Page 27

The first time it happened I hated myself for weeks.

Cade's parents' driveway, the summer Margot turned seventeen. Same cracked net we'd been shooting on since we were kids and her, the girl who used to trail after us begging for one turn.

Except she wasn't trailing anymore. She'd gotten good.

Cade had gone inside for water, and she asked me to fix her one-timer, so I did the thing I'd done a hundred times since she was twelve. I stepped in behind her, folded my hands over hers on the stick, told her to follow through.

And she did. Ripped it top corner past the busted lawn chair we used for a goalie, then spun around under my arm, flushed and breathless and grinning up at me like I'd hung the moon in her own backyard.

Something happened in my chest and I knew I could never go back to what we were.

She’s Cade's little sister, and years back the two of us had made a promise about exactly that, a stupid, solemn, kid kind of promise, and I'd meant every word of it.

I stepped back from her so fast I nearly fell over my feet.

Said something idiotic about her elbow. Drove home with both hands strangling the wheel, telling myself it was a fluke, a one-time misfire, a thing a decent man could ignore into nonexistence.

I ignored it for years. Got frighteningly good at it. But it never once went away.

Cade sets down his fork, and the sound of it drops me back into her kitchen, into the present, into the dinner where I've been staring at his sister.

His eyes do laps. Clocking every inch of space between me and Margot like he's measuring for a penalty.

So I play it careful. I keep my hands to myself. She calls me Hunter. But halfway through, she reaches over and pats my hand and across the table Cade goes quiet for a beat too long.

Then he sets down his fork again.

"So." He looks at his sister. "Tell me about the real one. Ethan."

And I have to sit here, in her warm little apartment, with the best meal I've had because she cooked it, turning to ash in my mouth, and listen to my best friend ask his sister about the man she actually wants.

"It's early." Margot pushes food around her plate. "I don't want to jinx it."

"Give me something. What does he do?"

"He's..." She won't look at me. "In finance."

Of course he is. Of course Ethan is in finance. I called it, tall and soft-handed with a boat, and somewhere in the back of my skull I take a bitter little victory lap and immediately want to drive into a wall.

"Finance." Cade nods, pleased. "Responsible. I like it. Step up from these clowns." He tips his beer at me, friendly, my oldest friend in the world, and I make myself grin back while something green and ugly climbs my throat.

"He treats you right?"

"He does." Her voice goes soft. "Very well."

I'm not real. I'm the placeholder. I'm the drill. I'm the guy teaching her how to be good enough for a finance guy named Ethan, and I am about to lose my mind at this table.

And why would it be me, anyway. Look at what I am. The guy they run montages of, a different woman every week, a highlight reel of nothing real.

I spent years making damn sure the world saw me as exactly one thing, and it worked, and now I get to sit here and eat the bill for it.

Women like Margot don't keep men like me. They borrow us. I'm the wild story you tell your friends, the mistake that was good in bed, the chapter you skip to get to the part where a responsible guy in finance puts a ring on it.

I'm good for a hotel room and a headline. I'm not good for a Sunday morning brunch. Not good for keeping. Not good for love.

I taught her that myself, one tabloid story at a time. She learned it. She's right to not want me.

But I didn't want those women, I wanted her.