Page 188 of One Wild Wish

The two girls beside her were watching the guys leave, but Gwen’s eyes were locked on me, and my pulse rocketed, like I’d already played my soccer game, had run a marathon, had summited Everest, my oxygen thinning at a rapid rate. I wanted to drop to my knees and apologize for what I’d done. I also wanted to tell her her actions had devastated me , but if she’d listened to my first angst-ridden album, she’d be well acquainted with my resentment.

That didn’t keep me from soaking her in.

Even from my distance, I could tell her arms were defined in her slim tank top, suggesting she worked out a lot. She’d always been athletic, but this was a body honed through years of exercise, work. Her hair skimmed her shoulders, shorter than I’d ever seen it, her face a bit more angular. She still exuded casual style. Effortless. Unpretentious. Drop-dead beautiful.

Swallowing became an effort.

As did hiding the desire one look from her inspired. It echoed through me, the vibrations like reverb blasting from my guitar. It wasn’t cool. I replayed how catching my brother in his boxers had sickened me, that smug grin on his face. How often I’d pictured him and Gwen in bed together, unable to stop. My lips compressed and my nostrils flared.

That was better. That was how I was supposed to feel.

Angry. Resentful.

Gwen sat on the bleachers, gaze locked on me, piles of unaired dirty laundry between us. If I had to write a song for the haunted anguish in her eyes, I’d title it: “Shame’s Window.”

* * *

Gwen

My two best friends were trying to talk to me—Ainsley snapping her fingers in front of my face and checking for vitals, while Rachel asked what was wrong. I couldn’t focus on anything but the man talking to Owen and Jimmy.

And I did mean man .

August hadn’t noticed me yet, thank God, the small mercy allowing me to study him. Unlike the boy I’d grown up with, this August had shoulders a swimmer would covet and a jaw that could cut diamonds. The cords on his neck stood out. His thighs and calves belonged on a Greek statue. Glasses no longer shielded his hazel eyes, but I wasn’t close enough to test if the gold flecks in those stunners still reduced me to a soppy mess.

That didn’t keep my body temperature from spiking to lava levels. Even more alarming was that he seemed to know Owen and Jimmy, the three men slapping backs and talking like old friends.

Considering Rachel and Ainsley were the better halves of those two hunks, this could be world-ending bad.

Rachel leaned forward and stared at my catatonic face. “Do we need to call a doctor?”

“It’s him,” was all I managed.

Ainsley, the always stylish fashionista, crossed her legs and smoothed her floral dress. “Him who?”

“August,” I said.

The sound of my friends sucking in shocked breaths should have been amusing, but amusement was no longer in my emotion arsenal. They knew August had been my first love, but the details of why we’d never hooked up had remained in my high-security vault. A Mission Impossible , booby-trapped vault.

I should come clean and finally confess what I’d done, explain how I’d lost August for good, ruining his relationship with his brother in the process, but the words blockaded my throat.

The girls were the closest thing I had to family, to sisters. They knew how estranged I’d been from my mother before cancer took her last month. They’d listened to me speculate endlessly about who my father might be, while cursing my mother for keeping the information secret. They were the most important people in my life. The idea of them learning my Worst Terrible Fuck-up gutted me.

Ainsley ogled the love of my life. “Was he that hot when you knew him?”

“He’s filled out,” I murmured.

August’s back was to me now—a well-built, muscular back—but he glanced over his shoulder as though sensing me. His eyes widened in recognition, and that lava in my veins steamed and bubbled. When a shadow eclipsed his features and his body stiffened, that molten liquid hardened into ice.

“I need to go.” Barely glancing at the girls, I rushed away from the soccer field, worried I’d puke on the grass or start bawling. I never cried. Ever. Not even at my mother’s funeral. And I hadn’t thrown up since my first CrossFit workout and the one hundred pull-ups that had bested me.

Yet, here I was, ready to puke or bawl.

Nine years should be long enough to get over my Worst Terrible Fuck-up (aka my WTF night, an appropriate acronym), but some guilt-ridden disasters were eternal.

Hence my nausea. And my stinging eyes.

I should have contacted August after what I’d done, offered some sort of explanation. I’d dialed his number so often the digits had practically been imprinted on my fingers. I’d even practiced what I’d say, every night, every morning, repeating my apology on a loop: I slept with your brother because I loved you and the idea of never having you had destroyed me. But shame had kept the words inside. Disgust with myself. Then too much time had passed.