I clench my jaw. My game’s better, but it’s still not where it needs to be when the season’s so close. Conrad has managed to convince the board to let me stay and play a few games before they take matters out of his hands and bench me for the season. And yes, having a surgery will be a wrench in the already fucked up game. I could lose my chance, my captainship, everything I’ve worked for my entire life.Butit doesn’t matter. Because I’ll manage.
“It’ll be fine,” I tell the same to Con.
He leans forward, resting his elbows on his thighs. “So tell me again why is it that you’re so hellbent on getting this procedure when we don’t even know if you absolutely have to yet, before the season you absolutely did not want to miss?”
Anger heats up my blood, but I keep my cool. There’s no reason for me to go off on my big brother when he doesn’t know the whole story and can’t see the entire picture. Because I’m not going to share it with him. I’m not going to share it with any of them. Just the fact that we’re standing here discussing this is making me lose my head a little bit, so there’s no way I will share anything else with them. Because it’s mine.
Thissituationis mine.
Sheis mine.
She may be Callie’s best friend and Callie may have brought her around initially, butIfound her first. In all the ways that count,Isaw her first. Despite her penchant for hiding and standing off to one side, looking like an outsider, wanting to belong—and now I know why—Iwas the one to notice her first. Not to mention, I was the first to know her secret.
So yeah, mine.
Nottheirslike Conrad said back there. And fuck me but I didn’t like that either, him calling her that. I’m still fucking pissed about it. And this is pissing me off even more, themasking questions and interfering in what’s supposed to be my business.
“Things change,” I finally tell him.
“What things?”
“Important things. Things that have nothing to do with you.”
Unlike a lot of guys out there, I never really thought about being a girl’s first. In fact, I always thought it would be too much work. Too much responsibility. Too much fucking hassle I didn’t need. But I was wrong. I do want to be someone’s first. I want to beherfirst.
Her first kiss. Her first touch. First to teach her things, show how it is between two people, as obsessed as we are with each other. First to make her dance in my lap, to sneak into her room through her window. First to watch her sleep. First to take away all her burdens, to solve her problems. First to keep hersafe.
I feel safe with you…
Because I’m also the first one to break her heart. To ruin it, wreck it into pieces. And all because I couldn’t get over my goddamn anger. I couldn’t get over my rage after that phone call. The betrayal. It felt like a stab in the back.
There were a million scenarios running through my head about why my pissant of a father would be calling her. Until I contacted one of my high school friends who owns a security company, Ark Reinhardt, and asked him to look into her background, and found out the real situation, something I never could’ve expected in a million fucking years. Never in a million years could I have expected that her mother is married to my father. That she’s connected to me. Connected to me in a way that’s out of my control. That wasputout of my control years and years back.
And that pissed me off so much, this betrayal, this unwanted connection with her until I couldn’t see straight. And all Iwanted to do was hurt her back. Hurt her like she’d hurtmeby lying to me, keeping things from me.
Not once did I stop to think about her side of things. That so much was out of her control too. Or that if he was an asshole father, it stands to reason he’d make an asshole stepfather too. And maybe, justmaybe, she’d been living through what we lived through. I knew our situations were similar, but I didn’t know how much. And when I found out, instead of being her safe harbor like she said I was, I broke her heart. I wrecked her body.
Not her spirit though.
Thank fucking God or I don’t know what I would’ve done except break the world, break the sky, killed everyone, ruined myself to get it back. But she’s brave. She’s strong. She’s fucking magnificent and as soon as I saw her sitting on that couch, spilling her story, telling us about Snow, I knew. I knew there’s no one else like her.
“Do you have any other plans then?” Conrad asks, breaking into my thoughts.
“What?”
He keeps watching me. “Since you’ve thought about the surgery, I’m sure you’ve thought about other things too.”
I don’t generally care for sharing my plans but I’m going to need their help with this so I might as well tell them. “Her apartment is a dump.”
Conrad frowns. “A dump.”
“It’s in bad part of town.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“She’ll live here,” I declare.
“Here. In this house?”
