Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
I spot Farrow out of the corner of my eye, watching me, and now I’m aware of the tightness in my muscles. My rigid spine. My flexed jaw.
I turn my head away, itching to say something back to Kade, but the seconds stretch. The moment becomes longer and further away until it’s gone, and now he knows he won.
I yank the phone away from my ear and end the call.
I shake my head. Fuck.
I wrap my fist around the phone, hearing it crack in my hand. All I had to say was something. Some dumb, fucking quip that would’ve been fine if I’d just said it with confidence.
But no. I was brain dead, as usual, when it comes to him.
A shadow of him.
I disappear around him.
Turns out, after a year, he’s still better.
Farrow is at my side. “Was that your brother?”
I jump off the treadmill. “Forget it.”
I start to walk away, but he grabs my arm. “Did you fucking hang up on him?”
I push him off, but he clenches the back of my neck, and I growl as he pushes me to the ground. He comes down on my back, pressing me into the mat. I grit my teeth, breathing hard.
“Did he get the last fucking word?” Farrow yells at me.
I flip over, grabbing his head and attempt to lock it under my arm, but he throws himself over my shoulders and wraps an arm around my neck.
“Did he?” he growls as everyone stops their workout to watch us.
Twisting around, I rise, and so does he, but I pin him to the mat before he has a chance to get his feet under him. I straddle his back, growling in his ear. “Back off. We’ll have the last word…when we win.”
“And her?” he inquires. “You’re mad at her, too?”
Screw this. I climb off him and stand up. He follows, brushing invisible dust from his chest.
Walking over to the barbell rack, he retrieves a cigarette and lights it.
“You’re pissed at her too,” Farrow points out. “Why?”
I just stare at him, breathing hard. I’m not pissed at her, other than that she’s a distraction I don’t need right now. She’s preoccupying this team’s attention.
Farrow moves toward me. “Does he love her?”
“Of course, he does,” I say through my teeth. “She’s his family.”
“Does he want her?” he says like he’s spelling it out for me.
They all know Dylan doesn’t share any blood with Kade and me. We’re family through marriage only.
“Does she want him?” he asks next.
I narrow my eyes.
He comes in, grabbing the back of my neck and bringing me in. “We’ll see him at the game,” he says. “You’ll win, have the best fucking year of your life, and then go off to the University of Chicago and leave him and his circle of influence behind for good.”
Fucking yes.
“But we have her now,” he points out. “She can be first.”
“I don’t give a shit about her—”
“Because if we beat them on the field,” he continues, “and he still gets to go home and have her at his beck and call, are you still going to feel like you won anything?”
I look at him, but my gaze falters.
“Oh, Jesus Christ.” He rears back a little, eyes gleaming with realization. “I can’t believe I actually called that shit.” He has the decency to keep his voice low. “She’s the reason for the rift between you and Kade,” he says. “She’s the reason for all of this.”
No. My problems with Kade aren’t Dylan’s fault.
I never cared about her beyond the fact that she was a friend.
It never hurt when she wanted to be around him instead.
“Fuck,” I murmur.
Farrow squeezes the back of my neck. “She needs to pay too,” he tells me. “Your fun…starts now.”
Dylan
The apple didn’t fall far, indeed. Not only did I make a vile comment to people I don’t know in that classroom, I also don’t feel badly about it yet.
It’s weird. I knew it was wrong the second it came out, and I knew why. But even now, a few hours later, and on my way to face everyone at lunch, the guilt hasn’t really set in.
I’m like my dad.
I’d always understood that he had problems in school. He spent years, not only forcing himself to hate my mother, but to actively—and unjustly—take it out on her. Treating her harshly, he’d told me, felt better than facing everything that was hurting him. His past, his parents, his lack of hope in the future, his jealousy over others’ happiness…
And his fear that she was too good for him.
Fear.
We only ever do anything out of love or fear, and I certainly didn’t say those things this morning out of love.
I don’t want to be like my dad was when he was younger. Bitter.
I stop at my locker, lifting my notebook and the two books I’d been distributed—a copy of Cockney Reds and an economics book—but as soon as I open the steel door, a flutter of little papers spills out. I watch them float to the tile at my feet. Torn-up pieces of lined school paper with jagged serial killer penmanship.