My body meets a hard wall of muscle, and my lid flies off. Hot chocolate sloshes out of my cup with the sudden braking.
“Fuck. That’s hot.” A voice hisses, sucking in a large gulp of air through their teeth.
“I’m so sorry. I wasn’t—” Common sentence structure eludes me when I meet a familiar pair of green eyes. A pair that twinkled with power yesterday, watching me unravel underneath him. I snuck out this morning, hoping never to see him again, but now that I have to make him fall in love with me, that plan is as out the window as I was at seven a.m. “I wasn’t watching where I’m going.”
“Neither was I.” He shakes his head. His lips curl into the hint of a smile. “A lot to look at today, huh?”
Which, I’ll admit, is a weird thing to say when, as far as I can tell, this town has looked like this at Christmas for the entire four years we’ve been at this school.
“Um, yeah.” I dab at the stain with a spare napkin I used as an extra barrier against the heat of my cup and my gloved hands, but there’s no way that stain is coming out like this. Of course, Seth is wearing a super expensive, designer-brand workout shirt because nothing says “fall in love with me,” like ruining an eighty-dollar shirt with scalding hot chocolate. Though now, I have an excellent excuse to invite him back to my apartment.
“Oh, darn it all, Seth,” I say. Aren’t I wholesome? “I think I’m just making it worse with this napkin, but I have a killer stain remover back at my apartment. If you aren’t busy, I can spray it on there and let it work its magic before that stain sets.”
Glancing past my shoulder at something, he shakes his head and turns his attention back to me. “Uh, yeah, that sounds good.”
“Great.” I smile. “Let’s get going then.”
Seth’s hand falls on the small of my back. I bite down the shiver threatening to terrorize my spine at how simple a touch it is, telling myself that all we’re going to do is fight a stain together, but my libido isn’t getting the message. She’s ready for another round of Seth turning us into a puddle, even if my endo is still rearing its ugly head, and my heart is wary of growing closer to Aarons.
With him, it feels like I could shatter, even more than I did with Brady, more than I ever have. And that terrifies me. But if I don’t do this—I’ll lose everything I worked so hard for, so it’s a risk I’ll take.
Everything will go back to normal, anyway. I can weather this.
I have to.
Chapter nine
Miracle on 34th Street
Seth
Thisplaceisbecomingmy favorite song.
When my shoes hit the cobblestoned pavement, the staccato rhythm soothed away my anxiety over the unknown. None of this makes sense. I was convinced I was dreaming, but a day later, either my dream is playing the long game, or I owe Jenny an apology, and faeries are real.
And when Ellie blew powder on my face, and the ground swallowed me whole, she sent me to an alternate reality.
One where I never got hit by a truck, and Maddie looks at me like she’s just as gone as I was when I first saw her.
And we live in a college town ripped right out of a Hallmark movie.
Huh. I don’t know if a college, holiday, small-town romance has ever been attempted. Ellie’s going for all the tropes with zero fucks to give if it makes sense, then. Cool. I can get behind all vibes, no plot, I guess.
With each long stride forward through town, Maddie’s whimper became the melody that looped over and over in my mind.
I tried to push my body past its physical limits. But as I passed onto the main street at mile three, the limit never came.
It had been years since I had run like that. The strange memories that have plagued me ever since I woke up in bed with Maddie tell me it’s because I’m training for the combine and the draft. And there’s no telling how long or far I would have gone if a hot beverage and a gorgeous smile didn’t assault me.
I pull my shirt away, trying to keep it from sticking and burning everything there further, but I’m pretty sure it’s too late.
You don’t see the seething pain mentioned in the coffee-spill meet cute too often, but I’ll insist on its inclusion from now on because, hell, this hurts. And this isn’t cute.
Luckily, Maddie’s apartment isn’t too far away, and I can strip it off and let my chest breathe for a second.
The bar below her apartment is where I first ran into her in this world. She was reading a textbook at the bar. This Seth saw her across the room and recognized the reading material as something he was supposed to study for a Humanities class he was failing. It turns out that Maddie was perusing the book for fun since she’d already aced Professor Scott Calvin’s dreaded Humanities introduction class.
Professor Calvin is a hardass and doesn’t care if failing means I can’t play in the big bowl game that will bring lots of donations and free advertising to the school. It’s a backbone I’d applaud where I’ve seen how annoying it is not to be the one getting the special treatment. But now that I can throw a ball well again—I’d rather just coast through like I used to.
