All Played Out (Rusk University #3)(40)

Maybe that’s where I went wrong, trying to approach life the way I approach science.

In science, every action might have an equal and opposite reaction, but not in life. Life is unbalanced. Life is complicated. A little lie can cause a lot of pain. A big event like an important game or losing your virginity can have an enormous impact or it can turn out to not mean that much in the end.

“There’s no predicting it,” I say aloud. “How one thing can affect your life. There’s no way to know until it’s too late.”

“Life’s a bitch like that.”

I tap my water bottle against her Dr Pepper can, and for the rest of the tailgate party, Stella becomes my partner in silence. She doesn’t push me to talk, and I don’t push her, and when we head for the stands, I’m relieved to be seated by her.

And when the players exit from the locker room, and my eyes pinpoint Torres in his uniform, she bumps her shoulder into mine. “You okay?”

I shake my head, then nod, then shake my head again. “I don’t know.” I’d thought coming to a football game would give me some kind of closure. I’d get to see him again to ease the ache in my chest, but I’d also see how different our worlds are. That realization was supposed to help me let him go.

Instead, I watch him stretching and my own heartbeat sounds suspiciously like Love him, love him, love him, in my ears. This isn’t going to give me closure. It’s just going to give him more power over me.

Torres is my catalyst. He set my life spinning, and there’s only one way to counteract that kind of momentum.

Friction.

I’ve got to fight back. Resist the urge to miss him, to seek him out. I’ve got to resist. I stand up as the band starts playing next to the student section, and at first no one hears me over the music, so I have to say it again, louder. “I can’t be here!”

I can’t sit up in these stands, watching him risk his own health for a game that could never be more important than his future. There are two things I know for certain about Mateo Torres:

1. He has a type (my type, apparently).

2. He will always put football first. He did it with his ex, and now he’s doing it again with his health.

And there’s one thing I know about me:

1. I don’t dwell on setbacks. I move forward. Always, always forward.

Stella stands, and hooks her fingers around my elbow. “Come on. I’ll go with you.”

“Wait. You’re leaving?” Dylan asks. “But you’re the one who wanted to come.”

I shrug. “Sometimes you make the wrong decision. And that’s okay, as long as you don’t keep making them.”

“Stella?” Dallas asks. There’s a bigger question in those two syllables, but whatever it is, it passes just between the two friends. Then Dallas nods even though Stella hasn’t said a word, and the two of us begin inching past all the people in our row.

“Let’s get out of here,” I say.





Chapter 26

Mateo



My mind tries to wander to the empty bed I woke up in this morning, but I don’t let it. There’s nothing good down that path. Standing in the locker room, I focus instead on the fact that today is my third day without symptoms.

I did the right thing. There’s no reason I should miss this game. I’m fine.

Physically, at least.

My head is a little blank. A little numb. But that’s not the concussion. That’s Nell.

I keep waiting for it to feel like Lina, like my life has just detonated. But no, Nell isn’t the type to leave shrapnel, well, not unless you count the final words she said to me Tuesday night when I dropped her off at home.

I get that you loved her. But any kind of love where you have to prove yourself to be worthy is the wrong kind. And you’re better off without her.

No, Nell didn’t leave me with any wounds. Instead, she healed them. Losing her was the final thing I needed to heal all the damage Lina did to me. Nell fixed me, which is kind of what I’d been hoping she’d do all along. Only this was better. This wasn’t just blotting out memories, it was putting them into context. It was taking away their power.

Because what I had with Lina? That wasn’t love. It was infatuation.

And I hate that it took losing Nell to see just how different things are with her. I know I still need to talk to her. It isn’t fair the way I left things. I don’t want her to think that Lina was the only reason I was with her, that she was only a replacement. Because she fucking wasn’t. She was something new. Something better. I’d known that from the night she’d given me her virginity. I spent years trying to forget what it was like to be with Lina, and no other girl had ever been able to do anything but blur the memories.

Nell obliterated them.

