I should’ve been focused on the drills we were doing, but my head wouldn’t shut up. Everything had felt off all day, like my body was here but the rest of me was still trapped somewhere between my dad’s voice on the phone and the string of texts he’d been sending since. Each one was another link, another thing he wanted me to buy, even though the money I’d already sent was supposedly for his overdue bills.
Aka. his gambling debts.
My stomach refused to unclench.
At least Jace was being his usual annoying self.
“So, remember Riley’s old roommate?” he started, shaking his arms and lining up for the route we were practicing.
“How could we forget?” I muttered. My voice came out rougher than I meant, but I couldn’t help it when he’d just brought up the world’s most terrifying person.
He grinned like he could feel my irritation. “She texted Riley.”
“What did Creepy McCreeper say?” Parker asked, his tone way too eager for someone who clearly didn’t grasp the trauma I was still trying to recover from. He’d never actually met Emma. He hadn’t seen the way she stared like she was cataloging your organs for later. All he knew were the stories Jace and I had told him about her fascination with femurs and her unsettling love of murderous clowns and iced milk. You really had to meet Emma in person to understand just how much therapy she could make a man consider.
“She said her new roommate isn’tnearlyas interesting to watch,” Jace said, sounding way too casual.
I froze mid-step.Fuck.
Just hearing her name out loud made me break into a cold sweat.
Emma was a walking nightmare of a person, a girl who made you question whether reality had short-circuited whenever she was around. She had big eyes and a bigger smile, and that smile didn’t quite match the words coming from her mouth. When Riley had started dating Jace, he somehow convinced me to distract Emma so he could sneak into Riley’s dorm room to “be near her.” Which translated tospy on her like a psychopath and sleep in her room without her knowing.
So I did it. I sat through the most terrifying date of my life while Emma told me she was “fascinated by human anatomy,” especially “the texture of femurs.” I’d spent the whole night wondering if she’d stolen a bone or two from a grave, or if she was secretly plotting how to getmybones out of me.
And now she was texting again.
“She—she’s texting her?” I asked, my voice coming out all weird and screechy.
Jace frowned. “Well, not anymore. Riley doesn’t even know how she got her phone number. She never gave it to her.”
She was probably hiding in Jace and Riley’s closet; that was probably how she got the number. I made a mental note to check every closet in our house when I got home. You could never be too careful.
“Riley thinks it was Emma’s attempt at being sweet…like in a definitely-should-have-ended-up-on-a-true-crime-podcast kinda way,” Jace mused.
Parker snorted. “Yes, real heartwarming. I bet she’s crying herself to sleep at night, clutching the hair she probably cut off Riley’s head while she was sleeping…like it’s an unrequited love story.”
See. I definitely needed to check the closets. And under the beds. And anywhere else a human-sizeddemoncould be hiding.
Jace scrunched his nose up at that. “There’s no way she doesn’t have a playlist dedicated to Matty—one of those dramatic, longing ones. ‘I Will Always Love You,’ ‘Under My Skin,’ maybe ‘Every Breath You Take’—really good ones like that,” he mused.
I threw my water bottle at him. It hit his shin, which only made him grin harder.
I lined back up for the next drill, but my chest still felt tight. Maybe it was the pressure of the upcoming game. Maybe it was my dad. Maybe it was just me.
Coach blew the whistle, and we ran it again—routes, cuts, sprints. Jace cracked another joke about investments that hardly anyone laughed at. Usually, I’d at least toss something back, but I couldn’t find it in me.
My thoughts were everywhere, and as I was melting down into an existential crisis…I glanced out toward the parking lot.
The sight of her beat-up car had become part of the background noise of my life, like the smell of turf or the soundof helmets clashing. I didn’t look for it on purpose, not really. It was just…there. Every practice.
Except now, it wasn’t.
“Hey.” Jace bumped my shoulder. “Why aren’t you appropriately worshiping me right now?”
I didn’t answer. My jaw locked, my gaze fixed on the empty space where that car usually sat.
“What’s up with you?” Parker asked.
