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“I’m so sorry, Flynn.”
“Stop that.” He moved his hand from my cheek then, dragging his fingers down to hold my chin between his thumb and forefinger.. “You only knew what you heard and how I presented myself.”
“But I didn’t try to see anything else, either.”
Still didn’t stop me from kissing him three years ago, though.
“Alright, buttercup, your turn. Tell me all about Aaron.”
Humiliation crashed over me as I tried to work up the courage to tell him.
“I don’t want you to look at me differently.”
“I’m already looking at you differently,” he murmured.
“That’s not what I mean. It’s not as simple as an arrangement with someone for show.”
“We all come with baggage, Harper.” He took his finger and tipped my chin until I looked up at him. “This is part of building a relationship. We share the good, the bad, and the ugly. We sift through the rubble and build a new foundation.”
I nodded. Talking hadn’t ever been our problem. It had been the feelings and our attraction that should never have existed to begin with.
“He was a baseball player. We met at a party in college, mutual friends, and started dating. The short version is that he was sure he was going to the show, to the big leagues, finally. That’s where all his focus went, and I guess, looking back, I was along for the ride. He went into the minor leagues, played there for a while.”
I stopped, not wanting to share the rest. It was humiliating, between the experience itself, and the fact that I’d been blindsided.
Hindsight was twenty-twenty. If I’d just opened my eyes, I would’ve seen the way he laughed when I talked about my dreams, or the way we always had to do whathewanted to do. He never did anything with my family and couldn’t wait to get out of this town.
It wasn’t even love. Just blindness.
“I’m here,” he reminded me, his fingertips grazing the skin on my arm.
“We went to a game one afternoon, and he left to go get drinks. At least that’s what I thought. I can’t believe how long I sat there, waiting for him to come back. They announced over the loudspeaker that he’d been called up to the major leagues. Huge congratulations, all that. And that’s when I realized he wasn’t coming back. He left me sitting in that stadium and never even said goodbye.”
A lump formed in my throat, and I cleared it, worried Flynn might take it the wrong way. I’d put entirely too much trust in Aaron, and he’d devastated me.
“He just left you there.”
“That’s not even the worst part.” I looked away, not wanting to see his face when I finished the story.
Flynn waited for me to continue, his silence somehow comforting. I blew out a huge breath, the enormity of my honesty suffocating. He stopped caressing my arm to find my hand, and he squeezed it with encouragement.
“Let me just paint a quick picture: I’m sitting alone. It’s glaringly obvious because the entire section I’m sitting in is full. They’d just switched between infield and outfield, so the kiss cam starts to show people on the screen.”
His eyes widened as puzzle pieces slid into place, and I shook my head. Whether or not I wanted to, I had to continue telling it.
“There he was. Mister big shot, wrapped around another woman. I have no idea who she was, but I don’t suppose it really matters, does it? Anyway, I started crying. He’d made his choice. And it certainly wasn’t me. It also was the precise moment that the kiss cam found me.” I laughed bitterly, embarrassed for that version of myself. “There I was, sobbing all alone in my seat, on the jumbotron for everyone to see.”
All I had to do was close my eyes, and I was back in that moment, surrounded by the smell of dirt and popcorn, the crack of the bat echoing in the air.
“I didn’t know.”
“Why would you? It’s not something I broadcast to anyone fortunate enough to have missed the most humiliating moment of my life.”
When I finally gathered the courage to look back up at him, his eyes were wet, his expression somber.
“Our whole relationship was a sham, Flynn. Not in the way yours was. There was never a mutual agreement for us. I bought into it hook, line, and sinker. My entire purpose was to be a stand-in for him. To fill a space in his life. I haven’t dated an athlete since. I haven’t hardlydatedsince.”
No one knew the gritty details of my love life except Madison. Not my parents, not even Steven. Not all of it, anyway. But Flynn had asked me to be open and honest with him, and I’d completely stripped myself bare.
