Boyfriend Bargain(44)

I look up at him, and he isn’t done talking.

“You need to do the right thing. Go after her and tell her—”

Anger fires inside me, itching to get out. I slap my hand against the table. “Funny how I’m your best friend but all your interest is in her.”

He exhales. “Dude, chill. You know Sugar and I are just friends.”

“Do I? You flirt with her constantly.” My jaw pops as we have a stare-off. I know I’m blowing up at him for no good reason, but I can’t seem to stop.

Everything is falling apart.

He gives me a nod, as if he’s come to a decision. “If you want to talk, I’ll be in my room.”

He grabs his glass, walks down the hall, and shuts the door.

Standing, I shove away from the table and kick the chair back until it clatters against the wood.

Screw him. He’s upset about the game. The entire team is. Every single player thinks I’ve lost my mojo. Pouring yet another drink, I think back to their rumblings on the bus on the way back, and I know I’m not the captain they deserve. I’m not going to lead HU to a national championship.

My fists clench as I recall the embarrassment of waking up in the locker room with a medic beside me. My heart checked out fine—of course—and I begged to go back out there, but Coach told me to cool my jets in the locker room and “check in with my shrink.” Those were his words. Stan Wilcox was nowhere to be found.

Cursing, I pick up the bottle and stalk out to the deck, slamming the back door behind me.

The air is bitter cold, the ground hard as I pace around, my feet shuffling, my mind trying to come to terms with a new reality.

I won’t ask her to come back. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. Because if she says no…

I end up in the garage. I’m staring down at the table we made love on, and my heart clenches in my chest. I set the bottle down on the edge of a tool shelf behind me and pick up a hammer, turning it over in my hands. With one arm, I sweep everything off the table and swing the hammer at it, whacking at nothing. The tool reverberates in my grip, the sound of metal against wood sharp in my ears, but I don’t care. Over and over I work at it, rage eating at me, clawing, until finally the metal head flies off the wooden handle and I jerk to a stop, my eyes moving around the room, wondering what else I can hit.

But what I want to hit isn’t in this garage.

My buzz builds as I take another swig and head back toward the house. I kick open the back door and stalk to Reece’s room. Without asking, I push it open and turn on the lights. His room is a mess, clothes and shoes and hockey gear in every corner. Everything is out of place, protein wrappers, Gatorade bottles, books, and a laptop littering the floor.

Just another way we’re different. My hands clench.

They scuttle up to the pillows when I barge in.

“What the hell? Privacy, please?” Reece says as he sits up, covering up Veronica at the same time.

I stop at the foot of his bed and it’s all I can do to not yell, but somehow I keep my voice calm. “Veronica is not welcome in this house again. She needs to pack her shit and go.”

Reece looks from me to her and bolts out of bed stark naked, shoving his legs into gym shorts. “This is not just your house. It’s half mine.” He glances back down at Veronica, who’s clinging to the top sheet. “She won’t talk to Sugar again.” His eyes come back to me, and I see the knowledge there. Veronica must have told him what happened. “Besides, don’t you think it was time she knew the truth?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I only told her the truth.”

“You told your truth, isn’t that right?” I glare at Veronica and rage builds. I would never, ever hit a girl, but I want her gone and out of Reece’s life, and there’s only one way to do that. I look back at him. “Tell me, how does it feel to screw a girl who wants me? Do you know how many times I’ve told her to leave me alone? Nice, right? Think about her begging me when you’re hitting it.”

“You’re a dick!” she yells, yanking up her clothes from the carpet beside the bed and trying to put them on under the sheets.

“Get out of my room!” Reece’s skin is mottled, going from red to white and back again.

“Make me,” I snarl back at him. I’m past the point of caring about our precarious relationship. I’m angry and pissed, and Sugar’s gone, and someone’s going to pay.

His chest heaves as he faces off with me, and I’m ready, my shoulders tense, fists clenched.

“You’re losing it, Z!” he yells. “Pretty soon you won’t have anything left if you keep this up.”

