“Look at you two lovebirds.” Bomber waved at us. “You are so washing our shorts.”
My emotions swelled up inside me, so close to the surface, that crazy hope, the love I felt for Cam. He turned and met my eyes. I tried to give him a tiny smile, my lips quivering. I clasped my hands together, twisting the silver ring I wore on my right hand, back and forth, back and forth, watching him, waiting for him to say something. My entire body vibrated.
Please…say it, Cam. Say it. I love you.
I sank my teeth into my bottom lip. Cam’s gaze flickered to my hands, my fingers twisting my ring, then back up to my face. I couldn’t breathe. I was sure my love for him shone in my eyes, telling him…please, Cam…
Chapter 20
Olivia
Cam smiled and turned back to Chaser.
My heart fluttered.
“Nope.” Cam shook his head. “I win. Not in love. Tell him, Liv.”
I sat stone still, my fingers ceasing their motion, squeezing the metal ring on my finger. I worked to keep my face expressionless, heat sinking in my belly like an anchor pulling me down under water.
I replayed his words in my head, in case I’d misunderstood. Not in love.
Surprisingly, I didn’t feel like crying. My limbs all felt numb, my insides hollow.
I had to agree with him. I had to back him up on this. That was the deal. It was my deal. I was the crazy one who’d suggested it.
It took all my will to stretch my lips into a smile and say, “Yep. He definitely wins.”
Chaser frowned. “You know about the bet?”
“I had to tell her,” Cam said.
My voice came out sounding high and weird. “I was the one who suggested we let you guys think you were winning.” I gave a light laugh that I was afraid sounded like a hyena high on weed.
Chaser, Bomber, and Rico all looked confused.
“Neither of us wanted a serious relationship,” I went on, making sure nobody knew that I felt like I’d just been hit between the eyes by a hockey puck and could barely focus. “We’ve just been having fun. Not falling in love. Nope, not at all.” I gave another shrill titter.
“So you’re doing the laundry,” Cam told his friends with a smirk. He turned to me and lifted a hand to high-five. I stared at his hand for what felt like an hour before I could get my arm to cooperate, to lift and slap my hand against his. I was still smiling…I hoped.
The guys all exchanged looks.
“Is your ass jealous of that shit coming out of your mouth?” Chase asked Cam with a frown.
I didn’t know what he was talking about and couldn’t summon the energy to even try to understand. I dropped my gaze to the remains of my chicken sandwich. Bleh.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Cam picked up his beer and took a gulp.
Chase shook his head. I thought the guys would all be laughing about the bet, annoyed because they had to wash Cam’s shorts, but instead Cam seemed puzzled, his forehead creased.
Luckily the guys had to take it easy because playoffs! So we didn’t stay long after that. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.
Cam took me home, since his parents were at his place and I didn’t really want to go and stay over with them there. I’d barely met them last night at the game, since we hadn’t sat together, and now…well, I’d probably never see them again.
Unless…had Cam lied to his friends to win the bet? Maybe he’d lied. It was possible.
My heart pulsed in painful beats in my chest as we drove, my mind a mess. I knew I couldn’t get my hopes up again. I’d just had them smashed into slivers that I felt piercing my chest with every shallow breath. I had to face reality—the two months were up. The bet was over. Cam had won…because he hadn’t fallen in love with me.
I, on the other hand, was a complete idiot because I had fallen in love.
I clasped my hands, the fingers of my left hand finding the ring on my right and twisting it. Was this it? Was this the end of us?
My heart hammered so hard I felt it in my wrists and my throat, along with a hard pulse in the pit of my stomach.
Cam pulled up in front of my building and parked. He turned to face me.
Terror seized me in a cold, bony grip. He was going to end things. I had one shot left. “Cam.”
“Yeah, babe?”
For a moment, I couldn’t speak. I stared back at him. The air inside the car felt thick and heavy. I took in his face, illuminated by the dash lights—his strong square jaw and carved cheekbones, his beautiful mouth, the heavy layer of stubble that was the start of a playoff beard. My heart expanded hard against my breastbone. “I love you.”
I waited, my heart measuring out time in painful beats.
He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. The hand that rested on the steering wheel curved around it and gripped it.
“I know this is supposed to be the end.” I still clasped my hands together, twisting my ring again. “The two months are up, you won the bet, I get it, but…I don’t want things to end.” I gazed at him imploringly. “I know this wasn’t supposed to happen. But every time you do something nice, I fall more and more in love with you, and I know I’m not supposed to be your real girlfriend and you wanted to win that bet. And I know you don’t do relationships, but I feel like we have something really…” Wow, everything sounded so cliché as it spilled from my mouth. “Something really great, and I have to tell you the truth. I…I was hoping that maybe…you felt the same.”
Okay, I’d done it. I’d spilled my guts. Basically presented my beating heart to him in my hands. I’d never in my life felt so vulnerable, or so scared or exposed.
“Uh…” He looked away from me, staring out the windshield into the dark. A muscle flickered in his tight-set jaw.
My stomach tensed up into knots, a gnawing, hard ache. I resisted the urge to fill the excruciating silence with more babbling, biting my lip. I’d said enough.
