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I glance up at him, my heart warming. A smile forms when he holds my stare. One second. Two. “Ilovedwatching him play,” I tell him, my throat aching with emotion. Five months. Five entire months since I watched my brother collapse on the court and never get up again. “It wasn’t supposed to happen so soon,” I mumble. “The doctors—they said he had time. As long as he limited the number of minutes he played, he could get through high school and then…” I’m rambling, going around in circles with no proper sense to my words, but I’ve never spoken about this. Not out loud. I tried once—with my mom—but she didn’t want to hear me. It was my pain too. My hurt. “It was a routine medical check during one of those training camps… the diagnosis came out of nowhere… the heart disease… it’s genetic. Fifty-fifty chance of having it. It was him or me…” I suck in a breath, hold it in my lungs until the weight of my guilt burns a hole in my chest. I think back to that moment. To the collective gasp from the crowd in that arena and the way his team surrounded him while the medical staff worked on him. I remember my parents on the floor, my mom crying while my dad held her in his arms. I remember watching it from the stands, unable to move. Unable to think. Unable to breathe. And I remember the moments after… when no one was around to hear my cries, see my tears, or witness the ache in my chest that later formed the scars on my flesh.
I’m so deep in my heartache that I don’t even realize Jace has reared back, just so he can hold my face in his hands, wipe my tears with his thumbs, and then kiss me. It’s not a passionate kiss or even a lingering one, but it’s his lips on mine, soft and gentle and caring, and then he’s pulling away, releasing me, and I’m blinking, blinking, trying to get back to reality. “That was better than the first time,” he murmurs, looking away completely.
“Right.” Because none of this is real. Especially the connection I thought we were having. Still, I’m not ready to let go of my brother’s memory, and if Jace wants to use this time to practice “fake-dating,” then I get to use him too. I clear the knot in my throat and ask, “Would you have done it? Played knowing it could kill you?”
Jace is silent a beat before he answers, “I’m the wrong person to ask if you’re looking for a comparison.”
“Why?” I face him. “You’re on the same path as he was, right? You said it yourself. Division I school, then the pros? That was his future too.”
After a heavy sigh, he kicks his legs out in front of him and says, “If you’re asking me if I’d be happy to die doing something I love, then the answer is yes. I would’ve played until I couldn’t anymore.”
“Doyou love it?” I ask, and this should feel strange, right? Sitting in the darkness with a boy I’ve barely said two words to, discussing things I’ve kept locked up for months? It’s not as if I didn’t want to talk about it or that I couldn’t… I just didn’t have anyone willing to listen.
Until Jace.
“Sure, but for different reasons.”
I watch him, waiting for him to elaborate. He doesn’t. Instead, he looks sideways at me, and I return one of his world-famous glares. I’m rewarded with half a smile and the answer I was after. “I watched a few of his games after I found out who he was to you,” he says. “Your brother loved the game, Harlow. Anyone who watched him play could see that. He loved putting on that jersey and representing something bigger and better than himself. And he loved the feeling he got when he was on that court, shredding maple in front of hundreds, sometimes thousands of fans. There was nothing in this world that could’ve replaced that feeling for him, and I know he knew that because I feel it too.”
I replay his words over in my mind, again and again, and I realize that not once since Harley’s diagnosis had I ever thought about whathewanted. Sure, I felt bad for the future he had lost, but I always assumed he was grateful to ever find out. Grateful that he could live a longer life, even if the path took him in a different direction. He could still fall in love and get married and have kids and love those kids the way he was loved. I guess I never thought that for Harley… love meant basketball.
“You say you forever lived in his shadow…” Jace says, and it’s not a question, so I don’t respond. “But maybe he wanted you to see his shadow… so that you’d always remember there’s light.”
It’s hard to see through the tears, to breathe through the heartache. Jace holds my face in his hands again, his thumbs working overtime to clear my tears, my anguish.
For months I’ve searched and searched, and I didn’t even know what I was looking for, but I do now.
I needed closure.
I needed answers.
I needed Jace.
I grasp his wrists, holding him to me before I kiss him.
Once.
Twice.
The taste of my tears merge with the scent of his lips when I kiss him again.
His grip tightens as he tilts his head, running his tongue along the seam of my lips, begging for entry, and I give in to his needs. To mine.
Before I’m ready, he pulls away, struggling for air, and asks, “Are we still faking it?”
My lips a whisper from his, I shake my head.
Hesmiles.
And it’s in this moment that I fall.
Hard.
Deep.
In the company of darkness, Jace Rivera becomes my light.
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