Darkness pulls at me, wanting to wound him and make him feel as low as I do right now. “At least I’ll always be better than you at everything.” He shoves at me with his hands and I stumble back against his dresser. I laugh and turn back to face him. “That’s all you got, little brother?”

His face hardens, but he’s not angry enough. He’s not there yet, and I need him pissed. I need him livid, and I know how to get him going.

I know his little weakness.

I get in his face and push at his chest. “You loved Willow and I always knew. She told me. She laughed about it.”

At first, his mouth opens and he stumbles back, but then he steps forward, his eyes ablaze. “Yeah? So what? I did love her. I loved her more than you did. I was there when you weren’t. I watched her drive away that night.”

Pain and guilt slam into me, and my jaw goes slack at the gaping wound he opens.

Then he hits me square in the face and everything goes black.





35





Sugar





I want to die.

A week goes by in a blur. It feels like the world should stop and wait for me to catch my breath, to wait for this awful emptiness to ease, but it doesn’t. I spend the first two days without him in my bed tossing and turning, angry and pissed off at myself for trusting him. By the time Wednesday hits, I’m curled up with a pillow, trying to smell the remnants of him as I re-watch Game of Thrones and cry. Julia calls Taylor and Poppy, and they come over and beg me to leave the dorm room and go to class. But I can’t. My room is our place. It’s where we made love and laughed. It’s where he gave me the penguin. By Friday, I feel empty, a vast cavern of nothing. My anger is back, battling with the grief, but I don’t have any tears left, and I vow to be better and throw myself into filling out more law school applications. When Monday rolls back around, I resolve to go to class. I tell all my professors I was sick and when they look at my face, they buy it and let it slide.

Another week creeps by. I live at the library, trying to get caught up on my coursework. I eat real food instead of crap and keep my head down as I work at BB’s. Mara keeps asking me what happened and I can’t tell her. She gives up and just sighs whenever she looks in my eyes. I know what she’ll see there: heartbreak.

And through it all?

I haven’t seen or heard from Z.

A whimper wants to rise up inside me, and I push it down.

Which is why when he walks into our poetry class midmorning, I gasp aloud.

I scramble around for my phone and fire off a text to Eric. He’s been checking in on me periodically to see how I am, and while I only send him one-word answers—Fine, Okay—it’s a connection to Z that’s hard to give up.

Why is Z in our poetry class? What happened to therapy?

I see the dots across the screen and I clench the phone, anxiously awaiting a response as he comes to a halt in the doorway, looking for a seat.

He rearranged his schedule. Told me this morning.

Why? He’s still seeing the sports psychologist?

Yes, babe. Maybe he’s there to see you. I don’t know.

Whatever. I hit send and look back up.

Z looks magnificent, his shoulders and body in a tight black shirt, his legs in jeans that cup his ass, his feet in gold Converse. His hair is untamed, his face hard as he steps forward and moves his gaze across the auditorium.

I prepare myself for one of his intense stares.

It doesn’t happen.

His icy grey eyes ghost over the room and I feel the brush as they flicker briefly on my face, but they keep moving, his expression blank.

And just like that, it’s back to the way it used to be: me, invisible to him.

“Dude, Z’s back,” breathes Sorority Girl a few seats away.

“The TA said the professor excused him for hockey stuff, but he’s been doing the work on his own. Maybe he’s back for good,” another girl replies.

Well. She certainly keeps up. My lips tighten.

“I hope this class improves his hockey game,” says a guy a few seats away.

I clench my fists and even though I’m angry and hurt, I can’t let anyone drag Z down. I turn around and scowl.

The guy’s eyes go wide. “If you watch the news then you know he’s losing his shit.”

I flip back around and stare at the professor. There has been rampant speculation about what happened at Concord State but no confirmation, and I’d have to be on another planet to not know that they barely won their last game against Denver.

I have an empty seat next to me, as usual, but Z heads to the front where he used to sit. Of course there’s a girl on each side of him, gushing.

Class gets started but I’m in a daze. I can’t stop staring at the back of his head.