by Casey Diam
“I’m going to miss you.”
I shook my head as the snow crunched under my boots. I had never told someone I would miss them. I’d also never spent the whole night at the girl’s house. Sex had always been just sex. I’d never dated any one girl for more than two months until Francis. She and I dated for three months, broke up, and then kept fucking when it was convenient. But this thing with Gabriella, who I had a history with, was already in no way comparable to any other situation I’d ever been in.
And I’d never felt anything like what I did last night or the night before. I’d wanted to keep talking to her until I knew everything about her and her plans after the Olympics, her plans for her future, even just for the next day, but she’d fallen asleep, and then I’d followed not long after.
“Son of a bitch,” I said under my breath as I pulled up to my house and spotted the blue Dodge Ram parked on the side of the road. Apparently, there was no escaping Will.
And seriously, what did he do? Sleep here? What the hell?
I rolled to a stop in my driveway, and I jumped out, hurrying to the front door.
“Ryker!” Will yelled when he saw what I was doing, but I was already inside the house, closing the door behind me. Childish, but I didn’t want to see him.
He was the only person I’d vowed never to confront because in the strength it would take to do it was a weakness and the truth of why he loved Ash more than me. And it was too late for him to pretend that he gave two fucks about me.
Moments later, I fell into my bed for the last time. When I heard the vague sound of a door opening and then my mom’s voice, I dragged my tired body out of the bed and walked over to the window to listen.
“Go home, Will. Do you realize how early it is? Are you crazy? I told you to stay out of his life, and now look what’s happening. This is because of you! All this football crap, and now he isn’t even going to wait until his graduation. How could you encourage this, knowing what happened to you? If you aren’t here to talk some sense into him, you need to leave.”
“Oh, now you want me to talk sense into him?” At Will’s retort, I padded back over to my bed and promptly fell asleep.
When I finally woke sometime just before nine, it felt as if the entire night had been a dream. If it weren’t for the teeth marks Gabby had left on top of my shoulder, I would have assumed it was. Before my mind could wander back to how deep I’d been buried inside her, a knock sounded on my bedroom door. Not knowing if it was Lily, I pulled on the pants I’d just discarded on the floor before pulling the door open.
Brody, Eddie, and Ash, who’d be making the thirteen-hour drive with me to Oklahoma, stood there, looking more alert and ready for this drive than I was.
“Dude, you said you’d be up and ready to leave Alpen Springs at the break of dawn. It’s nine.” Eddie threw up his hands in confusion. “Did you even pack?”
“I packed,” I grumbled.
Clothes. Bedding. Toiletries. Towel. iPad. Sketch pad and pencils. What else could I need?
Ash grabbed my shoulder. “And what the fuck did you sleep with last night, a vampire? Couldn’t you have tried to leave this town with some dignity?”
“Not when said vampire is a future Olympian,” Eddie joked.
“Shut up,” I hissed.
“You slept with Gabby, and you told Eddie and not me?” Ash’s palm tapped against my jaw. Did he just slap me?
“I didn’t tell him. He figured it out.” When he’d caught me outside at the party saying good night to Gabby. I narrowed my eyes at Eddie, telling him without words to shut his freaking mouth. Gabby wasn’t like the others, and there was nothing for them to talk about when it came to her. Especially when things between us seemed to have ended before it had even begun.
By the time I showered and dragged on a T-shirt, Lily was awake and sitting in my room in her multi-colored, heart-dotted PJs. “You promised to wake me up,” she whined. “And now you’re leaving.” Tears filled her green eyes.
“Aw, Lily, I’m sorry.” I approached to lift her into a hug, but she turned and ran out of my room yelling “No.” A second later, her door slammed shut down the hall.
“Damn it.” She was going to be mad for a while. “Can you start taking my stuff down?” I asked the guys. “I’m going to see if I can talk to her.”
“You mean take down your two measly boxes?” Brody asked. “Yeah, sure, dude. No prob.”
I knocked on Lily’s door and tried the knob, but it was locked. “Lily. We talked about this. I’m not leaving forever. I’ll be back to visit you. I promise.”
Silence.
“I’m taking my stuff down to my truck, don’t you want to help me?”
Silence.
I bit my lip.
“Lily, I’m leaving now. Okay? I’ll see you in a few weeks.” I held my breath, and when I heard nothing, I added, “Please, can I get a hug?”
I guess not.
After one last check in my room, I headed downstairs and gave my mom a quick hug, and then nodded to Tom.
Eddie was already in Brody’s SUV, and just before I got into my truck where Ash was waiting, Lily ran out, looking like that little redheaded girl from Brave.
“Lillian Princeta Stanley!” Mom yelled from the door, and I could see why. Lily only had on her PJs and her pink UGG boots. Ignoring Mom and the below thirty degrees temperature, she stopped in front of me, her head hanging low as she picked at her fingernail.
I lifted her and hugged her close, keeping her warm as I walked her back to the house. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
“Like how soon?”
My thoughts drifted to Gabby, and I’d never been more certain as I said, “Real soon.”
Chapter 23
Gabby
“Oh my God. Why would you tell him not to call you?” Averie asked.
