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Even when she promised she wouldn’t.
My heart clenches in my chest as a rip tears down the middle. I’m hollow. Too empty to lash out. Or cry. There’s just nothing…
The thrumming of my heart is panic-induced. It beats so fast I gulp in air.
It’s as if a typhoon’s washed everything away right from under my feet. An hour ago, I had the world.
Now, it’s empty.
This is just what happens to me. I love someone so much, but that person doesn’t care.
My hands shake. This cruel reality hits like a lineman souped-up on steroids. This is how people act around me. All the accolades in football won’t help. They don’t matter. Not when things like this go down.
I put the car in Drive, tossing my phone onto the passenger seat. I can’t sit here and watch this any longer. Just as I’m about to drive away, my car door yanks open, and a body lands on my lap. “I’m here. I’m here.”
Arms move around me, holding me so tight. It takes a moment to realize it’s Bailey. The scent of her perfume surrounds us, and her sweet voice is like the purest caress. I shove the car back into Park. “Bails?” I almost can’t believe it.
She cups my cheeks like I always do to her and gives me a hard stare. “I didn’t want to write that.”
“What?” I can barely make my mind catch up. Swimming out of black nothingness is hard. It clings like tar.
Tears track down her cheeks while she looks at me. “Oh, Aidan. I’m so sorry. I jumped out of Mom’s car at a stop sign. I ran here. I knew you’d come looking.”
“You…” I swallow. “You didn’t leave me?”
Her shoulders deflate. “I’m never fucking leaving you. You hear me? For as long as you want me, I’m never leaving you.”
Brick by brick, her words build stairs in my mind. Stairs out of the empty dark. I trudge and trudge, fighting my way until I can see more clearly. “Your mom lied?”
She straddles my hips, shaking her head. “She doesn’t get it, Aidan. She doesn’t get that I’d do anything for you.”
“So you were never going to go?”
She laughs. “Did you hit your head, stud? I told you yesterday, I’m in love with you.”
I drop my head to her chest, pulling her close. I breathe her in, my viselike grip not letting up. Those few minutes felt like hours. Felt like years. “My brain likes to lie to me.”
“We can rewire it together,” she says. “You’re too pretty to be dumb.”
I laugh, the tears that had started to form leaking over now. She kisses them away, and even though I try to fight it—I’m the man, right? I’m supposed to comfort her?—she won’t have it. She stays where she is, telling me everything is going to be okay.
Behind her, her whole world is being taken away, yet she’s worried about me. “You and me,” she promises.
After a few moments, she sighs. “I think I learned a very valuable lesson.”
“What’s that?” I croak out.
“Family doesn’t have to be blood. It’s like you with your teammates and your adoptive parents. Sometimes the people you’ll give up everything for aren’t even related.”
She couldn’t be more right. Love is when you fight for someone, and my parents have been fighting for me all along. They fought to get me. They fought to keep me happy. My brain doesn’t make it easy to let them in, but I can work on that. “You forgot one person,” I tell her as that realization sinks in.
“I was implied,” she teases. “I jumped out of a moving vehicle for you. I ran Lord knows how many miles in these stupid boat shoes. Remind me to buy sneakers, by the way.”
“The car was moving?”
She brings up her hand, pushing her thumb and pointer finger together. “A little, but if I told you it was crawling, it sounds less heroic.”
“I’ll remind you about the sneakers if you remind me to tell my parents I’m sorry.”