I’m halfway up the stairs when the girl holding the laundry basket calls out to Lincoln, referring to him as The President. “I brought this for you,” she says, lifting the basket a bit higher.
Did she wash his laundry?
Why?
Was it left at her place?
Does she stay here?
Is that what he expects?
Allows?
My thoughts overflow, slipping out in the form of tears. This isn’t what I want. I don’t want to buy my approval through chores and favors, by wearing short shirts and heavy makeup.
“Rae?” Caleb calls from his seat on the couch.
My blurry gaze goes to his, and through the thin veil of tears I see the concern and surprise in his expression as he gets to his feet and moves toward the stairs where my feet feel cemented in place.
Lincoln steps into the room, his small entourage at his heels. He looks across the room with one sweeping gaze, stopping on me for a second before moving to the girl holding his laundry.
I continue up the stairs, my steps too fast.
“Rae,” Caleb calls again, revealing he’s following close behind.
I pull in another deep breath, steeling myself and blinking the tears back as I turn to face him, a contrived smile on my lips. “Hey.”
“You okay?” he asks, searching my face for each sign I’m working hard to conceal.
“Yeah. I’m fine. Are you? I saw those girls were trying to get their claws into you.”
He continues his search for another beat, and I throw in a small laugh to make myself more convincing. “We haven’t really had a moment to talk,” he says. “I know things are kind of a mess right now.”
My smile starts to slip, but I bat his words away with a quick shake of my head. “I’m good,” I tell him. “I just need to grab some things.”
He swallows. “You know you can stay here, right? As long as you want to, you’re welcome.”
His kindness disarms me, reminding me of how many of my truths he’s witnessed firsthand. I nod. “I don’t want to inconvenience everyone. You guys have a routine, a rhythm.”
He shakes his head. “And you’re a part of it.”
I shake my head faster, disputing his words. I’m not. I haven’t been in a long time. “Is Pax home?”
“No. He left. I think he went to go see Candace.”
I wipe a hand across my face, pushing away the fine hairs that often fall across my face because my hairdresser insists framing my face is a good thing. “He’s really gravitating toward her with everything going on, isn’t he?”
Caleb presses his lips together, teetering between a frown and a line intended to hide his feelings. “I think he just likes feeling needed right now. You know Pax, he hates change, and after this bomb went off, I think he’s afraid of more change.”
He’s right. So right. Paxton, like mom and me, has always hated change.
“I’ll call him,” I say, my tone apologetic, knowing I should have worked harder to ensure he was okay, especially with the souvenir he’s worn on his face in the way of a cut and bruise from our dad, reminding me he’s not.
Caleb shakes his head once, then twice. “He just needs time.”
Footsteps pound behind us, and we both turn—my heart matching the bass and rhythm as hope invades the space in my chest.
“Rae Rae!” Arlo calls, a broad smile showing off his teeth. “What are you guys doing? I think that blonde thinks you guys came up here to get it on.”
I roll my eyes, annoyance feels like salt in the wound disappointment created. “You can go back. I just need to shower and grab some things. I’m meeting Poppy.”
“Invite her over,” Arlo says.
“That depends, do I get my own fan club?”
Caleb smirks. Arlo grins. “Trust me, some of these girls would totally be into you.”
I tilt my head back and laugh. “Only to get your attention.”
Arlo shrugs. “Stick around, and we’ll find out. I’m ordering some pizzas. You hungry?”
Caleb nods. “Cheese with extra cheese. We’ll text Pax and see if he’ll come by.”
“If you guys keep worrying about me, those girls are going to lose interest.”
“Nah. It just makes them work harder.” Arlo makes his eyebrows dance.
“I feel used,” I say.
His grin reappears.
“Maybe another time.”
“Tell her to come over,” Arlo insists.
I shake my head. “I need to study. I have a test in my statistics class next week, and I’m nowhere near ready.” The reminder sets me into motion, and I move farther down the hall to where my things are clumsily organized within the small closet space.
