He can.
Hecancarry me with one hand and I try not to shift my gaze over to his arms. His sculpted biceps. His strong, graceful fingers.
He was built before, when he was the soccer god of Bardstown High, the Wild Mustang. But he’s something else now. He’s strength itself. It drips off his body like a thick syrup. It wafts off his body like a delicious scent.
“Do they still call you that?” I ask, because I can’t stop myself. “The Wild Mustang.”
“What?”
“At your college. Do your soccer groupies still call you that? By your nickname.”
His gorgeous face is blank, inscrutable as he watches me. “Yes.”
It shouldn’t bother me.
It should not bother me at all.
He was always popular and a player. Why wouldn’t he still be the same now?
Still though something contracts in my chest and I can’t help but say, “You must be very popular then. Not that there was any doubt whatsoever. I mean, everyone knew you were going to go pro, be all famous and whatnot and —”
“Yeah, I’m a regular stud,” he says, bites out almost, cutting me off. “Are you going to get in the car or not?”
“I’m not going to eat the cupcakes,” I tell him again.
And he asks me, again, “Why?”
“Because I just told you. Because I’m watching my weight and because it was…”
Because it was our thing.
Because it was something that he brought me. And even though every time he did that, I told him not to bother because I was getting fat and yet, I waited for him to do just that.
To bring me Peanut Butter Blossoms.
I don’t say that though. And I don’t have to.
Because he gets it.
Because forsome reason, he remembers everything about our time together. Even though it was inconsequential and insignificant to him.
Or rather, significant only in the sense that he used me to win against my brother.
With sharp features turned even sharper, he says, “Because I brought you cupcakes two years ago. To fool you. And you did get fooled. So now you’re punishing yourself for falling into my trap. Because that’s what you do, don’t you?”
“I don’t…” I trail off because I’m lying.
Of course I do that.
I punish myself so I can remember to never make the same mistakes again and I hate that he knows this about me.
“You do,” he says, his wolf eyes narrowed. “You lied to your brothers about coming to my party that one time and you walked on eggshells around them for the rest of the week after that.”
I did.
I did walk on eggshells after lying about going to his party, the one that started everything. Because I felt so guilty.
That for days after that, I tried to make up for it in a hundred different ways. By never being late coming back from school; by doing Ledger’s laundry without him having to pester me about it; by cooking Con’s favorite things and so on.
