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“I don’t know,” I cried.
Then my dad stopped and pulled a gun out of his shirt.
“I don’t know,” I pleaded, shaking my head.
Then he pulled it up and aimed.
“I don’t know,” I whimpered.
“Mi, amor,” Nico’s voice intruded in my dream.
God, Nico. What do I do? My head thrashed back and forth as I tried in vain to get my hands free.
“Georgia, despertar mi amor,” Nico’s voice cracked through my horror like a thunderclap. “Wake up!”
My eyes opened to find Nico over me in the bed.
He was straddling my hips, and he was hunched over me. His beautiful brown eyes were wild as they stared down into mine.
“You with me, Georgia?” He rasped.
I nodded, “Yeah, I’m with you.”
His head dropped so his forehead rested against mine. “Ten years off my life, niña.”
I smiled sadly at him. “They never get easier.”
‘They’ meaning my dreams. They never lost their intensity. My dreams were vivid and real, and I relived the worst day of my life over and over again, when something triggered them.
He shook his head. “No, they don’t.”
His voice held the pain of a thousand sins, and I so desperately wanted him to know that he had helped me. That he was the one that made me live.
“You know why I survived that night?” I asked, staring at his neck.
He shook his head as my eyes closed and then reopened. A lone tear trailed down my face as I exhaled.
“You taught me how to get out of cable ties. I watched you do that a hundred times when we were younger. I remembered your voice as I did it. I replayed exactly what to do a hundred times in my brain. I blanked out my thoughts, and just did it. It was your reassuring voice that got them out of the house alive. You’re the reason we’re all alive today,” I whispered brokenly.
I saw the muscles of his neck work as he swallowed thickly. “That was supposed to be a party trick. I thought you’d find it cool.”
I gave him a watery laugh. “Well, your party trick worked, and I’ll forever be grateful.”
He leaned down and pressed those full lips against my forehead, then fell over to his side and gathered me into his arms.
“So…obviously, I know not to wake you up by grabbing your ankle again,” he replied jokingly.
I snorted. “Yeah, let’s not.”
He stayed silent for a few moments, and my eyes started to drift closed, but his voice made me open them once again.
“If you ever wake me up, make sure you don’t do it while standing over me. Do it, preferably, with a long stick by the doorway,” he said dryly.
Or at least I thought he was kidding.
“You’re kidding, right?” I asked.
He smiled. “Sort of. Just don’t stand over me and you should be fine. Bennett tried that one night after I fell asleep at his place after a ball game. He got power slammed into his coffee table when he went to wake me up.”
I rolled until my face was level with his. “What the fuck are you doing in my room at,” she looked at her clock on the nightstand then back to me. “Five in the morning?”
He pointed to a box on the end of the bed, and I gave him a good, long glare before I moved to grab the box.
The blanket that was covering my legs slipped until my lower half was revealed. I’d thought that the simple pair of cotton shorts that covered my butt was conservative, but obviously I was a little naïve when it came to my clothes.
Moments later, when I sat back in my original position with the box in my lap, I stifled a giggle when I saw Nico conspicuously readjusting the large tent in his soccer shorts.
I tossed a look at him and he shrugged, not apologizing at all.
I opened the box to try to cover up my nervousness, and stared at the contents in confusion.
He grinned unrepentantly at me. “You up for some soccer?”***I ran up the length of the field with a large man at my back. His name was Michael, and he was incredibly competitive.
He also didn’t like when he was losing against a girl.
My new pink cleats tore into the spongy grass, trying my hardest to get into position to accept the pass that I knew Nico was about to lob at me from his position across the field.
My lungs were screaming at me for oxygen, but I pushed harder, practically feeling Michael’s pounding feet catching up to me.
My heart was beating quickly, and my hair was sticking to my damp forehead.
Then the moment I was expecting to happen happened, and he side footed the most beautiful arcing pass I’d seen.
It hit the sweet spot of my foot like it was meant to. One of the most perfect passes I’d ever witnessed.
I juggled the ball ten more yards, coming to a stop and firing off the shot at the goal.
The goalie blocked it, like I knew he would. He was too good.
However, Nico, my Diablo, was better.
He was there, bouncing the ball off his chest, then firing the shot like a bullet from a gun.
The ball slapped against the back of the net, and I screamed.
I was tempted to pull a Brandy Chastain, ripping my shirt from my body, but that’d look bad against a bunch of amateurs.
Nico and I were playing the rest of his team, which included Bennett, James, John, Luke, Downy, and Michael.
Bennett, of course, was the best on the other team since he’d played in high school and had kept up with the sport as Nico had.
Sadly, they were no match for Nico and me. We’d played together no less than thousands of times. Literally. We’d done this so many times that I knew, instinctually, what he’d be doing.
They never stood a chance.
I was, however, dying.
Once he scored, I fell down in an exhausted heap, laying my head down on the cool grass.
Shadows, one by one, fell on me, but I still didn’t move.