But not because of any similarity to my ex, just because there isn’t room enough in my head and my heart for old hurts and new hopes, and I’m so fucking gone for Nell that she takes up every damn inch.

She’s on constant repeat in my head, cycling through every single second of our time together. I can close my eyes and recall just how fast my heart was beating the first time we kissed, the sounds she made that night in my truck, the way her sheets smelled waking up the morning after she gave herself to me.

No, Nell didn’t leave me with scars.

She left me empty.

She took with her my ability to laugh, the ease with which I can make a joke, the joy that comes from making that perfect catch. She took my ability to pretend that I’m okay, that I’ve got it all together. She took it all.

And there’s no fixing that kind of thing. I can’t blot over it with distractions or remake it with someone else. I’ve got to get it back. Pure and simple.

I’ve got to get her back.

As soon as the game is over tonight, I’ll find her. I don’t know yet what I’ll say. We both said things in that fight that we probably shouldn’t have. But I know that what we have is worth salvaging. I don’t know how I’ll get her to give me a second chance, because God knows, she’s smart enough to say no.

But I’ll do it. I have to.


THE NORMAL RUSH of adrenaline and anxiety I feel before a game is gone. I reach for it, but I can’t get it back. Not even when the team starts yelling and psyching one another up in the locker room. Not even when I don my pads and uniform. Not even when Coach gives a particularly good speech about rising above our underdog status. Win this game and we’re 9–2. We’d almost be guaranteed a bowl game. Win another, and we could even get picked for one of the big ones.

But I can’t quite see the future stretching out in front of me like I could a few weeks ago. There’s a wall, and I know I won’t get past it until things are right with Nell.

She’s part of my future.

That’s why I can’t picture it.

Coach Cole stops me before I head out onto the field and asks, “You ready?”

I nod as much as my helmet and pads will let me. “Yes, sir.”

“Listen, if we get the coin flip and receive first, I’m putting you out to receive.”

“Sir?” I ask, confused.

“Gregory has some kind of stomach bug. He’s out. So I need someone fast who can replace him on the kickoff. I need a playmaker. Think you can handle that?”

“Yes, sir,” I answer immediately, but inside I’m saying no.

Well, not me precisely, but it’s Nell’s voice in my head.

Coach heads for the tunnel that leads out onto the field, and I follow him, but the dark corridor is too much like the one where I’d lost everything earlier this week, and I find myself gasping for breath.

Returning a kickoff is one of the most dangerous plays in football, so much so that there’s been talk of removing it from the game altogether. When the kick returner catches the ball, they’re usually in the end zone. The defense is coming full speed from the other side of the field. The returner can take a knee, and his team will automatically start at the twenty-five-yard line. But the good returners can gain more than twenty-five if they’re quick, can find the holes, and break through tackles. But with players coming at full speed, and all that extra field to gather momentum, kick returners take some of the hardest hits in football.

I tell myself that maybe we won’t win the coin flip, maybe I won’t have to worry about it. Yet.

But we do. The setting sun glints off the flipping coin, and McClain says, “We’ll receive.”

Then I tell myself maybe it won’t come to my side of the field. Maybe the kick will end up outside my territory, and someone else will return the ball.

And then I’m taking the field. My cleats sink into the grass, and the thud of my heart echoes all the way up into my head and fills my helmet until I can’t hear the crowd, can’t hear anything.

I see the opposing team begin to move, watch the kick of the ball, track the high arc of it with my eyes. It’s coming right for me. And I watch the ball spin end over end, and as it begins its descent toward me, I hear my fight with Nell on fast-forward.

And somehow it’s there on the field with that ball speeding toward me and all the fears crammed into my skull that I realize . . . Nell wanted me to be realistic about the concussion. I’m such an idiot. I wasn’t fighting with Lina; this wasn’t about me giving up football completely for something she deemed smarter or more worthy. Nell’s last words before I cut her off and started to yell were “You have to take care of yourself, if you want to—”