Page 24

ARES

“ W hat’s with the shitastic mood?” Preston glared at me from across the table, a dinner roll clutched in his hand like he was about to throw it.

Bring it. I wished he would. I was spoiling for a fight.

“Preston James Waters! Language,” Mom snapped then turned her focus on me. “What is going on with you tonight?”

I pushed the half-eaten steak aside, giving up on the farce that I had an appetite. That alone was enough of a tell to my mom. “Nothing. Just a long day.”

“It’s Sunday. You didn’t have school or practice.” Mom deadpanned. “What’s really going on?”

I should have made something up, anything. When Mom leveled that look my way, there was no escaping a full-on interrogation. “Fine.” I gave up before she could pull more information from me than I wanted her to. “I got in a fight with Brielle last night.”

“Brielle who?” Mom asked.

“Um.” I shot a guilty gaze toward Preston before I answered. “Brielle Sinclair.”

Her mouth formed an O before she also glanced at Preston .

“You were a dick, weren’t you?” Preston’s eyes widened. “Wait. Why are you talking to Miss Sinclair outside of school?”

I glared at P, and Mom cracked him on the back of his head.

“I’m not telling you again, young man.”

“Really?” I smirked because I’d been on the receiving end of that head crack more often than not. “You’re giving me an attitude about being rude to her? And I know her from my school.” Easy explanation. He didn’t need to know we were dating—well, sort of.

“Yeah, well, she’s not that bad,” he grumbled.

Mom nodded, and my brows climbed my forehead. “That’s a pretty quick turnaround from the recent torture you’ve been dishing out. What changed your mind about her?”

“She told me about her dad and how everyone knows her dad screwed over his company and her family,” Preston explained. “She’s broke and working her ass off to get her degree so she can help her younger sister through college.”

I didn’t need to peek at Mom to know why she’d let that last swear word slide. Preston was finally seeing beyond his pain to recognize he wasn’t alone. It was a huge step in the right direction.

“And you realized making her life a living nightmare wasn’t the right thing to do?” Mom pressed. At P’s nod, she turned her laser focus to me. “And you. What did you do wrong where Brielle is concerned?”

“I resent that you think I was in the wrong.” I leaned back and crossed my arms over my chest, holding her gaze, trying to throw her off the trail.

She mirrored my pose. “Am I wrong?”

I waited too long to answer, and she frowned.

“You need to fix whatever you did. I met her at the start of Preston’s school year, and I like her.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I know, and I will.” I needed to end the conversation before she figured out we were seeing each other, sort of. Mom narrowed her eyes at me, and I knew without her saying anything that she suspected Brielle and I were more than friends. The truth was, I was falling for her.

But there wasn’t exactly a “we” anyway—since our relationship wasn’t real—so no harm, no foul.

Mom was right, though. I did need to fix things.

The problem was that I had difficulty trusting people, and her frenemies had hit my trigger.

I hated feeling used or as if all a girl could see in me was a meal ticket.

No one wanted me for me, and even worse , it had felt like Brielle was different.

But I wasn’t so sure anymore. Especially knowing she was broke and looking for a way out of the hole.

That reinforced everything her supposed friend had said last night—and was a fact Brielle had conveniently failed to mention herself.

Preston laughed, and Mom rolled her eyes.

“Well,” she said. “It’s good to have friends, and you sorely need a girl’s influence in your life, other than myself.”

“Aurora lives with us.”

“And she’s lovely. But we don’t know where she and Kylian will end up after the draft. Has he heard anything yet?”

“No.”

But he had an idea, and I hoped he was the first-round overall pick for the upcoming draft.

Kylian had financial obligations with his mom’s medical bills.

He’d planned to bail on college junior year, but then he’d gotten injured, and that had killed that plan.

He was a gifted quarterback, and barring any more injuries, he had a promising career ahead.

Besides, he’d bounced back to be an even stronger QB1 after the knife wound last year.

So much so that ESPN was calling him the GOAT.

“Are you staying?” Preston’s voice was reed thin.

Fuck. How to answer that one? I couldn’t. “I don’t know.”

It all depended on the team that picked me—if I was still in the running.

But football was my endgame, so I hoped the heat from the video was forgotten.

School was fine, but I wasn’t interested in anything specific.

My advisor had me taking business and communications classes.

I could always go into sportscasting if something happened, and Liam could do the same.

Out of all of us, he was even less interested in anything outside the NFL, and I suspect he would have gone into the draft last year if all hell hadn’t broken loose with our best friend and his fiancée.

“I don’t want you to move away.”

The vulnerability in my nephew’s voice nearly broke me. “I don’t want to be far from you guys either. I hope to get picked up by a nearby team.”

Mom wrung her hands, her gaze bouncing between Preston and me. “If you transfer to another state, we could move with you. Not in the same house, of course, but in one of our own.”

“Really?” A weight lifted from my shoulders. “Would you be good with that, P?”

“Yes.” He grinned. “I can make friends anywhere, and if I do well on the team here, I’m sure I can get on one in whatever school we move to.”

Mom slapped her hand on the table. “Good. It’s settled. Nothing is holding you back, son. Preston and I will follow you. I can get a job anywhere.”

That wouldn’t be necessary once I played professionally. Mom worked too hard. I wanted her to quit for good. I would buy them a house and give her money so she could concentrate on P and living her life. She deserved a break. Life had been hard enough for all of us with my sister’s passing.