It felt like forever before Cam looked back at me and spoke. “I can’t.”
For a beat, I felt nothing. Then a sharp blade sliced into my chest. It hurt everywhere…my back, my shoulder blades, my stomach.
“I’m sorry, Olivia. I can’t. I like being friends with you—”
“Friends!” I shouted the word, not meaning to. I tried again. “Friends?”
“Yeah, you know…we don’t have to end things, but—”
“But we can just be friends. Is that what you’re saying? Like fuck buddies, I guess, since we do that. Fuck, I mean.” I glared at him. “Well, fuck that. I don’t want to be your friend. Or your fuck buddy. In fact, I never want to see you again.”
I fumbled for the door handle, trying to make my escape, but of course it was less than graceful, since it was me, and the handle of my purse caught on the seatbelt so when I tried to slam the door, my purse got stuck in it. “Oh, for fucking fuck’s sake.” I wrestled it free and shut the door.
By this time, Cam was out of the car and around it, standing next to me, a concerned but sort of desperate expression on his face. “Liv, wait.”
I pulled in a long breath, trying to salvage some dignity. I lifted my chin and smiled at him. “Hey. It’s okay. We did what we set out to do. It was my idea, remember? I’m sorry I let my feelings get too involved, it was my mistake. Don’t worry, I don’t blame you at all. Not your fault.” I paused. “Good luck in the playoffs. I know how much it means to you.” My voice wobbled, because I did know. “I want that for you,” I croaked out honestly. “I want the best for you. So…good luck. And goodbye.”
I walked into my building with my head high.
* * *
—
“What’s going on? Are you okay?” Paisley walked into my condo and followed me as I trudged back to the couch where I’d been watching Netflix
and devouring chocolates all day. Yeah, I’d called in sick.
“No.” I wrapped the soft throw around me and sat again. I was still in my pajamas. My entire body ached, and my arms and legs felt heavy. I hadn’t even brushed my hair, and I didn’t care. I picked up a chocolate and studied it. “I don’t know how many chocolates equal happiness, but so far it’s not…” I squinted at the box. “Twenty-seven.”
Paisley snort-laughed. “Jesus, woman.”
“I’m kidding.” I sighed. “Though I probably have eaten too many.” That might explain the pain in my gut.
Paisley dropped her purse and sat down. “What’s wrong?”
“Cam and I broke up.”
“Oh no! Why? What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Liv.”
“Okay, okay. I might as well make my humiliation complete.” I popped the chocolate covered caramel into my mouth and chewed. “I tow im I uv im.”
“What?”
I was trying to talk with my mouth full of candy. I chewed and swallowed. “I told him I love him.”
Paisley blinked.
“Yesterday was the day the bet ended. We told his friends that he won. I kept hoping…” My throat squeezed up tight. When I could talk, my voice came out small. “I kept hoping maybe he would…feel the same. But he told them he’d won the bet.” I scrunched my face up, my nose stinging. “It hurt so much, but even so, I kept thinking maybe he’d just said that to screw over his friends, maybe he really did care about me…and I decided to tell him how I felt.”
Dammit, I was going to cry again. I didn’t want to cry any more. My eyes felt gritty enough.
“Oh.” Paisley’s eyes shadowed, anticipating what I was going to say.
“He really doesn’t love me. He gave me that ‘we can still be friends’ bullshit line, but I told him to shove that up his ass.”
Paisley snorted softly. “Good for you.”
“One problem with that.” My mouth twisted. “Not only is my heart b-broken, but I just lost us our celebrity spokesperson.”
“Ohhhh.” Paisley frowned briefly. “But he signed a contract.”
“T-true.” I sniffled. “Shit. That means I will have to see him. If he honors the contract.”
“He will,” she said confidently.
Yeah. He probably would. “I don’t know how I fell in love with him. He’s a jerk.”
“Mmm. I have thoughts.”
“Tell me.”
“You wouldn’t fall in love with a jerk.”
“Ha! I have before.”
“Shit. That’s true.” She frowned.
“It’s Jason all over again!” I waved a hand. “He seemed like a nice guy who was all into me, until I discovered what he was really like.” I threw myself back into the couch cushions and said to the ceiling, “Why am I so stupid when it comes to men?”
“You’re not stupid. Phht.” Paisley leaned back in the chair. “I can’t believe this.”
“I know. Have a chocolate.”
She selected one and ate it.
“It seemed like things were going really great between you two.”
“I thought so too.” My bottom lip quivered. “I don’t know how I could have misread things so badly. I really thought we were more than just fuck buddies.”
Paisley exhaled gustily. “Damn.”
“I know. Welp, I think it’s time to switch from chocolate to wine.”
“Great idea. It’s wine o’clock somewhere. I’ll get it.” She stood. “You have red? Red wine goes great with chocolate.”
“I do have red. Break out the Chambertin 2005.”
“Oooh. I love it when you talk expensive French wines.”
Paisley knew where everything was in my kitchen and soon returned with two big wineglasses and the opened bottle of Chambertin. She set everything on the coffee table and filled the glasses generously, which pretty much killed that bottle of wine.
