My stomach turned at the thought of eating, but I couldn’t deny Lana. I wanted to show my support.
I wasn’t ready to face the fact that I thought about her more than I should. She wasn’t either.
The moment I stepped into the hallway after cleaning up, I was hit with an amazing smell. Cade was waiting for me against the wall outside the cafeteria. He didn’t bother to offer false words or smiles. He simply lifted one eyebrow, a silent question asking how I was doing.
A shrug was the best I could give him. What else was I going to say? After all this time, my heart was still shattered. It felt hard to breathe when I thought about her. It felt like I would be drowning in guilt forever.
He let out a sigh and turned, opening the cafeteria door to usher me inside. The smell of savory herbs hit me. Usually, I could smell the cooking when we had volunteers in here, but it was nothing identifiable.
Everything was always tasteless, but healthy. I wasn’t sure why so many damn nutritionists and athletes were afraid of spice, but it seemed this omega was not. I should’ve known that from the start.
Music was playing, and Lana was definitely in her element. She was walking around greeting the players as she handed out their food, learning names and taking notes in a small notepad she was keeping in her back pocket, the pen tucked in her hair.
Generally when a nutritionist came in, it was a free-for-all, everyone responsible for dishing up their own, but she’d gone beyond that.
She looked up when Cade and I walked in, her smile brightening. “There you are,” she greeted as she waited for us to follow her up front. She had two plates sitting under the warmer.
“Thanks, Lana,” Cade said. It was funny that our quiet leader never hesitated to talk to her.
I didn’t think it was a coincidence that our bond had been almost muted lately, a shadow of what it usually was. Everyone was shutting it down the best they could. We all knew exactly what that meant.
“And that leaves you,” she said, smiling up at me as she held a plate out.
It was a pasta dish with sliced steak that looked incredible. The green sauce on the pasta was light, but it was carb-and-protein heavy, exactly what we needed to be at our best tonight for the game.
“Half an hour before the game, I’ve got smoothies waiting for you guys as well,” she explained. “Your name is on everything.”
“Thanks, Lana. I’m excited to have you here,” I said, trying to keep my voice light.
Her head cocked to the side, eyes narrowing just a hint. Not enough to be obvious, but I’d apparently studied her plenty lately and knew her mannerisms.
“Is everything alright?”
“Yeah,” I lied straight through my teeth.
Her lips tipped down into a frown just slightly, but she gave nothing more away. I hated that I was forcing her to hide her own confusion.
The words were there on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t quite get them out. I wanted to tell her, to explain why things were so hard today. I had a feeling if she tried again I’d break. Lana had the stubbornness of her brother.
“I’m excited to tuck into this,” I promised, going off to find a seat. She let me go, but I felt her stare on me the entire way to my chair.
We didn’t exactly have assigned seats in here, but we tended to migrate to the same ones. I dropped down next to my pack, and even they were more subdued today.
At this point, they knew. That and the big game was tonight.
The cafeteria emptied slowly. Each time one of my pack members left, I was given a firm squeeze on the shoulder or a gentle clap on the back, silent ways to tell me they were here.
It helped more than they realized. I just wasn’t ready to talk. I never was on these days. In a day or two, I’d be back to normal, pretending everything was fine.
Pretending that six years ago I didn’t lose the love of my life.
A heart defect, an undetected killer. She had no signs. Gabriella was happy, and then one day it simply gave out. The doctors promised there was nothing I could’ve done.
Suddenly not hungry anymore, I started to push away my plate, but Cade pushed it back, his eyes a silent warning that I was going to finish it.
Not eating beforehand was an easy way to fuck up a game.
“You’ll beat yourself up far more if you do this,” he warned.
