disgusted by what he did.
I wanted him.
With every inch of my being, I wanted him.
“Make a wish,” I muttered, frowning. “If only it were that simple.”
I shoved the card into my desk drawer, heaving a sigh as I looked at my reflection in the mirror propped against the back of my closet door. I looked ridiculous with a floppy shrimp hat on my head, but even that couldn’t make me smile.
I’d spent the last few weeks ignoring all these feelings simmering under the surface. It’d been easier that way, to throw myself into practice, into training, into class, and ultimately, into Zeke. We had an understanding, an agreement.
Take this for what it is.
Remember what it will never be.
It was my brilliant idea.
Or was it my sorry attempt to protect myself in the only way I knew how, to take the reins on the only thing I could control?
Everything I’d stuffed down popped out like confetti from a cannon as I got ready to go out with the team for Halloween.
For my birthday.
Knuckles tapped gently on the frame of my door, which was open — and had stayed that way ever since Zeke flew through it and clawed another guy off me weeks ago.
He stood there now, leaning a hip against the frame as he crossed his arms and took me in. His dark eyes crawled from the shrimp hat on my head, all the way down to the hot pink heels I was trying very hard not to wobble in, before they made their way back up.