Whatever. I’d wallow in heartbreak and misery and maybe a little drunkenness for today. Tomorrow I’d be fine.
Okay, maybe not. But eventually I’d be fine. I hoped.
Cam
We’d just lost our second playoff game.
At home.
This fucking sucked.
I thrived under pressure. I loved competing.
But right now, I felt like a bag of smashed assholes.
I didn’t even know what that meant. Whatever.
I sat in the locker room, freshly showered, dressed in my game-day suit. I’d done the interviews, come up with noncommittal ways to say that I’d played shitty, and now I wanted to go get drunk.
Except my parents were here, and they were coming home with me.
Fuck.
I couldn’t get drunk anyway. We were leaving in the morning for Minneapolis, and Coach was likely going to have a few choice words about tonight’s game. In other words, he was going to rip us new ones.
Woo fucking hoo.
I needed to get my ass off this bench and get out there to find Mom and Dad.
I stood and shoved my phone in my pocket, slammed my locker shut, and headed out. Nearly everyone else was already gone. The dressing room had felt like a funeral after the game. I wasn’t the only one who’d played like crap, but I was the one who’d turned over the puck in the neutral zone which had let Minnesota have a three-on-one and score the winning goal. I was also the one who’d taken a stupid penalty in the first minutes of the game that had let Minnesota open the scoring. Two–one loss.
Now we headed into Minneapolis down two games.
I found Mom and Dad, and we walked to the underground parking garage where players parked.
“Well, that sucked,” Dad said as we walked.
“Yep.”
They didn’t get on my back. They never had. They weren’t those nightmare parents who pushed and criticized, who barraged the officials with verbal abuse and got into fistfights in the stands with other parents. When I’d lost games, they’d praised me for being a good sport. When I’d screwed up, they’d let me learn from it.
Guess I needed to learn something from tonight’s game.
“You didn’t seem totally focused,” Mom said.
I clicked the button on my key fob to unlock the doors of my car. The lights flashed on. Mom slid into the backseat and Dad took the front.
“I hope it wasn’t because we’re here,” Mom added once we were buckled in.
“No.” I glanced over my shoulder to reverse out of the parking spot. “There are a lot of distractions though. Pressure.”
“You like pressure,” Mom said.
I sighed. That was usually true.
“Anything we can do?” Dad asked.
“Nah. I just need to get my head in the right space.”
“We should have stayed in a hotel,” Mom said. “Let you have your usual routine.”
“No, it’s fine.”
I wanted to talk to Olivia. I couldn’t stop thinking about her and what she’d said the other night.
She loved me.
I’d been a mess ever since.
I went from terror to pissed off wanting to punch something, to incredulous joy, which then turned to mortification and crushing guilt at how I’d acted. I couldn’t focus, couldn’t make any kind of decisions. I wanted to be alone and retreat inside myself to try to figure things out, but that wasn’t an option.
It fucking killed me, remembering how she’d tried to hide how hurt she’d been. I’d never seen her like that. This whole thing reminded me of Ashley, which I knew was the reason for my freak-out, but even though I’d felt that squeeze of panic, Olivia was totally different. Ashley had made sure I knew how
devastated she was because she wanted to make me change my mind. She’d called me, leaving crying voicemails. She’d sent me desperate text messages one after another. She’d come to my billet house at crazy hours.
Olivia had lifted her chin, blinked back tears, and calmly wished me good luck.
Fuck.
I sensed that Mom and Dad were concerned, so I made an effort to talk as we drove to my place. After I changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt, I escaped for a few minutes to take Magnum out, lingering in the park, in the dark, breathing in cool evening air.
All I kept thinking about was Olivia…telling me she didn’t shave her legs on our first date…sick as a dog and still hot…telling me about not fitting in with her family, but then watching her deal with them like a boss. Horrified when she dumped a glass of water in my lap. Running as fast as she could to beat me in a one-mile race. Afraid of Magnum but then letting him sleep on the bed with her.
What was wrong with me? This wasn’t like me. I didn’t like feeling this way.
Back at my condo, I walked in to find Dad sitting on the couch watching Sportsnews, a beer in his hand.
“Where’s Mom?” I sat on the other end of the couch and stared at the TV.
“Went to bed.”
We watched for a few minutes. Then Dad said, “Thought Olivia would be at the game.”
“Uh. Well.” I rubbed my face. “She broke up with me.”
Another moment of silence, then, “Lark thought things seemed pretty serious between you two.”
“She was wrong.”
“Not trying to be nosy, son, but you seemed off tonight.”
Off. That wasn’t even close to how I felt. More like, fucked right up. I sighed.
“That why you weren’t focused on the game tonight?”
“No. Yes. Fuck.”
“Sounds like you’re confused.”
“Yeah.”
“You in love with her?”
“No!” My head whipped around to glare at Dad.
He shrugged, still watching the TV. I remembered some of our more difficult conversations had always been either in the car or in front of the TV, where we weren’t actually looking at each other. Somehow, that made it easier for us to talk.
Game On Page 21