When I turn back around, Arlo and Caleb pause their hushed conversation and look at me.
“I’m okay,” I tell them.
“You should see if you can get Pax to talk to you. I’m worried he’s going to lose his starting position.” Arlo rubs a hand over his short hair.
Surprise has me pulling my head back. When Lincoln mentioned Pax not focusing, I had never guessed it was a dire situation. I assumed he was being an uptight asshole, and his teammates were getting fed up with conditioning. “What’s going on?”
“He’s late. He’s missing looks he shouldn’t be. He’s distracted.”
“Okay.” I clear my throat. “I’ll call him on my way to class, see if he’ll meet me.”
Arlo hesitates, his gaze moving to Caleb.
“What?” I ask.
“We’re worried about him,” Caleb answers. “He’s been smoking pot every day and drinking. It’s just not him.”
I brush the hairs that have fallen in my face again. “I’ll call him, and if he doesn’t answer, I’ll go over to Candace’s.”
Arlo nods, his shoulders slowly relaxing like my words offer an assurance that I don’t feel nearly as confident about. “We’ll see you later.”
I gather my things and then descend the stairs with the weight of Paxton’s future hanging over me like a giant shadow.
The girl with dyed red hair sizes me up, her eyes ticking over my features and then my bag. “I know you from somewhere,” she says.
My heart beats too quickly. “I don’t think so.”
She taps her chin with a narrow index finger. “You look familiar.”
Lincoln looks at me, and I stare back, silently accusing him of things that I know logically are being fabricated by my fears, but they feel too real—too raw.
27
Lincoln
There’s something in Raegan’s gaze that makes it difficult for me to see or hear anything else. A glimpse of something I recall seeing in my mother’s eyes before she left my dad.
She pushes her bag higher on her shoulder and then tucks some hair behind an ear. She looks tired and not just physically. With her shoulders squared, she turns, ignoring the redhead's questions and walks out the front door with a barely audible good-bye that I’m fairly certain was directed solely at Caleb, as Arlo moved back to the girl with russet-colored hair.
As I stand, Caleb and Arlo both look at me. Arlo nods a silent ‘she’s pissed’ confirmation. I clear the front door in time to see Raegan slam her trunk closed. I jog down the steps, placing a palm on her car door when she reaches for it.
She draws back. “What are you doing?”
“Let’s talk.”
“I need to go.”
“Because of them?”
“Because I believed you.”
That look from earlier registers in my thoughts, recognizing it was deceit. “What do you think happened?”
She reaches for her door again, and once more, I place my hand on her window, keeping the door closed.
“Nothing happened.”
She narrows her eyes. “With them or us?”
“Them.”
“This is a bad idea.”
I shake my head. I knew things would be harder this time around. “Because some girls are
hanging out at the house?”
“Because even if gonorrhea is easily treatable, I don’t want to go through that.”
The insult lands like a slap to my face, her certainty that I would sleep with any girl causing my temper to spike. Her blue gaze is fixed on mine, bright and determined—she’s ready to go to war with me. I drop my hold on her car door and step forward, debating which urge to succumb to when I want to kiss her as much as I want to shake some sense into her. “You don’t trust anyone, do you? I’m pretty damn certain you don’t even trust yourself. And this excuse about your parents having kept you on a short leash is complete shit because you do that. You keep yourself tied to this two-foot diameter, unwilling to risk anything.”
Her shoulders drawback, the war in her eyes dimming with every second that ticks by, my words penetrating the night air like an echo. “Everyone notices you. Everyone watches you…” she shakes her head slowly like she’s debating with her thoughts. “I don’t know how to compete with that.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I can’t…”
“Can’t what?”
