AllFreeNovel
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He stared at her. Just kept staring. Unblinking. Staring and staring.
Ross, this new Ross, wasn’t a jock. He wasn’t the guy who half the teachers covered for just so he could keep playing football. He wasn’t that guy, the guy who was always the center of attention. He wasn’t the clown he was when he was with Chance. Up on the tower, his heart bleeding out all over the place, maybe he was just who he always was. And maybe all the parts of him that she’d crushed on and later, fallen in love with, were leaping to the surface instead of being smashed down.
“Look, Ross…”
“It’s okay.” He leaned back against the tower, refusing to look at her. “I get it.”
“I don’t think you do.” She leaned back too, ramming her back and shoulders up against the unyielding metal. Life sometimes felt a lot like that. Like if you punched at it, it punched back and all you got was bloodied, shredded knuckles. “I know we haven’t ever really been friends. I mean it though. If you need someone to talk to, I’m here. I’ll be here. If it’s Chance you need, I’ll go and get him. Anything. I- I just- we- don’t need to confuse things. I don’t want to be a distraction.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m sorry. Not because of this. But because I never saw what happened from your perspective. Can this be a real truce?”
He stared at her outstretched hand for a long while. “Yeah,” he finally breathed. His shoulders curled in a little, like saying the word hurt. Like he was deflating because he didn’t have the strength to hold himself up and be that same unflappable heart breaker who didn’t take life seriously, anymore. “Truce.”
They sat in silence, their shoulders almost touching, but not quite. His heat bled into her. She left it like that, for a long time, until the silence shifted and became loaded and unbearable. Then she turned her head and rested it gently on Ross’s shoulder. His shoulders were massive. He always looked like he was walking around with football gear on. That was one of the first physical things she’d noticed about him when she was thirteen. How he was gorgeous because he was huge. Fierce. How he was built like a man at seventeen, and before that even. He topped six feet at sixteen and kept growing and filling out.
Her attention, the things she noticed about him, his beauty, finally hit home when she woke up and realized her brother’s friend wasn’t just an obnoxious teenage boy. He was also gorgeous. Real. Raw. Masculine. He’d changed and she was bound to sit up and notice some time.
“Ross?” She mumbled, waiting for his response.
“Hmm?”
“Your mom- she’s- she’s a brave lady. This is crazy, but if anyone can kick this shit, she can. She’s the one person on earth you’d actually believe when she spouts that nonsense that looks like a banner quote on social media.”
He snorted, and she took that as a good sign.
“She’s always telling people to seize the day and really live it. That there won’t be another day like today, even if tomorrow is better. That if all we live for is tomorrow, all our tomorrows are going to be is a big stack of regrets about yesterday. She told me, one day, when I was sixteen and my parents were gone for three weeks, that I shouldn’t doubt that I was loved. I didn’t even tell her how I felt when they left. How Chance and I both basically felt abandoned. She just knew. She got it. She made me feel loved. She baked those cherry cupcakes she knew I liked. She’s strong. She’s so strong. She’s the backbone of your whole family. There’s no way she’ll go out and make your dad try and survive without her. He wouldn’t make it. He can’t even wash his own socks.”
Ross snorted again, but it was sadder sounding. “I know.”
His shoulder heaved under her head and even though her heart ached, her whole body tightened, and heat filtered through every single nerve ending she had. Her heart kicked up in her chest, swelling and aching all at the same time. She wished she could turn off her attraction to Ross, the things he did to her body, but she couldn’t now any more than she could before, when she’d tried so hard.
“That’s the worst part.” His voice was husky and raw in her ear. “If something happens to her, I know dad won’t be fine. I won’t be either. She’s the glue. She’s the glue holding us together. As a family. As people. She has to be okay. There isn’t another option.”
“She’d laugh if she heard you talk like that. She’d tell you to start doing your own laundry and take some cooking classes and learn how to be just fine on your own. She’d give you that push, even if it wasn’t what you wanted to hear or how you wanted to hear it.”
