Page 69 of Touchdown, Tennessee

But this time, there wasn’t venom in his voice at all.

He liked this just as much as I did.

I felt for the bulge under his shorts and gave it one quick squeeze.

And then I pulled back.

Taking it all away, and leaving him standing there with slick lips and half-lidded eyes.

God, I have never wanted to fuck someone more.

“I meant what I said,” I told him, swallowing hard. “I can’t afford to write bullshit puff pieces for the paper. I have nothing else in life. You have everything handed to you. Money. Athletics. Popularity. I was tossed aside like a piece of trash formy entire life, and everything I have is because I clawed for it, and I’m still clawing for it?—”

“I wasn’t handed everything, Gray.”

“You will never understand,” I told him.

“That isn’t fucking true,” he roared. “What wouldn’t I understand?”

Something snapped in me.

The words started to spill out.

Not because I was drunk, but because Andrew waspushingme.

Pushing me with his words.

His attention.

His fucking eyes.

“You’ll never understand what it was like. Going home after school when you’re only ten and not knowing if your mom will be home,” I said. “Waking up cold on winter mornings, not knowing how much longer it’ll be before she can steal enough money to put the heat back on.”

His brow furrowed.

Every bit of malice dropped from his face.

Yeah.

This is why I don’t tell people about my childhood, Peachel. Poor little Gray Gilman, and the world he grew up in.

“Gray,” he said softly.

“Being forgotten in bars,” I continued, my chest tightening as I spoke. “Or your mom telling you that you couldn’t come home unless you used those little fingers to sneak as much cash as you could from every purse in a restaurant. Sometimes I watched my mom get hurt. Other times, I watched her hurt other people. She only had enough guts to fight otherwomen, but she’d pull switchblades on them every time she felt like she probably wouldn’t get caught.”

“Christ, that’s enough,” Andrew said.

All at once he moved forward, and for a split second I thought he was going to try to fight. I juked to the right, trying to dodge.

And only when I stepped on the knot in the tree trunk did I realize that Andrew had been going in for ahug.

For fuck’s sake.

I’d already lost my balance.

I lurched forward, tripping and landing in the thicket of shrubs behind the tree.

Shrubs with fat thorns, apparently.