Danny’s new touchy-feely stuff had started after I mentioned his teammates coming into the Coffee Kiosk and inviting me to their parties. And he only touched me in front of other people. Not once during all the evenings we’d spent studying in my cubbyhole of an apartment had he offered to so much as brush past me—which he could have easily passed off as an accident in my tiny space.
The fact he’d all of a sudden decided it would be fun to fuck with my head now was what hurt the most. I’d fallen hard for him from the moment I first saw him, and all he’d wanted from me was friendship. So I’d settled for that. Friendship was infinitely better than not having him in my life at all. Over all these years, I’d worked hard at being the best friend I could be: his sounding board with his bully of a dad, his literal cheerleader on the field and off, his pal to hang out with when no one else was around, his wingwoman.
God, hiswingwoman. Aside from Hailey, who was just too, too much, I’d introduced him to nice girls like Sophie from work, who was sweet and goofy, and my friend Nina, who’d been in almost all my required classes since freshman year. Nina was exactly his type—athletic (she was on the dance team), funny, bubbly, not in a hurry to get serious with anyone. Then there was Tracey who we’d run into one night playing pool at the Molly. She was kind of a wild thing—super-pretty with zero filter. I adored her and thought Danny would find her to be a good time too. Yet he’d passed on all of them. Obviously, I didn’t know his type anymore, but that didn’t mean he needed to be an asshole to me—or to Josh.
I lost track of time as I sobbed my heart out. In a bathroom stall in a public building. Pathetic. It was only when I’d run out of tears that I noticed my phone vibrating in my pocket. Pulling it out, I saw Danny’s name across the screen and also the time. I had exactly three minutes to make it to my next class—time I had zero intention of spending on someone who thought so little of me.
After setting my phone on “Do Not Disturb,” I dragged myself from the stall, filled my hands with frigid water from the sink, and buried my face in it in the hopes of disguising some of the puffiness from forty straight minutes of crying. As I dried off, I remembered I had a pair of sunglasses in my backpack. For once I wished I was one of those women who kept a makeup bag handy, as my Rudolf-red nose could do with a whole tube of concealer, but maybe since I was going to have to race to class, no one would notice. Or if they did, they’d pass off my mess of a face to exertion from running across campus with a heavy backpack strapped to my shoulders.
I slid into the back of the lecture hall five minutes late, but the prof had already dimmed the lights and cued up his slides. For the next hour, I stared at the screen and willed the tears that tried to return to stay bottled up until I could go somewhere private. It was only after the lights came on that I realized I hadn’t even opened my backpack and didn’t have the first clue what had happened in class.
?Chapter Eighteen
?Danny
The hurt inTaryn’s voice last spring when she’d called me after her dipshit boyfriend had ended it with her had made all the difference in my future plans. Instead of burying my own pain and disappointment at losing her to a redeployment in the Air Force, thereby following right in the captain’s narrow and unhappy footsteps, I’d made up my mind to go after what I truly wanted.
Taryn Hamilton.
After I enrolled in Mountain State, I’d always made sure to touch her as often as I could when we were together. Hold her hand, slide my arm across the back of her chair, bump her shoulder with mine then stay close. Mainly I wanted my hands on her, but I was also trying to gauge where she was with us. Asking her outright would have been the grown-up thing to do. The honest thing. But if she’d said she only saw me as a friend, I’d probably do something stupid like head back to the military.
Two years ago, I’d taken a chance and kissed her—I could still feel her soft lips on mine—but my timing had sucked. If I’d kissed her before I’d been on my way out of town, I might have moved us out of the friend zone then. But it wouldn’t have been fair. I was headed to Germany for a year. Asking her to wait for me when I wasn’t even in the country would have been a dick move, and I knew it. Honestly, kissing her was a dick move, but she was so pretty standing there with that light snow falling in her hair, her cheeks bright with the cold, and I’d wanted her for so damn long.
Seeing her this afternoon with that preppy asshole flipped a switch inside of me. Taryn was my girl—had been my girl from the minute we met. It was only a matter of time before we found our way to each other. After nearly blowing it by being the grown-up and not asking her to wait four years ago, I’d be damned if I blew it now when we had a real chance.
Except I blew it.
There’s blowing kisses and then there’sblowing kisses. After all the careful buildup to our first kiss as a couple, I’d lost it. Kissed the hell out of her without any warning. Without any conversation. Without telling her how I truly felt about her—about us. How the hell had I let myself turn into a Neanderthal—the type who staked his claim on his woman by dragging her into the bushes and kissing her senseless?
Oh. Yeah. Seeing her smiling and horsing around with someone who wasn’t bothering to hide his interest tipped me right over the edge. The plan had been to catch up with her between classes, maybe grab a coffee, cajole her into smiling and horsing around withme. Instead, I’d hurt her. Never mind she’d kissed me back as if she’d been waiting all her life to kiss me. Soft, sweet, tentative at first, and then so wild she’d left me as hard as a brick. Which explained why when she ran away from me I couldn’t catch her.
By the time I’d followed her to the Union, she’d disappeared. I’d spent the next hour wandering around searching the place inside and out, but I couldn’t find her anywhere. Though I texted her about twenty times, she didn’t respond. That was when I knew I was in real trouble.
Finn caught up with me as I was making one last pass around the cafeteria and dragged my ass to practice. If not for his timely arrival, I probably would have fucked up that part of my life too.
As it was, my head was not in the game.
“What’s going on with you, man?” Callahan asked as he drove us home from the facility. “In the two months since you joined the team, I think I’ve maybe seen you drop five passes total.” He shot me a side-eye. “Today I’m not sure I saw you catch even that many. I’m surprised Wiley doesn’t have your ass doing an hour of burpees right now.”
I waved a hand in front of my face. “Whatever.” Turning my head, I stared unseeingly out the side window. At the moment I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about football.
“The fuck? What happened today? You fail a test or something?” He wheeled his truck around the roundabout near our place and turned it for home.
“You could call it that.”
“Anything I can help with? Marketing isn’t as math-oriented as engineering, but I’ve taken some calculus,” he offered as he parked his rig in the driveway at the house.
“School’s fine, all right? It’s not a school problem.” I reached behind the seat for my duffel bag and stepped out of his ride.
“Oh, fuck. It’s a girl, isn’t it?Thegirl,” he amended.
“What are you talking about?” I asked as I unlocked the front door, walked inside, and kicked my shoes off in the foyer.
“The girl you hang out with most nights of the week. The one you skip team parties for.” ’Han drew his hoodie over his head and hung it on a peg by the door before following me into the kitchen.
Yeah, my heart ached, my head was a scrambled mess, and my body didn’t feel like it belonged to me—hadn’t since Finn dragged my ass to practice when all I’d wanted to do was find my girl and make things right with her. Apologize for my colossal dick move. Have an adult conversation about the clusterfuck of not being together for the past five years. But I’d just spent the past three hours running my ass off, and in spite of everything I was starving.
Having a post-practice empty belly was an unfortunate circumstance considering it meant I was going to face the third degree from my roommate before I’d be allowed to eat. Since it was my turn to cook, I couldn’t disappear into my room, come out when the food was ready, and take it back upstairs away from prying questions.
