“You good?” he asks.
She nods. “I will be.”
He glances in my direction, catching me watching. “You still here, Calloway?”
I lift my shoulders. “I was emotionally invested.”
Amelia laughs softly, the sound catching my attention more than it should.
Kamden shakes his head, but there’s a smile tugging at his mouth now. “Alright. You win. You can stay. But if anyone gives you shit?—”
“I’ll handle it,” she says firmly.
I push off the lockers and step closer. “For what it’s worth,” I add, meeting her eyes, “you don’t look like someone who needs saving.”
Her gaze holds mine, steady and unflinching.
“Good,” she says. “Because I don’t.”
Fuck.
FIVE
Amelia
I’m halfway out of my heels when there’s a knock at the door.
I freeze for a second, my pulse jumping, then I hear a familiar voice on the other side.
“Don’t make me eat this alone.”
I open the door to find Kamden standing there with a pizza box balanced in one hand, a six-pack dangling from the other. He looks relaxed now, out of uniform, out of game mode. Just my brother.
“Dinner to celebrate?” he asks.
I blink. “Celebrate what?”
He steps past me without waiting for an invitation, setting the pizza on the counter like he owns the place. Which, to be fair, he kind of does since he loaned me the money for it.
“Your big break,” he says. “And I want to apologize. I’m sorry for how I reacted today.”
I close the door and lean against it, studying him.
“Sometimes,” he continues, quieter now, “I still see you as that sixteen-year-old girl who didn’t know what the hell she was getting herself into.”
My stomach tightens.
It was a bad year.
I let one of the junior varsity baseball players get a little too close. He thought he was entitled to more than I was willing to give. He wanted to round home plate.
I didn’t.
We were on the baseball field when it happened. Empty. Dark. And Kamden heard me screaming from the parking lot.
I swallow and push myself upright.
“I’m not that little girl anymore,” I say firmly. “And I need you to stop bringing it up.”
