Page 47 of Lovesick (The Minnesota Mustangs #1)

LOVING YOU SOFTLY WAS NEVER AN OPTION

MERIT

N obody warned me that working with hockey players is like trying to herd a group of misbehaving toddlers.

The marketing class has divvied up jobs, including everything from setting up bidder registration, compiling a basket of hockey-themed goods to give away, designing promotional graphics to advertise the auction, and preparing the pavilion for the event.

Whereas Irelyn, I, and a few select others are overseeing a practice run-through with the players.

“Places, people! We only have this space for an hour!” I shout, clutching my very professional clipboard to my chest and truly stepping into the role I was made for—bossing people around.

The Mustangs are all lined up on an elevated catwalk, talking amongst themselves about the upcoming game this weekend.

This will hopefully be a good distraction from the fact that I haven’t told my dad about Crew yet.

I’m glad my mom and I are on the same page.

I don’t know what I’d do without her support.

I glance down at the list of names in order by jersey number. “Knox Mulligan, please walk to the edge of the catwalk,” I announce.

Nothing. No movement. The line-turned-clump of hockey players are too enthralled in their own side conversations to pay any attention to me. Their voices are raucous, superimposed, resounding off the fieldstone walls.

I clear my throat, trying not to let my impatience shine through. “Knox? Can you step forward?”

It’s like I’m not even here. We’ve only just started, and we have a lot of players to get through. If this is the pace we move at, we won’t be anywhere near ready for the real thing. And I refuse to be a part of another school-wide disaster that’ll eventually go viral.

When I’m about to raise my voice, a louder one intercepts my feeble attempt, stealing their attention—the absolute apotheosis of frustration.

“Hey, asshats! There’s a lovely woman trying to talk to you, and if you don’t start listening to every word she says, you’re all going to be doing lightning drills across the ice until someone pukes.”

I’d know that voice anywhere. Easy on the ears, a dulcet tone dipped in fine granules of sugar that tickles the folds of my brain.

Crew, who towers over a majority of his teammates, seems to be the only one keeping the integrity of the initial line, standing with his arms crossed over his chest. The guys go dead silent, and one poor dude even apologizes.

I’d be lying if I said that my heart wasn’t chugging like crazy in my chest—I’d also be lying if I said that I wasn’t totally turned on by Crew’s authority.

The coiffed-haired delinquent whom I’m assuming is Knox saunters down the runway, exuding an arrogance that’s even more insufferable than Crew’s, and that’s saying something. He has an award-winning grin that’s going to rake in some high offers.

“Okay, you’re going to stand on the X and pose while the audience is bidding,” I instruct, gesturing to the giant tape monstrosity at the end of the catwalk.

Knox steps on the mark, then immediately sticks his tongue out.

I grimace. “That’s…nice.”

After we cycle through a few more players, Irelyn decides to take over while I check in with the other departments. Mostly because she still has the patience.

As I’m surveying our inventory for the giveaway, I feel a body come up behind me, displacing the air. I turn around to find Crew with his hands in his pockets.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi.”

God, I wish we could display our affection in public. All I want to do is melt into his embrace like a fly caught in the chiffon web of a spider.

He cudgels any pleasantries, a frown christening his lips. “Um, your dad didn’t act any differently when I was at practice today. He didn’t even bring me into his office to confront me about my relationship with you.”

Shit. I should’ve told him that I haven’t talked to my dad yet.

His presence is usually cathartic, but guilt still puppets me like I’m a marionette on broken strings. At this point, my dad isn’t the only one I’m lying to. I’m lying to Crew with all my empty promises, and if I were him, I’d stop giving out second chances.

“About that—I spoke to my mom first to get some insight. I haven’t found the right time to confront my dad.”

An incensed growl curdles in his throat. “Right.”

“I’m so sorry,” I apologize, a glut of emotions swarming me like hornets when one of their nestmates dies, and my stomach cramps with this primal urge to jettison the stupid facade I’ve put on for everyone around me.

“There’s always an excuse with you, Merit. I appreciate you coming clean to your mom, but your dad deserves to know too. You keep avoiding the truth.”