“Being a girl sucks,” she says, a dry chuckle follows her words. “There’s this impossible balance we’re all working to find: being tough without being too masculine, being smart without being arrogant, being kind without being a pushover, being beautiful without being prissy, being successful without being too informal. It’s this massive scale that is constantly in flux, and the joke is on us because everyone is judging us—constantly—and more often than not, we’re our own toughest critic.”
I stare at her, recognizing the several walls she’s dropped. She’s being vulnerable right now, whether intentionally or not, I can’t tell.
“This. Us.” She moves a hand between us. Her nude nails are short, and the gold band she wears around her index finger catches the sunlight, distracting me for a few beats. “I don’t know that I can do this. I don’t know that I can handle the scrutiny of others I know I’ll receive just by being near you. I don’t know if I can handle you comparing me to others.”
Her nostrils flare slightly, her lips barely parted as her gaze drops.
I slide my hand over her cheek, stroking the length of her impossibly soft skin with my thumb. I tilt her chin back, but she keeps her eyes downcast. “Rae,” I say her name gently, realizing how fragile this moment is.
Slowly, she lifts her blue orbs to meet mine, closing her lips into a neutral line I want to kiss and force into the curvy twist I always picture her with.
I want to tell her to fuck them. Fuck all those who think she’s anything short of perfection. Fuck anyone who dares to search her for faults and shortcomings. Fuck everyone—but I know she won’t accept that and definitely won’t believe it’s sincere. “This is the furthest thing from conventional right now, but I have a feeling we’re going to need to learn to trust each other for this to work. You have to trust I have your best interest in mind and that I’m not going to do anything to try and hurt you, and I have to trust that you’re not going to sell naked pictures of me to the press.”
“I feel like I have a lot more to lose.” Her voice hints at humor, but her eyes are sober.
I’m about to tell her she’s dead wrong, but before I can, Paxton turns down the road, his music so loud it’s like a siren, alerting us to his presence.
Raegan sags back, and I remove my hand, my palm meeting the air that feels icy in contrast. But even with the added space, our being out here alone has to look suspicious.
Paxton gets out of his car and lifts a bag from the passenger seat that clinks, revealing its contents: more beer. “What’s up?” he says.
“Hey,” Raegan says. “Where have you been? I tried calling you a few times today.”
“Yeah. I was with Candace. Sorry about that. Everything okay?” He doesn’t look at her or me, unaware of the obvious and only asking the question as an automatic response.
“You want to hang out? Go get something to eat?” she asks.
He shakes his head. “No offense, but not really.”
She wipes her palms across her thighs. “Yeah, I know.”
Her words seem to catch him off guard, and he turns, sweeping his gaze across her for the first time, likely recognizing the same things I have for the first time, the minute differences that began a few weeks ago. How it takes her smile longer to appear, the fact her arms seem like armor, constantly crossed over her body, the lack of her easy laughter. “Sorry. Yeah,” he says. “Let’s do something.”
“We don’t have to talk about anything,” she promises.
Pax’s shoulders shift backward, his attention shifting to me with a silent question, as though checking to see if I see the same details missing from her usual happy and fearless demeanor. “No. We should,” he says, breathing out a deep sigh. “We should talk about things.”
“There’s a bunch of girls here,” she says, shucking a thumb in the direction of the house. “You want to go grab some coffee or something?”
“Mexican?” Pax asks.
The edge of disappointment scrapes against my chest, blunt and dull.
“You want to come?” Pax turns his attention to me again, a manufactured smile that I recognize as an apology.
Raegan’s eyes lock with mine, and she gives a nearly imperceptible nod. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s go. We can take my truck.”
I wanted Rae to take the passenger seat, wanted to rest my hand on her thigh as we drove the short distance to the Mexican restaurant we’ve frequented since moving here. It’s farther than several other restaurants, but its short menu is authentic, and the chips are homemade—it’s also Raegan’s favorite. But, she gets into the backseat without a word, latching her seat belt behind Paxton.
“You smell like fish,” Pax says as he kicks his feet out.
