PuckingSkylerShaw: Perfect. Guard it for me?
Me: With my life.
PuckingSkylerShaw: Okay. For real now. Sleep.
Me: Sleep.
PuckingSkylerShaw: Text me when you wake up tomorrow? Even though I’llbe in the air?
Me: I’ll send you pictures of the booth. Proof it’s being properly protected. I’m sure it will miss you.
PuckingSkylerShaw:It’ll miss my ass.
His ass? Holy mother of . . . I think my brain stuttered. Inside my head. Where only I could hear it.
PuckingSkylerShaw: You’re the best.
Me: I know.
PuckingSkylerShaw: Night, Jacks.
Me: Night, Sky. Safe travels.
I stared at the conversation for a long time after he stopped responding.
I’ll miss hanging out.
Four words that probably meant nothing to him.
But four words that felt like everything to me.
Chapter 16
Skyler
The team bus smelled like coffee, sleep deprivation, and weary anticipation. Five in the morning was an ungodly hour to be conscious, let alone functional, and the twenty-three men crammed into this stupid metal tube showed it. Half the guys were already passed out against windows, headphones in, dead to the world. The other half clutched oversized coffees like lifelines, staring at nothing with the hollow expressions of people who’d made questionable choices the night before.
I was in the second category.
Not because I’d been out partying—I hadn’t—but because I’d spent way too long staring at my phone after texting Jacks, replaying our conversation.
I’ll miss hanging out.
I’d typed that. Sent it. Put it out into the universe like somekind of lovesick—
No.Notlovesick. That wasn’t the right word.
I was . . . going to miss my friend.
That was normal. Friends missed each other.
That I’d barely slept after saying good night, my brain running in circles about tacos and floating restaurants and the way he’d called me “Sky” like it was the most natural thing in the world, meant nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I grabbed it so fast I nearly dropped it to the floor before clutching it so hard I thought the case might crack.
Jacks: You awake yet or did you sleep through your alarm like a responsible adult?