“I don’t know.” Dropping my head on my pillow, I hugged the other to my chest as Averie sat at the foot of my bed. After wallowing in self-pity all morning, it had begun to hit me that Ryker was really gone, so I’d caved and texted her. “And then he just left, and I guess that was it.”
I half sighed, half groaned, wondering how much I should tell her. “He was so perfect. It was perfect. And then it wasn’t.”
“Oh no.” She lay down and propped her head on her hand. “What happened?”
I swallowed.
“Um . . . uh, he was kind of my first.”
“Shut up!” she whisper-yelled. “What?”
“Yup.”
She looked at me for a moment as if trying to dissect my current state, but I was fine. I just wished I’d known how I should have proceeded after the deed was done.
“Sorry, but I’m so curious. Why him?”
Oh. Well, that question was hard.
“I don’t know. I guess, in a way, I’d imagined it being with him a few years ago, but also, I might still have some major feels going on for him.”
“You might?”
Tingles spread across my skin as it warmed. “Just a little bit.”
She grinned. “Please tell me it was at least good?”
“Really good.” I hugged my pillow tighter, thinking for a moment. “I didn’t know what I’d wanted with him, but now that he’s gone, I know I want to be with him. He was so gentle.” I placed a finger on my lip as I recalled his kisses. God, his lips were so soft. “And the things he was saying, I loved it, but then this morning, I began to wonder if he was just saying it—like maybe they meant nothing and was stuff he said to other girls too. He told me he was going to miss me, and it was so hard to hear because I could almost feel myself falling for him after just one night.” I reflected for a second before I sighed. “Go ahead, tell me I’m crazy for feeling like this about him. I need to hear it.”
She smiled. “I’m not going to tell you that. Also, are we talking about the same Ryker, as in Ash’s brother? I heard gentle and his name in the same sentence, and I’m trying to picture it, and it’s not happening
.”
“I know.” I chuckled. “But yes, the one and only.”
“Okay, well, now that I’m sure we’re talking about the same person, and I mean no offense by this, but Ryker is a quintessential dick. He would not say anything at all that he didn’t mean, not even if it was just to make you feel good. He isn’t wired that way, and I think you know that. So whatever he said, he definitely meant it.”
I smiled. “I guess, but the same could go for him being a typical manwhore. He’s going to be all the way in Oklahoma with half-naked college girls throwing themselves at him. There’s no way we could work out.”
How would I even know if he would be faithful?
“So, that’s why you told him not to contact you.” She pursed her lips. “That’s tough, Gabby. Honestly, I don’t know what to tell you. You’ve known him longer than I have.”
“Yeah, except he isn’t the same lanky, teenage guy friend I grew up with. He’s hot now. I mean he was back then, but now it’s”—I shook the image of his abs and broad muscular shoulders from my thoughts—“so different.”
“Oh my God!” Averie laughed. “You realize you’re going to have to call him, right? In fact, I dare you not to call him because you are, in the literal sense, fucked, Gabby Taylor.”
I scrunched my face, but she might be right about that.
“There’s something else,” I said under my breath, getting to the next reason I’d been slightly freaking out most of the morning.
Her head slanted. “What else?”
“We sort of, um—got carried away last night, and kind of, sort of forgot to use protection.”
Averie jerked upright, her eyes popping open. “What?”
I squeezed the pillow. “He didn’t, you know—he didn’t, uh, he withdrew. But I don’t know. Do you think I could still get pregnant? I’ve been googling it all morning and have been going crazy.”
“Are you on birth control?”
“No.” I pulled the pillow up to my face and groaned into it.
“What about a morning after pill?”
“I tried,” I said, my voice muffled.
“You took it?”
I removed the pillow from my face. “No. I went to the pharmacy in town and walked out with a pack of gum. I feel so stupid. I was mortified to ask for it and terrified that, if I did, it would get back to my dad or mom, which was why I drove to Alpen North, but they don’t even have a freaking pharmacy.”
“Yeaahhh. My mom used to pick up my birth control pills after work when we lived in Alpen North.”
“You’re on the pill?”
“Since I was fourteen, but Ash and I still use protection. He’s practically religious about it. Sorry, not helping. But I think I have an idea.”
“Please tell me it’s a way to fix this.”
Sadness expanded inside my chest as I thought about my stupidity. How could I have been so careless? Putting everything I’d worked for, everything my parents had given up for me, on the line?
Chapter 24
Ryker
Son of a bitch!
Dropping my hand on my thighs, I exhaled hot ragged breaths on the OKU football practice field. After doing fifty back-to-back ten second, one-hundreds across the field, I was halfway to hell. I swore I was dying. My chest ached, my lungs ached, even my fucking throat ached.
“Welcome to off-season training,” Trey said, catching his breath, sweat glistening off his bronze complexion.
“Off-season?” This shit gets worse? Did I even want to know what they did in-season? Would I even live to see it at this rate?
“This is just the warm-up.”
And he was not kidding. By the time we were done with drills, my legs were fucking jelly, and I still needed to walk around the massive campus to check into admissions and find my classes.
I’d registered for four courses through the online platform last week, but there were a few forms I needed to fill out and some other shit I needed to do.