“That’s not my intention at all. I just wanted my mom to soften the blow before I spoke to him. My dad isn’t a forgiving man. I don’t want to be the one responsible for destroying your relationship with him. I’m not worth all this trouble.”

“That’s not your decision to make,” he snaps, the look in his eyes harrowing enough to make tears pebble on my lower lash lines.

A migraine badgers the inside of my skull, and nausea puts my brain through the ringer. I don’t even register that we’re having a very public fight right now. “You don’t understand, I?—”

Crew’s body eclipses mine—anger metastasizing inside him like a cancer—and he bares his teeth at me.

His hands clench into fists as the muscles in his arms flicker.

“No, you don’t understand. You don’t understand how much this hurts me.

Would you rather us just go back to being friends? To spare you from all ‘this trouble’?”

I want to reach out and touch him; I want to reassure him. But I can’t do any of those things because I forfeited my rights the minute I delayed talking to my father. I unknowingly made a choice then and there to keep the peace instead of pursuing a relationship with Crew.

“Of course not! I want you, Crew.”

My heart is doing a quickstep in my chest, my temples are scorching, and I can’t tell if my shortsightedness is because I’m utterly exhausted or I’m borderline infuriated. I don’t want my tears to show, but the rusty faucet behind my eyes is already turning .

“You sure have a weird way of showing it,” he states apathetically.

Before I can correct him, Irelyn shoves her way into our conversation, shaking a camera in her hand. “Merit, we need to get headshots for the catalog.”

“Wait, but…” I flounder.

Crew doesn’t stick around to listen to another one of my pathetic excuses. He just walks out of the pavilion without another word. Before headshots. Before his individual practice run. It’s like being near me was too much for him to handle.

Professionalism, Merit. You have a job to do, remember? You can’t break down right now. The auction is going to go on whether you and Crew are a couple or not. You made a commitment to the marketing class.

I shake my head, blinking back a torrent of tears. It feels like someone’s pressing on my emotional gas pedal and brakes at the same time, and all that excessive friction is going to overheat the transmitter.

“Right. Um, do you want to do it now? I thought we were photographing them in their game day formal suits?”

“I’m fine with whatever. Marley just suggested that we do it now so we don’t have to arrange another meeting. Marching band is really stingy about giving up the pavilion.”

“Do the players even have their suits with them?” I ask.

As if on cue, Harlan bursts through the double doors, panting as he carries a stack of neatly pressed garments in his arms. He almost disappears behind the leaning tower of menswear.

Confusion crosses my face. “Did you run all the way here from the locker room?”

Harlan sets the twenty-five suits down—somehow without dropping any of them—and brushes the back of his hand across his forehead. “Yeah, Irelyn needed them,” he answers, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world .

That’s quite an act of service. Some might even say a… romantic …act of service.

I balk. “That’s a ten-minute walk.” And there’s over fifty pounds weighing him down.

Harlan points finger guns at me. “Five if you run.”

“Thanks, Har,” Irelyn says, her sweet, Minnesotan accent sprinkled with the right amount of concupiscence, and she even tops it off by batting her eyelashes at him.

Poor Harlan practically enters rigor mortis. He looks like he’s about to tip over like one of those fainting goats that get scared by their own shadow. I didn’t realize the two of them were so friendly.

Fuck, I don’t think I can do this right now. It feels like everyone’s looking at me. Did they all just watch Crew walk out of here? I’m not in the right headspace to help pose the hockey team.

Anxiety revolves in my cotton-insulated skull—splitting my focus between two different points—and I start to feel a febrile heat blight my overstimulated body.

It hurts to breathe. My heart thumps against my chest like the capering of hooves against a well-trodden path.

Muscles tensing, the pain that overcomes me is the equivalent of someone taking a still-hot fireplace poker to my limbs.

I’m losing Crew—if I haven’t already lost him.

I hurt him. I keep hurting him. He’s tried so hard to move on from his past trauma, and I remind him of it every time I screw him over like one of his shithead exes.

I’m no better than them, am I? It doesn’t matter if our intentions are different, the outcome is still exactly the same—him questioning his worth.

