I kick at his hand. “Stop.”
“You need to get up.” He takes a sniff of the stagnant air in the room. “You need to shower. We gotta go.”
“I’m benched. Didn’t Coach tell you?”
“Yeah, right before I told him to do the same thing to me.”
“What’d he say to that?”
“That I shouldn’t make hollow threats.” Brayden grins. “I think he expected me to fold.”
“They’re gonna fine you for walking out.”
“Yeah, probably,” Brayden says. “So don’t waste my money. Get up. We need to go get her.”
Oh, so that’s what this is about. “Did Savannah call you?”
Brayden shakes his head. “I think she has my number blocked.”
“She definitely has my number blocked.” It’s hard to argue with someone when you’re lying down and they’re standing. I swing my legs around, ignore Brayden’s pleased look when I actually rise. “That’s probably a hint we should leave her alone.”
“Didn’t think you were such a quitter, A—” He cuts himself off, but I could hear what he was going to say. NotAsher, butAdler.
My pulse ticks up, my body awake for the first time in days. That anger I felt after Coach benched me didn’t actually leave—it just went to sleep. Now it’s waking up too. My hands curl themselves into fists. I don’t bother to stop them. “I’m not a quitter. I’m just not herhusband.” I practically spit the word. “I’m not anything to her.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is.” I tap the words out on Brayden’s chest with the tip of my finger, hoping to back him out of the room—out of my life. He doesn’t budge. “You need to get out of here.”
“No,” he says, “I’m not leaving without you.”
Another wave of anger goes through me: at Brayden for being here and seeing how miserable I’ve been. At Savannah for being somewhere else. At myself—for wanting something I knew I couldn’t really have. “Sorry, didn’t mean to be unclear. Get the fuck out.”
Brayden darts his eyes down to where my left hand has reformed into a fist. “Your knuckles are bruised.”
“Yeah, well, punching a wall will do that.”
Brayden scans around the room until he finds the dent right next to the doorway, one that I put there sometime on Monday. “Asher…” He says my name softly.
“Yeah, my landlord’s gonna be pissed.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He reaches for my hand like that’s going tofixanything between us. Like there’s anything between me and him and Sav left to be fixed.
I shake my hand, step back until the backs of my knees hit my bedframe. Brayden takes a step forward. I’m fenced here, trapped. Every muscle in my body tenses, my heart hammering against my ribs, hands clenching. “Get back,” I tell him.
He doesn’t come any closer, but he doesn’t move away. Just shakes his head like he’s not going to move unless I move him.
I suck a breath in, try to blow it out through my mouth, get only a hot, angry huff of air like a laugh. Red encroaches on my vision, a slight splash of it, then a haze. Blood in my head, unignorable. There’s only so much of this I can take, only so long I can put this off before something inside me breaks. No, something inside me is already broken and the least Brayden can do is leave me alone.
I take a step toward him, another. Back him up further and further until he’s against my bedroom wall. “You are not entitled to be here,” I say. “Or to tell me what to do. You have Savannah. She’s still your wife. That’s what you wanted all along, right? You’vewon.”
I cock back my arm. The same surge I felt in Coach’s office, now hotter, brighter, clearer. It’d be so easy to hit him, to make him feel just as bruised as I do inside. It’d be so easy. My hand is shaking, my body surging with adrenaline.
Brayden’s looking at me, gray eyes stormy, body alert like he’s ready to absorb a punch. He reaches up, clamps over my bruised knuckles with his palm. “Hey, easy.” His voice is low; his fingertips rub the back of my hand in tiny circles.
“Don’t,” I choke out. I don’t want his pity. I don’t want him to see me like this at all. My arm is still shaking. It spreads to the rest of me, my teeth chattering like I’ve suddenly gone cold.
“Don’t what?” Brayden asks.
