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In that roaring crowd, sitting next to her best friend, was Cass.
Cass, who I’d been in love with since I was thirteen.
Cass, who’d almost gotten married two months ago.
Cass, who decided to stay here in Roseville to lick her wounds after getting left at the altar.
It’d have been easier if she’d just left.
I wound up. Let out a breath. Threw the ball.
“Strike!”
Tate tossed the ball back, and I turned, adjusting my baseball hat as I reset.
I’d have said it’d be easier if she’d just gotten married, but that would have been the mother of all lies.
Had I been pining after her since she made it to town?
You bet your ass I had.
I’d been pining after her since my very first boner, and until we left for college—hers in England and mine in California—I’d had her for my own.
Maybe that was my first mistake. Getting a taste for something I couldn’t keep.
I shook my head at Tate’s pitch signal. Shook my head at the second one. A curt nod to the third, and I threw a knuckle ball that hit Tate’s glove with a pop.
“Strike two!”
I snatched the ball out of the air and reset again.
That last summer, we all took a road trip to Vegas—me and Cass, Remy, Tate, my sister Shelby, and a handful of other classmates. We stayed off the strip in some shitty roach motel and got hammered all weekend while we gambled all our money away.
It was one of the best times I’d ever had, and I’d had some good fucking times.
God, I’d been sick over Cass. The thought of leaving her, of her leaving left me gutted. Ruined. There was no reason to tell her, mostly because there was no way to change anything. She was going to Oxford, for fuck’s sake, and my pro career depended on my college career. Sure, maybe we’d be able to wait four years. Or maybe we’d both be single by the time we had our degrees. But the truth was bleak. So what else were we supposed to do?
Nothing. There wasn’t a goddamn thing we could do, and we both knew it.
I straightened up. Wound up. Let her rip.
“Ball!”
With a sniff, I caught the ball again and circled back to the mound.
We’d always thought we’d get married, talked about it all the time, but as senior year went on, we brought it up less and less. But our last night in Vegas, Cass and I passed a little wedding chapel. We stopped and stared at it for a long time, her arms around my waist and mine holding her close.
“We should do it,” she’d said, and I laughed. “Just for tonight—we can annul it in the morning. But … I love you, Wilder. This way, I could know what it was like, even if it was just for a night.”
I never could tell her no.
So we got married by an Austin Powers impersonator in a room that was wall to wall, hot pink shag carpet and laughed through the whole thing, all the way up until the kiss.
There was nothing funny about that kiss. It was a kiss born from a thousand dreams we’d never have, of hearts that were broken by the knowledge. This was it.
But for one night, she’d be my wife. And at least I’d have that.
That night was easily the best night I’d ever known.