Since my first class started at nine thirty, I had to jog back to the dorm after spending more time than I’d anticipated eating breakfast and getting to know the team inside the performance facility, which was basically a luxury hangout spot for the players with free food and entertainment.
After I left the admissions office almost an hour later, I found the bookstore, but the line was wrapped around a corner of the building as if a damn concert was happening inside. I peered down at my phone at the time and knew it was either going to be books or class, but not both.
Apparently, I already sucked at college, but having heard about how Coach did not tolerate players missing classes, I knew which option I had to choose.
Unfortunately, the entire day was a repeat of me sucking. From the outside, it probably looked like I didn’t want this, but being here was everything I wanted. This was the life I’d been working so hard to get to before the final step of getting drafted, but the problem was, my brother not being here fucking blows too.
After another two-hour workout, this time at the gym with the team, my legs were shaking and my arms were sore, but I finally got the chance to head to the bookstore, and then to the dining hall where I grabbed two huge servings of lasagna. Normal people would need only one, but me, I’d be hungry again within two hours after this.
“Hey, roomie!” A guy said a minute after I’d set my tray down. My roommate, Liam, dropped into a seat in front of me. With my last-minute decision to start early, I was lucky to even have a dorm, so I wasn’t going to complain about him.
A blonde girl and a short, slightly overweight dude sat on either side of Liam.
“This is Ashley, and my dude, Sammy.”
I nodded. “What’s up?”
“Liam says you’re from Colorado,” Ashley said.
“Yup.” I stuffed a bite of lasagna into my mouth.
“I’m from Denver,” she said.
I nodded again. “Cool.” I wasn’t in the mood to talk, but I could see the interest sparking in her blue eyes. Blue, but not like Gabby’s. I’d spent half the night last night thinking about her and debating whether to call her.
“So, what are you majoring in?” Ashley asked.
“Graphic design.”
“Oh cool, a football player and an artist.” I would wonder if Liam had told her everything about me, but that was all he knew from our brief interaction yesterday. He’d met my friends, but then I’d left to hang out with them at their hotel room for a while.
“What are you up to later?” Liam asked.
I quirked an eyebrow. “As in on a Monday night? Ah, I don’t know, sleep.”
“Lame. We’re heading downtown to Dixie Dive. It’s a dive bar that hosts beer pong tournaments. And we have a friend who’ll give us the hookup on the drinks without ID.”
I brushed a hand through my hair. “I don’t know, man.”
The temptation was real, even with my five thirty wake up for first practice at six.
“Dude, it’s your first night on campus—well, technically second night, but you need to come out and check out the scene, it’s going to be wild. These guys have been practicing all summer, and tonight is the first tournament,” Sammy said.
“Drinks, girls, music,” Liam enticed.
“What time are you leaving?” I forked the last piece of the lasagna and stuffed it in my mouth.
“Eight thirty.”
That would give me about two hours to get some reading and some artwork done. I stood, grabbing my backpack and tray. “All right. I’ll check it out.”
Dixie Dive was noisy and smelled of greasy fried food, and Liam’s friend was right, the students were hyped as hell and already dancing and drinking. I couldn’t even hear my own thoughts.
“Fifteen bucks if you want a drink,” Liam said.
“Nah, I’m good.”
The night took off from there, and I eventually settled for a beer, which became two and then three in less than a half hour, and when a call came in on my phone from Will, th
at was when everything went to shit.
I answered.
“Please don’t tell me you’re out right now.”
“Oh yeah? What does it matter to you?” The bitterness that had been brewing came spilling out before I could stop it. “Why are you even calling me? You never called me back home. Why are you suddenly so interested in my life?”
Was it because I was the one to carry on his legacy that ended before it started when he got my mom pregnant?
“I’ve always been interested, you just never gave me the chance to show you.”
“Bullshit.”
I shook my head in annoyance as I wandered outside the bar.
“You only came to all my games because Ash was there. When were you ever there for just me? I told you before, I’m done with you, Will. I put up with you for the sake of Ash, but I don’t have to anymore. He’ll always be my brother, but you were never my father.”
Feeling a knot in my throat, I hung up the phone and rubbed a hand across my forehead.
Fucking shit.
I needed a real drink. I headed back inside and spotted Sammy in a small crowd.
“Where’s your guy? I need another drink.”
Sammy nodded to a tall dude with shoulder-length hair in a red Hawaii shirt. I handed over the cash, and in a matter of minutes, I was downing a shot of whiskey, the other one at my fingertips waiting for its turn.
“You know it’s bad luck to take shots by yourself,” Ashley said, coming to stand next to me in the dark corner where the bar counter met the wall.
“I guess that explains why I’m not having any fun,” I said dryly.
She waved the bartender over and ordered two shots of tequila.
“You can order?”
She winked. “I’m twenty-one.”
Hm.
Something was wrong with me.
She was beautiful and giving me all the signals. Normal me would say something like, “Is that right?” while my gaze roamed over her body suggestively. I could have her against the bathroom wall within the next ten minutes if I really tried, but I didn’t want that. In fact, I didn’t want to be around anyone.
