Quarterback Sneak (Red Zone Rivals #3)(19)

Alone.

I’d been so focused on football since the season started that I’d almost forgotten how striking she was, how her long, brown hair flowed over her shoulders, her thick lashes framing those endlessly dark eyes. I’d almost forgotten those lean, tan legs and the narrow angle of her waist. I let myself take her in, let my gaze wander the length of her before slowly climbing back up.

She didn’t shy away. She didn’t cover herself or adjust her stance or make any sort of comment — though we both knew I was raking my eyes over every inch of her. She stayed perfectly still and calm until I found her gaze again, and then she tilted her chin a little higher, and the only thing that gave her away was the slight bob of her throat.

“I’ll let you get settled,” she finally said, her voice softer than before. She pushed off from where she’d been leaning against the frame and made her way toward the door. “Limited movement,” she reminded me, spinning to pin me with an aggressive finger point.

“Wait.”

She halted mid-turn, something… new in her eyes as she paused for me.

I hooked a thumb over my shoulder toward the en-suite bathroom. “Aren’t you going to help me shower?”

Julep blinked, and then scoffed, rolling her eyes and turning for the door again. “You’re lucky I don’t drown you in the shower.”

I gave her a toothy smile then, even though she’d already turned and couldn’t see it. But before she got all the way out the door, I called, “Thank you.”

She paused again, her back still to me as she hovered in the doorway.

“For having faith in me back there.”

Her back tensed, and then her shoulders deflated, and she angled her chin down and back toward me, her eyes flashing over her shoulders before her gaze was on the floor again.

“I don’t have faith in anything,” she said.

And then she left.





Julep



Two days later, I woke up at the ass crack of dawn from a nightmare.

It was a nightmare I was familiar with, one that made no sense but somehow always filled me with terror no matter how many times I had it. I could never even remember it when I woke. All I could grasp was that I was in a dark house with no walls or windows, that I was cold and scared, and that I had the distinct feeling that I’d slipped off the face of the Earth and was lost somewhere in-between where I was previously and where I was supposed to be now.

After the panic subsided, the sweating kicked in, and just like it had countless nights since Abby died, my brain started in on playing its favorite game of attacking me and keeping me awake with endless questions that had no answers.

It was still dark as I flopped back and forth on my bed, trying and failing to fall back asleep before I finally ripped the covers off and angrily stormed into my bathroom. I looked like hell, dark circles under my already dark eyes, skin pale and dull. I splashed some water on my face before hanging my hands off the edge of the bathroom counter and staring at my reflection.

But I didn’t look long.

Because the longer I stared, the more likely it was that I’d see her.

Abby may have been younger than me, but we had often been mistaken for twins. We had the same long, thick, shiny, dark hair, the same lean frame, the same button nose and full lips. Our biggest differentiator was that her eyes were neon blue and mine were shit brown — and I used to tell her that all the time, how jealous I was of her eyes.

I wondered if she’d be proud of me.

I’d only been in Boston for five months, since Dad moved us here for spring training, but it’d been the best five months I’d had since she’d died. I’d had a few drinks, sure, but I hadn’t smoked, hadn’t sniffed or snorted or popped anything other than Advil. I was focused at school, and on my work at the stadium — so much so that even Dad trusted me enough to let me live on my own.

He now trusted me enough to let me lead rehab for his quarterback.

I hoped this was the first real step in me changing for the better, in me turning my life around. Then again, the little shred of hope I held was pitiful because I knew who I was at the root of everything.

A monster.

And the only reason I was here, doing everything that I was doing, was because my father didn’t deserve to have his heart broken any more than it already had been.

I checked the time on my phone when I ambled back into my room, groaning at the ungodly hour. The sun hadn’t even started peaking over the horizon yet. But I knew sleep wasn’t happening, so I quietly changed into shorts and a sports bra and slipped in my headphones before making my way downstairs.

It was dark in the living room, save for the soft bit of blue streaming in from dawn through the window. I left the lights off as I stretched and got warm, and then I slowly slid the coffee table out of the way as quietly as I could.

Once it was in the corner, I wrapped my hand around the pole.

That first touch of cool chrome was like a bucket of ice water dousing the flame of guilt and panic and pain I’d woken up with. It soothed me immediately, and I took my first deep breath of the morning, walking around the pole before I lifted my inside arm high and did a dip, flying backward into a goddess spin.

That was my last bit of true consciousness for the next hour.

After that, I slipped out of my mind and into my body, letting it move in whatever way it wanted to with the cool, dark living room as its stage.