Hail Mary: An Enemies-to-Lovers Roommate Sports Romance(25)

I narrowed my eyes at the screen. “Where are you?”

Julep looked around her before sitting back with a sigh. “Waiting outside a nursery while Holden decides which seventeen plant babies he’s going to bring home with us. I told him he had to narrow it down from thirty.”

I cracked a smile. “He’s having a heyday now that he’s in warmer climate, isn’t he?”

“You would not believe the amount of squash and watermelon we have in our backyard.”

“Tell him his peonies are still thriving at The Pit.”

“This far into June? He’ll be tickled pink.” She raised a brow. “Speaking of which, how’s that been going? It’s been a couple weeks now since you moved in, right?”

“Tomorrow makes two,” I said, leaning against the brick wall of the building. “And surprisingly… it hasn’t been too bad, yet. I feel like the guys have been on their best behavior, roommate wise. They’re not as gross as I suspected.”

“Color me surprised.” She paused, seemingly weighing her next question. “Has Leo left you alone?”

I snorted. “I don’t think he’s capable of such restraint.”

“You never told me why you hate him so much.”

I shifted, cracking my neck. “For the same reason I hate all football players. They’re cocky playboys with an attitude like they own everything. It’s infuriating.”

“Yeah, but you don’t act the same way toward Holden, or Zeke, or Clay, or even Kyle.”

Suddenly, my mouth was dry again. “He just… dated a friend of mine and broke her heart,” I lied. “But it’s fine, she’s moved on and Leo has been tolerable.” I paused. “I would like it if they’d wear more clothes around the house, though. I swear to God, Julep, I’ve never seen so many naked muscles in my life.”

She barked out a laugh at that. “Hey, gives you an excuse not to wear pants. If they’re comfortable naked, why shouldn’t you be?”

Before I could answer, her eyes shifted to somewhere behind her phone and she lit up with a smile. “Gotta go,” she said as she stood, shaking her head. “He’s got two carts full. Two carts, Mary.”

“Good luck with that.”

“And good luck with your skin,” she said with a little squeal. “Take pictures!”

Julep blew me a kiss through the screen before the call ended, and I smirked, tucking my phone into my back pocket before making my way inside the shop.

My stomach was a little uneasy from the lie I so easily gave one of my only friends, but it twisted even more at the thought of telling her the truth. I wasn’t sure if it was because I felt pathetic for still holding a grudge all these years later, or because it would hurt to relive the pain out loud. It was enough to see him day in and day out and know that, even with me living in his house, he didn’t recognize me. But to speak the words into the universe, to admit to someone what happened?

It made me sick to even consider.

For a second, I let myself wonder what would happen if I told him, if I waited for him to give me some smart-ass remark about what a great, humble guy he was and then threw his cruelty right back in his face. Would he wave it off with a laugh? Call me sensitive and a weirdo for even remembering it? Would he call me out for not telling him? Call me a creep?

Would he be sorry?

I laughed out loud at that thought because I knew with full certainty that he didn’t even remember what he’d done to me, it had been that insignificant in his life.

I had been that insignificant.

With another drop of my stomach, I swallowed, shaking the thoughts away just as the front door opened, our little shop bell ringing.

Nero caught my gaze with a smile. “Bet that’s your skin.”

And for the rest of the night, excitement and nerves were the only thing I felt, Leo completely out of my mind.



I woke the next morning at an ungodly hour.

Okay, it was nine — but after having my first skin and being at the shop until after two, it was an ungodly hour for me.

Still, I was somehow unusually awake as I threw the covers off, the energy from last night still buzzing through me. The client had been an absolute sweetheart. Not only did she hug me when we met as if we’d been friends since middle school and she hadn’t seen me in years, but she’d quite literally jumped for joy when I showed her my amendments to her design. And suddenly, I wasn’t just doing a tattoo that had been done a hundred times on a hundred different people.

I was leaving a piece of me, of my art, on someone else.

It was her first tattoo, but she handled it like a champ, and she was encouraging me the entire time rather than me having to do much comforting her. In the end, she cried not from pain, but from how much she loved the little piece on her forearm, and I saw the way Nero crooked a smile at me when the girl wrapped me in another fierce hug.

I’d done it.

I’d tattooed my first client and I couldn’t have asked for it to go better than it had.

When I ambled into my en-suite bathroom, I chuckled a little at my reflection. My hair was a matted mess, eyes dark from where I hadn’t been successful in taking all my makeup off last night. Still, I looked happy in my chaotic, sleep-deprived state, and I gave myself nothing more but a quick sweep of a hairbrush through my locks and a cold splash of water to the face before I was ready to venture downstairs for some coffee.