Her dad’s guitar. Standing in the sunny, summer afternoon, surrounded by our classmates, she’d told me what I’d done to something that had been such a precious memory of her father, and I’d known that was it. She’d never forgive me, but I needed to know she was okay. “Any of it. All of it.”
“There’s nothing you can say to fix any of those things. Not a damn thing.”
Footsteps broke through the quiet of the previously deserted hallway. “Bay, you okay?”
A guy came down the hall, glowering, with his fists clenched at his sides like he was ready to throw down over Bay. I could take him. I’d spent the past decade working out in one way or another, and I’d gone up against guys his size back in high school, but beating the shit out of this guy wasn’t going to solve any of my problems right now. It would only add a whole hell of a lot more.
“Yeah, I’m ready. One of the football players got here early, so I was giving him his key and he was leaving.” Her words seethed like acid melting steel.
Her elbow nudged at my stomach and the door closed behind her banging into my shoulder.
“If you need any other help, I’m sure the team coordinators will be able to get whatever you need.” Her gaze was cool and even, her tone tight and polite, like she was speaking to an annoying stranger.
Walking away with the guy who’d interrupted, she didn’t look back once.
Every step cranked the screw on the vise around my heart.
I grabbed my things from the car.
My phone buzzed when I stepped into the elevator.
A text from an unknown number. After my name had been called in the draft, there had been a lot more of those. Changing my number was on the top of my list after training camp, but I didn’t want to spend any money I didn’t have to right now, and the texts had slowed down.
Unknown: Glad you finally made something of yourself
A knot looped in my stomach. I blocked the number like I had all the others and found my room. Messages when I’d first gotten drafted had been lots of requests for money, tickets, gear, and connections. But then others had started coming in. Those ones, sprinkled in amongst what was now a trickle of begging texts, delved deep into the dark fears I’d worked hard to put behind me. They sent a shiver down my spine or made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. They reminded me of where I’d come from and how hard I’d run to never go back. I dropped my stuff off in one bedroom of the two-bedroom apartment with the shared living room and kitchenette, barely looking at anything. There was Lions swag strewn around the room and information packets sitting on the coffee table in front of the flat screen TV.
I grabbed my workout gear from my duffle and threw it on before heading right back out.
In the hallway, I spotted someone in a Lions polo.
“Hey, where’s the gym?”
The guy jumped. Maybe I’d gotten a little in his face. I took a step back and unclenched my hands at my sides.
“The—the team gym isn’t open yet, but the campus gym is open. It’s right there.” He pointed out the window at the end of the hallway to the double-height building across the street.
“Thanks.” I clapped him on the back and rushed out of the building. Inside, I took to the indoor track on the second level. I pushed myself, not worrying about beating my time, just needing to keep going until my legs felt like soggy turf. Once I was winded with muscles on fire, I went to the bench presses. Loading the weights up, I pressed the smooth metal bar overhead until my last rep almost ended with me crushing my own windpipe.
Sweating, panting and barely able to walk, I dragged myself back to my room. Better to get everything out in the gym than to let those old feelings get the better of me. Better to push myself to the point of exhaustion even though I knew my muscles needed time to recover before training camp—I didn’t have a choice.
The controlled and level life I’d gripped tight to for the past four years was slowly unravelling. The only thing harder than being apart from Bay would be being this close to her, because no matter what I did, she was going to break apart the fragile shell I’d dropped over my life to keep things together. I’d be forever frozen in our past until I set things right. Until I earned even a sliver of the love she’d given me before I’d destroyed it, leaving nothing but the splinters.
2
Bay
I held it together until I made it out of the building while my heart collided against my ribs like it was trying to make a break for it. My steps faltered and I pressed my back against the stone wall at the bottom of the stairs. Only something that strong could hold me up. I braced my hands on my knees and gulped down air.
“What the hell is going on? What did that guy do to you?” Spencer held onto my shoulder, glaring up at the door we’d walked through.
I patted his hand. “Nothing. He didn’t do anything. Just ran into a ghost is all.”
“You know that guy.” He craned his neck like he could catch a glimpse of Dare through the glass-and-stone blocks on the front of the building.
My heart rate slowed and I no longer felt like I’d been shoved onto a treadmill going twenty miles per hour. “From high school.”
“And that sad puppy-dog look in his eyes?” He leaned in digging for dirt. “The ready-to-cut-his-balls-off look in yours?”
He lifted his chin with a shit-stirring grin. “You dated that guy. I’m sure he’d have walked the plank at the pirate party.”
Our freshman year new student orientation’s crowning event had been a pirate party. It had been a cardboard monstrosity surrounded by kiddie pools of ball pit balls with itchy eye patches, and epic stories still floated around to this day. Spencer had ‘walked’ the plank, snapping the cardboard and almost giving me a black eye in his fall to the ball pit where I’d been doing the backstroke.
“He’d have crashed the fucking pirate ship.” My eyes narrowed and I glared at him. “We kind of dated.”
“You don’t seem like the jock type.” He folded his arms and leaned against the wall beside me.
“How would you know?” I pushed off the wall and stalked toward the parking garage.
“I don’t know. We’ve only known each other since freshman year. If anything I’d say you’ve dated the exact opposite kind of guy for as long as I’ve known you.” His eyes lit up like he’d just uncovered a long lost treasure map. “And he’s the reason why, isn’t he? No bench-pressing jocks for our Bay. Nope, she goes for the quiet nerdy types. Emo guys who wear jeggings.”
“They were skinny jeans.”
Spencer coughed into his hand, and it sounded a lot like “jeggings”.
“He has nothing to do with the guys I like. He has nothing to do with my life at all. He’s not on my mind one bit.” I hit the key fob to unlock my car and flung open the door. My drop down into the seat jolted my teeth.
“Sure.” Spencer opened the passenger side door and peered in. “Not on your mind one bit, which is why you just got into the wrong car.”
I looked around at the dip tin in the cup holder and chrome sunglasses on the dashboard. Cursing, I jumped out of the car. “Who the hell leaves their car unlocked?” I slammed the door closed and looked around, making sure the owner wasn’t around.