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Standing between her and Maisie’s crew, panting from the game with his helmet in one hand, he raked his fingers through his sweaty hair with the other.
He was wet and dirty and he smelled like a mixture of sweet grass and the black soil they used in the garden behind their house.
To Birdie he smelled wonderful.
“What’s going on?” he asked, his eyes darting between her and the growing horde beneath the bleachers.
Maisie smiled. “Tell him, Birdie. Tell him what’s been going on under the bleachers while he’s been playing his heart out on the field.”
Birdie’s eyes lit on Maisie and then to Lucas. “Nothing.”
Another of Maisie’s friends blurted, “She’s stealing is what she’s doing. We just caught her taking someone’s purse during the last few minutes of the game.”
His eyebrows came to a V as he stared back at her. “Is that true?”
In an instant, Birdie’s heart plummeted to her feet.
Is. That. True.
She couldn’t believe it.
Couldn’t believe those three words came out of his mouth. He had known her for years, had shared some of the deepest most philosophical conversations with her while investigating sand dunes and bird-watching near the shore.
He knew her better than anyone on earth and the fact he spoke those three words almost destroyed her.
Her eyes pooled and her lips trembled as she couldn’t stop staring at him. To those watching, her emotions seemed to seal her fate rather than provide indisputable proof that her soul had been crushed.
Despite their waning relationship, she’d always considered him a holdout. That one person who would always believe her, believe in her, when others wouldn’t.
That was no longer true. Maybe it had never been true.
Lucas kept staring back at her, waiting for an answer, as if he didn’t recognize her. As if she were the villain.
He had never looked at her that way before.
She refrained from rubbing at the growing ache in her chest.
He was no different than the others.
He viewed her as they did, as someone to avoid and ignore. Someone unworthy of even a small seat on a metal bleacher, relegated to stand alone in the space beneath them.
They all stared at her, waiting for her to lie.
To deny.
What was the point?
Why tell the truth?
“Yeah, it’s true,” she lied, because honestly, why not? Might as well give them what they wanted. Feed the crowd with a healthy dose of one-hundred-percent vindication.
Gasps at her admission, some with gaping chuckles at her audacity, seemed like annoying background noise to the stare off going on between her and a seemingly incredulous Lucas.
He lowered his head, focusing on the ground as if trying to come to terms with what she said. His head still lowered, chocolate eyes full of heart-rending disappointment finally stared back at her.
“Why, Birdie?” he asked, shaking his head.
She shrugged her shoulder, more bone-tired than belligerent. “Why not?”
