The Bully (Calamity Montana #4)(26)

Straying far from the camper wasn’t appealing, so I’d done my best to stick close and stay busy. Except there’d been too many empty minutes. And when the temptation was overpowering, I’d reach for Nellie’s journal. Another week and I’d be able to recite the entries from memory.

Maybe I should have stolen another diary. While she’d been in the shower the other day and I’d been standing in her living room, my dick still hard, I’d thought about taking one, maybe two more.

But, coward that I was, I’d walked out the door instead. I didn’t need to steal more diaries to know what she’d written. I hadn’t exactly gotten nicer to Nellie as our high school years had progressed. Football had become more and more of a focus each year, but I’d been the same callous prick to her for years.

How could she stand to let me touch her? How could she let me inside her body?

How had I been her first kiss?

She deserved better.

That day was as crystal clear in my memory as yesterday.

Nellie’s dad was working on my parents’ yard, and she’d tagged along that afternoon. It was right after school started our freshman year. Early September. I remembered, not because of the date in her journal, but because football season was going strong and it was the Monday after our first home game.

Dad had bitched at me all weekend because I’d sat on the bench for most of the game. Even though I was better, Coach had played the senior quarterback. It was the guy’s last season and everyone knew he wouldn’t play college ball. But did Dad cut me any slack? No. He blamed me for not being a starter.

Work harder.

Show them you’re the fucking star.

Make them see that you’re the obvious choice.

He’d made me throw two hundred passes that weekend into the net beside the pool. My punishment for not shining bright enough.

I was supposed to do another fifty after I came home from practice. Mom had picked me up from school, and when we got home, I’d gone straight for a football, grabbing it with a wince. My shoulder was dead. She told me that she’d cover with Dad. That she’d lie and tell him I threw for an hour.

Mom lied to Dad a lot on my behalf.

Instead of homework or TV, I went outside and hung beside the pool.

I knew who Nellie was. All of us knew who the scholarship kids were at Benton. They stood out, even with our uniforms. Off-brand shoes. Cheap phones. And they kept their chins down. Mostly they were an afterthought.

Not Nellie.

She was impossible not to notice. There was nothing fake about her. Fresh face. Long, pretty blond hair. Green eyes that saw more than the other fourteen-year-old girls.

She had a book under her arm when she found me beside the pool. She’d been surprised and embarrassed, like she’d been caught trespassing. I probably should have let her walk away, but instead, I told her she could sit with me. She did.

She took the lounge chair beside mine and cracked open her biology textbook.

I was supposed to be studying the same thing, so I leaned in closer. The move hurt the hell out of my shoulder, and I must have cringed or grunted or something.

Nellie asked me what happened.

To this day, I still didn’t know why I told her. But I spilled everything. How my father was a dick. How he expected perfection. How he hadn’t made it to the pros as a quarterback, so he expected me to make up for his shortcomings. How the pressure made me sick at night.

I told her how I wanted to disappoint him just so he’d leave me the fuck alone.

I admitted that I didn’t have the courage to stop.

I confessed that the reason I worked my ass off was not because he wanted me to, but because I was better. Because I was going to show that son of a bitch.

No one knew my truths. Not Mom. Not Pierce. Not my other friends. But I gave them to Nellie.

I dropped my guard and let her in.

To this day I wasn’t sure why.

We talked while the sound of her father’s lawnmower hummed in the background. It couldn’t have been more than thirty minutes, but it had been the most important conversation I’d had in a long, long time.

She listened, without judgment. I had money and talent and status. I was a rich kid who had a bright future. She of all people could have thrown it in my face. Instead, she touched my hand and said she was sorry.

That was when I kissed her.

It was fast. Chaste. Sweet. I kissed her the way a nice girl should be kissed. Just a brush of my lips to hers.

Her first.

Damn.

I never told anyone about that kiss, not even Pierce. He knew the rest, my broken relationship with Dad and the reasons I pushed myself to the extreme. But that had come later in high school, when the two of us would get drunk at a house party and spill our guts. Maybe I’d had the courage to tell Pierce because I’d already told Nellie.

Because she’d seen the real me first.

After the kiss, she blushed and smiled. I remember thinking I wanted to do it again. Over and over again, just for that smile. But then the lawnmower stopped, she swept up her book and raced away.

What would have happened if I’d stayed in my chair?

Maybe I would have asked her out on a date at school the next day. Maybe I would have made her my girlfriend. Maybe I would have ruined her.

Maybe her hate was always destined to be the outcome.

Still, I wished I would have stayed in my chair beside the pool.