Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 131821 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 659(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131821 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 659(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
There may as well be a megaphone pressed to my ears, screaming out all the ways I’ve fucked up, but the fucked-up part about it?
I have no idea what those things are. There has to be more than I realize, right? For her to pull away after everything. For the ache that enters her eyes when she pretends not to watch me with Deaton. There was always that sliver of inner pain there. It’s the same tangled expression that would enter my father’s eyes when he’d watch me and my sister do something he and his sister did as kids before she passed, but inner pain or not, Payton never pushed.
In fact, she did the opposite. She kept me close, called first, and hung up last.
She’d run to me and jump into my arms when I’d sneak a short visit I didn’t tell the others about. Now she hears me coming and off she goes, a sudden appointment or event or urge for a coffee she can’t make herself.
But why?
What happened?
Where did I fuck up, because I must have, right?
Or maybe she can see through me and knows I’m not as confident as I like to make people think. That I do feel fear and I do have insecurities.
It just so happens my biggest one might be the very reason things have veered so far off course I’m running circles around my damn self.
Maybe I’m not enough, or maybe I’m simply not needed.
Why would I be?
What do I truly have to offer her?
I’m not even fucking there. I’m stuck three hours away for the next two years, and that’s if I go to the draft after my junior season. And if I do get drafted, I’ll be off to who the fuck knows where after that, but the odds say it will be farther. Somewhere I can’t hop in my truck for a quick visit.
The best I’ll be able to do is see their faces over video, but who’s to say I’ll even be given that?
The girl won’t even take my damn calls anymore.
So yeah, maybe it’s not that I’m not enough or needed but not worth the trouble at all.
Pushing the heels of my palms into my eyes, I growl in frustration, shoes pounding heavily against the concrete until I’m breaking out into a full sprint, tearing down the long hall, and shoving through the metal door at the end until I’m stumbling through, out onto the open field.
I gasp, hands falling to my knees as my lungs threaten to seize.
Behind me, the door slams against the wall with a resounding ricochet, and my eyes snap to the field just as the figure in the center of it comes into view, whipping around and glaring this way.
My brows snap together, and my spine shoots straight.
Alister fucking Howl stands at the fifty-yard line, a bag of balls at his feet and half a dozen spread out on the field. He stares for a long moment, then pretends I’m not even here, spinning back around and firing a bullet toward the end zone. It’s fast, straight, and a perfect spiral, not unlike a pass I’m known to make.
I was out getting drunk and acting like the sentimental prick I am and punching my best friend in the face for buying a soda, and this guy’s here on his days off, working on his game.
Anxiety falls over me like a tsunami, preventing me from breathing and sending panic through my every pore. My eyes fall to my hand, the knuckles swollen and bruised, an ache that burns all too familiar.
You’re fine. Everything is fine.
I step farther into the afternoon sun that’s scarcely peeking out between a layer of clouds, and I keep moving until I’ve reached the sideline benches. I don’t look his way, but I can’t help but watch his every pass thrown from the corner of my eye as I stretch.
A few minutes go by before he’s stalking closer.
I wait until he’s nearly reached his bag, sitting on the ground four feet from me, before I take off around the track. At some point, Alister packs up his shit and disappears, and I keep running.
I run until my legs begin to shake and my lungs start to shrivel, and then I push beyond the burn. My speed increases, my arms pumping wildly as I round the track for what must be my ninth mile. I’ve run farther distances, but that was when I kept a steady pace, so when my body starts to rebel, I have no choice but to listen.
My legs give, my knees buckling, and I just manage to veer to the left, falling onto the grass.
My stomach muscles convulse, and I start puking, nothing but vanilla protein shake and stomach acids. Maybe a little beer.
I heave and heave, my vision spinning and calves burning as I throw myself onto my back, fighting for air my lungs refuse to give. Lying there, I stare up at the cloudy sky and out at the empty stadium seats.