Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 122219 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 611(@200wpm)___ 489(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122219 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 611(@200wpm)___ 489(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
“For both,” I offered. I stood beside her, resting my back against the building. “I didn’t mean to make things harder for you, Avery. That was never my plan. And to be clear, the school district informed me that you were on board with me taking the head coach position. They even made it sound like it was your idea.”
“Does that sound anything like me?”
“Well, looking back on it, no. I just thought…” I didn’t know what I thought. I suppose I didn’t think it through at all. All I saw was a chance to get back into at game that I loved and amend things with the woman I once loved. Sure, I knew it wouldn’t be easy to get in her good graces, but such a big part of me wanted to prove to her that I wasn’t the selfish, hurtful kid I had been. One of my biggest regrets was how I ended things with Avery all those years before.
Yet now I felt as if I had only dug a deeper hole with her on my path to forgiveness.
She glanced over long enough for me to catch her rolling her eyes. “Just forget about it, Nathan. I don’t care, okay? I’m probably going to lose this job, too, thanks to you. My boss is going to kill me when he realizes I got myself locked out by the trash bins.”
Add that to my pile of screwups.
The list kept growing.
“I’ll talk to your boss. I’ll make sure he knows it was my mistake,” I told her. “I know I shouldn’t have followed you out here. I just wanted an opportunity to talk to you and apologize.”
“Cool. You did that. Now, if you could just leave me alone, that would be marvelous.”
“Av—”
“Gah!” she shouted as she pushed herself away from the wall. “What is it with you, huh? Are you on some kind of redemption arc? Are you trying to come back to town to right all your wrongs? What do you want from me, Nathaniel? You want me to forgive you?” She tossed her hands in the air out of frustration. “Fine. I forgive you. You want my coaching position? Okay. It’s yours. I just don’t see why you keep trying with me. We’re never going to be friendly with one another, okay? Just make peace with that.”
That felt like a knife to my gut. A knife that stabbed repeatedly.
Before I could even conjure up a response, the locked door swung open, and Easton popped his head out. “Oh shit! There you are,” he said to me.
“Keep the door open!” Avery shouted as she darted over to the door. She hurried inside, not looking back once. I stood there a moment, still trying to recover from the word bullets Avery shot me with. I didn’t blame her for her coldness. If anything, I deserved every single word that fell from her mouth. Still, it didn’t make it easy.
“Did you two get locked out here?” Easton asked with narrowed eyes. “Are you good, brother?”
“Yeah.” I walked toward him and patted his back. “I’m good. Let’s get another drink.”
5
AVERY
Whatever Laurelin and Reed Pierce mixed when they birthed their five sons, it must’ve been laced with gold. The Pierce boys were the definition of fantastic genetics. All five of them—including Nathan, unfortunately—were beyond good-looking. I’d known the boys since they were kids, as I worked at Honey Farms as a teenager. That was how I’d met Nathan. Though, at that point, everyone knew who he was. He was the all-star athlete who attended college on a full-ride baseball scholarship. He was a celebrity to us in Honey Creek. During that time at the farm, I was able to get to know Nathan. It only took one summer of young love for me to fall for him on Honey Farms, and then it only took one day for him to shatter said love into a million pieces.
Seeing all the guys in the bar that evening was odd because it was clear that both pairs of twins were no longer the little boys who used to help me around the farm. They were fully grown men who each looked as if they should’ve been featured on the cover of GQ.
Evan emanated a grown-man-who-didn’t-care-about-anyone energy whenever he walked into any room. He was the hermit of the group—the grumpy one, most would say. It seemed the only things he cared about were his work and his teenage daughter, Priya. I always thought he had to grow up a little faster than the others, seeing how he had a kid at eighteen, but he stepped up to the plate. His twin, Easton, was the poet of the group. The most romantic man I’d ever witnessed and a massive flirt with any and everyone. And I meant everyone. Whether a man or woman, Easton would give said person a stare that made them feel flustered.