The band blasted to a crescendo. Her squadmates cheered and cavorted, but Aubrey stood motionless, locked in communion with this incredible boy who dreamed of her at night.
Abruptly, Nick stood. He wove down the bleachers and loped out through the gym’s side door, letting it slam behind him.
She nearly shrieked her frustration. “Wait, what?”
She spent a precious moment deliberating, then broke formation. Megan called after her, but Aubrey flung open the side door and shot through without looking back.
Outside, the cold bit into her bare skin. Orange sodium lights flooded the alley, gilding her exhales and illuminating emptiness in both directions. A scream rushed up her throat, but she throttled it.
Nick couldn’t have gone far. She just had to find him.
Which she would. There was no way in hell he was getting away from her again.
12.
Seventeen years ago
Nick hurried through the freezing night, wondering what in the ever-loving fuck he’d been thinking.
The amount of real estate Aubrey MacLean had staked out in his head already tortured him, but this would burn him alive. Had hereallyneeded to know what the precious underside of her thigh looked like, or that she could lift her leg up beside her head with no apparent effort? Had he absolutelyhadto memorize the dewdrop glisten of sweat on her neck, the way it made damp red tendrils out of her hair?
Ugh. Now he would never get her out of his thoughts.
He sucked in a breath so cold it stung his lungs, then upped his pace. Aubrey probably wouldn’t have left the game at halftime, but on the off chance she’d followed, he needed to put as many frozen shadows between himself and the gym as possible.
How stupid that when she’d asked today in English, he’d thought he could face her. One glimpse of thatdance, and he’d known he couldn’t stand to let her end this... whatever it was. Which was borderline hilarious, since he would gladly get intoanother fistfight with Gallant. A hundred fistfights. A fucking thousand.
But let Aubrey tell him to stop writing to her, even once?
He’d rather die.
Still, it would happen, no matter what he did. He’d known it from the moment he’d shoved that first letter into her locker and stared, wondering whether he had the means to punch through the flimsy metal and reclaim the paper before Aubrey could see it. Seehim.
Except the look on her face while reading it had done something to him. Her eyes had deepened, her bottom lip folded between her teeth, and some kind of detonation had taken place beneath his ribs. Now he couldn’t stop writing to her, and it made him feel crazy. Like someone addicted to a drug they’d only done once.
“Nick!”
A sick jolt shot through him. Shit,hadAubrey followed him? She must be desperate to put a stop to the messed-up therapy sessions he was unilaterally conducting with her locker.
“Nick,” she said, right behind him, now.
He stopped, shooting panicked glances left, then right, but the night offered no escape. Nothing but frosty brick walls and darkness.
With no other options, he turned.
His insides twisted. She stood there in her cheerleading uniform, her hair like a flaming torch beneath the lights. Fuck, but she was beautiful. Cruelly so.
“Why do you keep running from me?” she said.
A dead laugh needled at his throat.Why?Gee, where to begin? Because he didn’t want to have to leave her be? Because he needed to go on believing she actually valued his confessions? Because he didn’t want confirmation that she’d neveragain look at him the way she had at her house, like she hoped to take him apart and cradle the pieces safely in her hands?
“I’m sorry about the letters,” he rushed out. “I got carried away, but I’ll stop.”
He made to flee, but she flung out await-a-minutehand. “Stop?” She sounded hoarse, her voice rubbed raw by the cold. “God, no, I don’t want you tostop.”
Nick hovered there, uncertain. He suddenly seemed to be anyplace and no place, floating in some nameless auburn darkness, his only anchor the girl who gleamed before him like a freshly bloomed rose. “You... don’t?”
She drifted closer. “No. Of course not.”