I can tell Crew he’s good enough a million times over, but he won’t believe me until I take action.

My eyes summon a baptism of tears, and if I don’t get the hell out of here soon, the whole hockey team and marketing class are going to watch a grown woman lose her marbles .

Irelyn fidgets with the settings on her camera. Some of the suit-clad players begin to roll out for their headshots.

“I’m sorry, I just—I need a minute,” I whisper under my breath, excusing myself to the conveniently placed janitor’s closet toward the far end of the room.

Panic champions inside me, coercing my legs to move at a speed I didn’t even know was possible. The minute I seek shelter, I slam the door shut, yank on the pull switch to turn on the light, and suffer through a tsunami of tears.

Sobs punch from my throat as I take a seat on an overturned mop bucket, using my forearms to erase the briny evidence.

I’ve done it. I’ve finally hit rock bottom.

I’m crying my eyes out in a crusty, dusty walk-in closet, surrounded by all-purpose cleaner and possibly asbestos.

I plant my face into my palms, trying to muffle the sniffles.

“Love?” Irelyn pipes up from behind the door, slowly inching it open.

“Go away,” I mumble.

She slips into the closet, airing out a cyclone of dust with a flap of her hand, her auburn curls jouncing with every turn of her head.

Sympathy charts the expanse of her features as she daintily maneuvers her way around cleaning carts and garbage bins.

“No can do. Not when my best friend is in crisis.”

She crouches down to stare into my eyes. “What’s going on, Mer?”

Regret wraps its ice-cold hands around my trachea. “Crew hates me,” I hiccup, my tear ducts becoming trigger-happy as they pump out wave after makeup-ruining wave. Each breath I take crushes my lungs, and dizziness bats my brain around like a cat playing with a ball of yarn.

Irelyn’s hands rub the length of my arms in a gesture that should mollify me but only seems to tamper my disquietude. “He doesn’t hate you.”

I can barely see her through my gauzy vision.

“Yes, he does. I keep getting his hopes up about cementing our relationship, only to ultimately disappoint him in the end. He deserves so much better. I don’t even know why he’s still trying to make things work with me.

He’d be so much happier if I wasn’t in his life. ”

A frown crooks down the corners of her coral-pink lips. “Don’t say that. You know that’s not true.”

My horrific epiphany begets a symphony of incoherent warbles. “He’s never going to forgive me. I don’t deserve it. I’ve done so much irreversible damage, you know?”

“Are you in love with him?” she asks, redirecting my self-destructive cycle.

Am I in love with him?

For someone who’s been lost her whole life, I’ve never been more certain about anything before.

I love the person I am when I’m with him—the person he’s helped me become.

He’s shown me kindness when I was the least deserving of it.

Love seems like such a flimsy word to express the utter gratitude I have for him.

“Of course I am,” I respond, pole-vaulting over shaky syllables.

Wow. Did I really just say that out loud? I’ve practically hurled the truth into the ozone with absolutely no drawbacks. My feelings have never been in bloom before. I don’t know how to handle this.

She goes in for a bear hug, squishing me with her arms and shaking me from side to side with the ferocity of a rottweiler.

“I knew Crew was your person. The way you’re with him—he brings out this side of you that’s been dormant for so long.

You can’t give up on that. Things are going to be tough sometimes, but if you really love him, navigating those obstacles together is what’s going to make you both stronger. ”

My tremulous heart is overindulged with love, and warmth is quick to fill every nook and cranny of my body, dousing my insides in liquid gold. Sparkling. Invigorating. Ochre light splitting open the heavens and offering me a happily ever after that was never promised for a sick kid like me.

“What if it’s too late to tell him? Maybe he doesn’t feel the same way.”

“Oh, love. If the way he looks at you is any indication, you’re going to be stuck with that boy for the rest of your life.”

Is Irelyn right? Could Crew love me too?

Come on, Merit. Would a boy who likes you wash the vomit out of your hair? Would a boy who likes you scale the side of your house just to talk to you? Would a boy who likes you put his whole career on the line so he could be with you?

Oh my God. I need to talk to Crew before it’s too late.