The same mouth that used to whisper my name in the dark. The same hands that used to cling tomeduring scary movies, trembling with trust.
My hands curled into fists at my sides. This was a joke. A cruel one. A fucking humiliation parade, and I was the one tied to the float. Because it wasn't justhim. It wasme. They didn’t even know it, but they were mocking me, flaunting that shit in my face.
Every kiss Vargas pressed to his mouth, every way Tru let him, was a spotlight on my weakness. On all the shit I couldn’t say, couldn’t touch, couldn’t want. And now some loser from my team was doing the very thing I hated myself for even thinking about.
I backed away from the window, breath shallow, just before I heard a slam.
I rushed back just in time to see Tru shove the car door closed with all his weight. He yelled something, his voice sharp, even from this distance. Vargas was red-faced, saying something back, but Tru turned away, middle finger raised over his shoulder like a weapon.
His precious pink shirt was wrinkled, and his perfectly coiffed hair tousled. The front porch light spilled gold over his skin, making him look soft and flushed. Tru stood there for a second, breathing hard. He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve like it had been tainted. Then he kicked the front step, hard enough to limp, and disappeared inside.
Vargas peeled out of the driveway with a shriek of tires.
I collapsed on the edge of my bed, rage simmering thick and raw in my chest. Tru’s out there in tight jeans, fitted shirts, and polished nails, letting guys crawl all over him in our driveway. Acting like it’s nothing. Pretending I don’t even live here. Like I’m not standing at the window, watching every second, knowing it meant something.
I dropped the curtain and turned away, but that image of his body pinned, lips claimed, shirt fisted in another guy’s hand was seared into me like a brand.
And the worst part?
I didn’t know who I was more furious at.
Him.
Or myself.
CHAPTER 17
TRU
Some gifts are heavier than they look. Especially the ones that come wrapped in silence and forgiveness.
The morning lightslanted through the blinds in jagged stripes, cutting the kitchen in half. I sat at one end of the table, hunched over a half-eaten bowl of cereal, while Dare slouched at the other. His juice sat untouched. His eyes were somewhere else.
I focused on the way his knuckles wrapped around the glass. Split and raw. They weren’t like that yesterday. He wasn’t talking to me, but that was nothing new.
I cleared my throat. “Good scrimmage yesterday.”
His gaze lifted slowly, lazily, but the way it cut into me felt deliberate. “How would you know? You weren’t watching me.”
My mouth went dry. I gripped my spoon tighter. “I… I saw you.”
He snorted and looked away, as if I’d just told him a joke he’d heard too many times. “Sure you did.”
I should stop. I should take my bowl to the sink, disappear upstairs, and pretend I didn’t care. But I did. I always did.
“So,” he said almost conversationally, bored. “You gonna run through the whole team now?”
I blinked. “What?”
“Starting with Vargas?”
The name struck a memory I wasn’t ready to face.
I set the spoon down slowly. “Why do you always have to be so deliberately cruel?”
He shrugged. It wasn't cruelty, just simple math to him. “Why can’t you stop handing me reasons?”
I stared at him. “Why can’t you just be happy for me?”
