Total pages in book: 185
Estimated words: 191421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 957(@200wpm)___ 766(@250wpm)___ 638(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 191421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 957(@200wpm)___ 766(@250wpm)___ 638(@300wpm)
I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember anything from the past.
All I want to do is move on, move forward.
So I focus on that.
On Lucas.
“Why,” I breathe deep and close my eyes for a second, “is Lucas drunk and stoned out of his mind?”
His best friend’s answer is silence.
And a belligerent stare.
But I refuse to back down. “Why doesn’t he know up from down? What does that mean?” Again he gives me nothing, and despite my better judgement, I stretch my neck, my body even further and get up in his face. “Is that why he was kissing those girls and putting on that disgusting show? Tell me. Tell me what you meant. Why’s Lucas like that? What’s going on? What —”
“What’s going on,” he speaks in a biting tone, “is that that’s what Lucas does now.”
“What?”
“He drinks. He smokes. He pops pills and he fucks.” A pulse has started up on his cheek now. “Whoever he wants. Wherever he wants.”
“But that’s… That’s not how he is. That’s…”
“As I said, that’s how he is now. Self-destructive. He parties all night and doesn’t care about much else.”
“He cares about soccer,” I blurt out.
He does.
He’s always cared about it.
About getting picked in the drafts, going pro.
About me following him wherever he goes to play.
It would actually make me feel slightly uncomfortable talking about it. Because I always wanted to end up at NYU and study creative writing, and Lucas knew that. But he’d always tell me that that you could study creative writing anywhere and us staying together was more important. And since it wasn’t something super urgent, I’d simply choose not to argue.
That’s not the point though.
The point is that Lucas has soccer and he loves it. And he won’t do anything to risk his chances of getting picked this coming January and going pro.
“Well, if he keeps on this path, there’s not going to be much left to care about.”
“But that’s… He wouldn’t…” I have to pause, will my heart to stop beating so loudly so I can at least hear my own words. “Why? I don’t… I’m…”
“Why do you think?” he tells me, his eyes intense and penetrating.
For a few seconds, I refuse to believe it.
I refuse to hear what he’s telling me. I tell myself that he’s lying.
That this isn’t true.
It can’t be.
Soccer is Lucas’s life. Soccer is everything to him.
But then I was too, wasn’t I?
He’d tell me that. He’d show me that.
He showed it to me on that night too. On my sixteenth birthday.
When I broke his heart.
I betrayed his trust. I hurt him in the worst way possible.
With his best friend.
His best. Friend.
With heaving breaths, I look at him. I look at his arched cheekbones, his arrogant brows. His heated eyes, his plush mouth.
That bruise on his jaw.
And I want to…
I want to bite it. I want to scratch it, scratch his ever beautiful and ever sexy face.
I want to pull at his dark, spiky hair. Punch his wildly breathing chest.
“Why aren’t you doing something then?” I voice my question but I don’t give him a chance to answer. “Why aren’t you stopping him? Why didn’t you stop him before he got drunk and stoned out of his mind? What are you doing here with me? Why aren’t you out there, looking out for him?”
“I’m —”
“You’re supposed to be his best friend,” I almost scream, going up on my tiptoes. “You’re supposed to look out for him. You’re supposed to make sure that he’s okay. You’re supposed to —”
Suddenly, all my words die.
They dissolve in my throat. They turn to ash.
As I feel a searing rush of heat flowing through my veins.
And I realize it’s because he’s touching me.
Gripping me.
My wrist.
His long, dusky fingers are wrapped around my pale skin and as jarring as the contrast is, as jarring as the burn of his skin on my skin is, it’s even breathtaking that I’m touching him too.
That I was the one who started it.
By putting my hands on his wide chest.
I don’t know when I did that.
I don’t know when my hands shot up and went to him and when my fingers fisted his t-shirt. And in a tight grip too because my knuckles are white and my nails are digging into my palms.
“I’m not,” he rumbles.
And it’s so low and thick that his chest vibrates.
Even the ground shakes beneath my feet, or at least it feels like it.
“What?” I whisper.
His fingers tighten around my wrist. “His best friend.”
I suck in a breath.
“I’m not even his friend.”
“I-I don’t understand.”
Those burning eyes of his narrow and his grip goes from tight to almost painful. “You didn’t think that you were the only one, did you?”
“Y-you…”
“That you were the only fucking one who made the biggest mistake of their life that night. You didn’t think,” he growls, “that you’re the only one fucking paying for it.”