Hail Mary: An Enemies-to-Lovers Roommate Sports Romance(33)

He didn’t know I was that girl he hurt all those years ago, but he damn sure knew that girl was Octostigma.

My stomach soured at the memory.

And yet, the way Leo looked right now…

Who else could he be talking about?

Did he meet someone after me?

And if it was me who made him look like that, that made him feel like that… why?

A thought I’d refused to let myself believe whipped through my head like a rush of wind.

Maybe he really didn’t realize it was you that day.

Maybe…

“Tell me what happened,” I said before thinking better.

I had to know.

Leo frowned, looking up at me before his eyes showed how surprised he was that I actually wanted to know.

For a moment, I thought he was going to tell me.

But then the front door burst open and our roommates stumbled in.

I jumped back, not realizing how close I’d been to Leo until we weren’t alone anymore. Leo didn’t move, his eyes still on me, even when Kyle flopped down backward over the top of the couch and landed between us with a goofy smile.

“Well, if it isn’t the party pooper and our hot new roommate.”

Leo flicked his nose, which made Kyle yelp before he let out another peal of drunken laughter.

“What are you two doing sitting in the dark?” Braden asked, leaning his palms on the back of the couch as he peered over us questioningly. I could tell he was a little buzzed, too, because he smiled wickedly in the next moment. “Or do we wanna know?”

I hadn’t even realized how dark the house was, how we hadn’t moved to turn on any sort of light other than the TV. I didn’t chance a look at Leo before I scoffed and stood up, unfastening my hair from the messy bun I had it tied up in.

“I was just kicking Leo’s ass at Madden,” I said as I pulled my hair up again, desperate to keep my hands busy so no one could see how they were shaking.

Braden and Kyle erupted in a chorus of oooohs. Then, Kyle did a somersault off the couch and grabbed one of the Xbox controllers. “Me next, me next!”

“You want to get your ass handed to you, too?” Braden teased.

“If it’s by her?” Kyle said, his eyes raking over me and fixating on where I knew my nipple piercings were visible under my shirt. “Gladly.”

“You’re a pig,” I said, hitting him upside the head with a pillow. I couldn’t help the smile that curled on my lips, though. “And I have to get ready for work.”

“Boooo, call out of work!” Braden begged, his hands clasped together.

I just ruffled his hair like he was my kid brother. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

“Not fair,” Braden said with a pout, plopping down where I had just been on the couch. “Leo gets to have all the fun.”

The boys keyed up a new game on the screen, the two of them yakking away about some girls they’d apparently been trying to talk to at the bar.

I paused when I was at the bottom of the stairs, everything in me pulling like a magnet toward Leo. I wanted to look back, to confirm what I felt, but I didn’t have to.

Because he hadn’t said a word since they came home.

And I knew without looking that he hadn’t taken his eyes off me, either.

I stood there for a moment, feeling the burn of his gaze on my skin.

Then, I took a breath, lifted my chin, and climbed the stairs without giving myself the satisfaction of proving I was right.





Leo

“Are you sure you don’t want to come home for the holiday?” My mom asked, and even through the phone I swore I could smell the arroz con pollo she was cooking. “It’s been years since we’ve gone down to Harborfest for the fireworks.”

My stomach growled as I threw my duffle bag in the trunk of my car, wrapping up an early morning Pee Wee practice.

“You know I want to, Ma, but we’re having a party at the house.”

“Mm-hmm,” she said, and again, I didn’t have to see her to know the look she was giving me, how one hand would be on her hip, and the other pointing the spatula at my nose. “I know you better behave yourself, mijo.”

“I always do.”

She laughed at that, and the sound made me homesick.

I was young when my parents split, so I didn’t really have a choice on who I would live with. I remembered when I was around nine or ten wishing that it would have been my dad. I wanted to be playing football all the time, wanted to hang out with him in his impressive basement with the pool table and ninety-eight-inch TV and the constant crowd of guys that seemed to always be there hanging out. He shot the shit with Super Bowl-winning athletes like it was no big deal, with a cockiness that said he belonged in that circle even though he never got a ring himself.

I wanted to soak up his energy until that confidence lived in me, too.

But as I grew up, I realized how much my mom did for me, how she was always the parent when Dad was so often the friend. And when I told my dad I wanted to go to NBU, I felt that friendship we had rub raw, saw the disappointment in his eyes, like I’d let him down.

I never had the guts to tell him how many times he’d done the same to me.

He loved me in the ways he knew how. I was old enough to understand that now, to give him grace. He never wanted to be a father, not that young, anyway, and clearly he never wanted to be a husband, either. His dreams were dashed by an injury, a career in pro ball cut short. Fortunately, he had a big enough reputation that he was still able to use that name, to start a training center outside of the city and be invited on as a guest announcer for ESPN and Fox and whoever else. He found a way to still wrap his life around that sport, even when life threw him the hardest curveball it could have.