In the rearview mirror I watch her lips curl. “It’s my shoes. I washed them, but they got fish stuff on them. I don’t even smell it anymore.” A frown tugs at her lips. “That’s concerning.”
Paxton and I belt out laughter, and it feels so damn good to hear him at ease, I laugh even harder.
A waitress sits us in the back, though the restaurant is nearly empty—too late for lunch and too early for dinner. Pax is seated next to Rae, and I sit across from them, sitting in the middle of the bench seat.
“How’s school going?” Rae asks, stirring the Shirley temple she’d ordered with a spoon after refusing a straw.
Pax winces. “I haven’t exactly been going.”
She wrinkles her nose, but then nods a couple of times and takes a long drink. “I have a feeling things are going to get uglier. I saw our pictures in the paper this morning. They’re questioning the validity of us being accepted into Brighton.”
Paxton slams a fist against the table. Rae doesn’t jump, but her eyes remain on his balled fist for several seconds before she slowly swallows.
“That’s bullshit,” he barks.
She nods. “It’s total bullshit, but…” She shrugs.
“But what?” Paxton narrows his eyes. “Don’t tell me it doesn’t matter.”
The tip of her tongue darts out, wetting her bottom lip. “It doesn’t matter. You’re a football god. You could’ve gone anywhere. They won’t be able to contest you being there.”
Paxton runs both hands down his face.
“I’m not telling you because I want you to debate the merits of the lie, I’m telling you because I don’t want you to be blindsided by it.” She places her hands on the table, fingers spread wide. “We need to make some decisions and then move forward. Right now, we’re letting his mistakes dictate our lives, and that’s going to make us all lose.”
Pax sands his hands slowly, the gears in his head turning, struggling to move beyond the past couple of weeks. “I’m so fucking pissed,” he says.
Rae nods. “I know.” She runs her hands over her hair, narrow fingers tangling and then untangling in the strands I’d raked my fingers through just last night. I
realize I’ve seen her do this before, when she’s talked about unethical fishing and difficulties the whales face, when she was cornered at her first college party and was trying to laugh and act casual, when I’d told her nothing could happen between us because she was Paxton’s little sister. I take a drink of my water, wishing it was a straight shot of Patron because sometimes being around her makes me notice too much. Care too much. Feel too much.
Then she refuses to look at me, her gaze cast on the varnished table top checkered with colorful tiles. I don’t think it’s intentional or a way of forcing me to remain out of her thoughts, it’s simply a condition of her impossibly stubborn and independent nature.
“I don’t know what we should do. Poppy says we should talk to Dad and forgive him, not for his sake but for our own.” She crooks her jaw to the side, a subtle lift of her shoulders. “I don’t know if I’m ready for that yet, but I don’t want it to stop you.
“You can’t let him and his actions get into your head and ruin your future. You’ve worked too damn hard to let everything fall apart right now. You have two games left, so if you don’t want to think about it until after the season, don’t, but you can’t let this ruin everything.”
He shakes his head, a sour twist of his lips. “This is about football? Who cares about football?”
“You do,” she says. “You care. This has been your dream since you were six.”
He shakes his head again, this time faster. Rae reaches out, placing a hand on his arm. “I feel so fucking stupid,” he says. “Thousands of families are worse off. Broken and filled with lies, and I know I’m being a fucking wimp because I can’t pull my head out of my ass and this idea of a perfect family, but that’s what I want. That was my security. I knew no matter what happened, I had my family.”
“You still do,” she tells him, her voice thick with emotions that swim in her eyes. “I will always be here, and so will mom, and so will Maggie.”
Pax drops his face into one palm. It’s the weakest I’ve ever seen him. It’s also the strongest, as he continues to list his feelings without hesitation or regret before burying his face into the crook of Rae’s neck. She wraps a hand around the back of his neck, the other going around his shoulders.
Breaking the Rules: The Dating Playbook, Book: 2 Page 22
