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“Wait, what?” The brunette like the nutritionist Coach made half the guys on the team hire?
“—she’d be ready to give us another chance. I thought, deep down, she had to still love me the way I still love her. But she doesn’t.” He groans, his eyes shining. “Do you have any idea what it’s going to do to her when she realizes that you lied to her? That you’re every damn bit as bad as I am.You’re worse.”
She doesn’t love him.
She loves me.
He’s clearly worked up. And there’s something about what he’s saying I know I should pay attention to, but—
“She hadn’t seen the article yet,” Jeremy snarls. “She doesn’t know that she picked the one guy she and Matty should trust even less than me.”
“What article?” All the hope and joy and relief that had started filling my chest evaporates, replaced with a sinking sense of dread. Jeremy isn’t here swinging at me because he’s jealous. He’s here because he loves Cammy and whatever he read this morning was bad enough he was willing to take me on.
“Here you’ve been looking at me like the worst kind of asshole. Like you’re so much better and you’d never let anyone down the way I did. Only that’s not true, is it?”
Fuck. It’s not possible. There’s no way.
Beth said she didn’t talk to Waters.
But even as I pull up my phone and open the first notification, I know someone did. The headline comes up.
“SLAYERS CAPTAIN RUXTON MEYERS ABANDONED PREGNANT HIGH SCHOOL GIRLFRIEND… Leadership abilities in question.”
* * *
Cammy
My hands are shaking,my eyes a blur of tears and confusion.
It took everything I had to hold it together long enough for Natalie to come over and get Matty out of here. It’s not even eight in the morning and the phone’s been blowing up for an hour. One silent notification flashes across the screen after another. I can’t turn it off in case something comes up with Matty.
And I can’t stop watching the screen, waiting for the one call I need more than my next breath… Rux telling me that it’s a lie. Because it has to be. I know it down to my soul, he wouldn’t have done that. I know him… he would never have walked away like Jeremy did. Never.
He told me long ago that marriage and kids weren’t in the cards for him. That he wasn’t made of the stuff it took to be a good father or husband. But that doesn’t mean—
The front door to the apartment bangs open and I jerk around to see Rux rushing in, regret carved into every line of his face.
The dam inside me breaks and, holding out my phone, I choke on a sob. “Just tell me it isn’t true. I know it already.I do.But I just need you to say it.”
There’s agony in his eyes and before he even opens his mouth, I want to call him a liar. Because it’s not possible.
I know him.
Rux is the most loyal man I’ve ever met. The most ridiculously dedicated and faithful.
I love him.
“It’s— Christ,” he chokes out, raking a hand over his haggard face. Haunted eyes meet mine and I wait, leaning into the silence. “We weren’t in high school.”
And that’s when it hits me. This isthe girl. The one he was so torn up over after it ended. This is what nearly cost him his career. Regret on a Rux-level scale.
The air leaks from my lungs as I stumble toward the couch.
Rux is there beside me, taking my hands in his. Telling me he’s sorry. He should have told me, but he was ashamed. All the while, I’m shaking my head, no. Thinking about those times I would see him staring at Matty with that strange mix of love, longing, and pain in his eyes.
I know him.
“Rux, make me understand,” I beg, tears running down my face. “Tell me what happened. Because that article makes it sound like you got your high school girlfriend pregnant… and left.” Left her to miscarry their baby alone. And never looked back.
