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Xander
I woketo a bass drum in my head. Bleary-eyed, I pushed onto an elbow and inhaled a thin breath.
Fuck.
My skull felt ready to explode, and the second my eyes landed on the empty whiskey bottle, my stomach churned. Pushing back the sheet, I staggered to my feet and ran a hand through my bed hair. I was a fucking mess. I could barely remember getting back home last night.
There had been a blonde at the bar. A tall, thin thing who had stayed by my side even after I insisted I wasn’t looking for company. She’d offered to make sure I got home okay… and I told her to take a hike.
Not my best moment.
But she’d reminded me of Peyton. All starry-eyed and seductive.
What the fuck was I saying?
Peyton wasn’t seductive, she was… a kid.
Except she wasn’t.
And that was the problem.
I couldn’t get the image of her on the roof terrace ledge out of my head. My heart had fallen out of my chest when she’d climbed up there. But it had been her parting words that really dug under my skin.
I don’t want anything from you, Xander. I’m not that foolish to ever think you would see me as more than what I am, but I just thought… I thought maybe you got it. That maybe you understood.
It shouldn’t have mattered—it didn’t matter that she thought so little of me.
But it did.
All day, I’d replayed those words over and over in my head until I’d needed to cleanse them from my mind. And the only way I knew how to do that involved an endless supply of whiskey on the rocks.
I could barely remember leaving the bar. Had I come straight back here? No, that didn’t feel right. I’d gone… fuck, I’d gone to the river and she’d been there.
Peyton had been there.
We’d talked… we’d… No, I couldn’t even think about that.
Jesus. I shook my head as I walked into my small bathroom. I was a fucking mess, and all over a seventeen-year-old girl in high school.
What did that say about me?
About the kind of guy I was?
If Jase or Cam could see me now…
Who the fuck was I kidding? They—especially Cam—would probably expect something like this from me. After all, I was Xander Chase, the guy who repeatedly screwed up and sabotaged any shot he had at turning his life around.
It was a miracle I hadn’t messed things up with the team yet. But part of me liked working with the guys. Coach Huckley was a grumpy asshole, but everyone else was okay; and I don’t know, it kind of felt like coming full circle.
I knew I’d given up my shot back in high school, but maybe by helping the team, helping Kaiden, I was paying my dues somehow.
Splashing my face with cold water, I stared at myself in the mirror. I looked as bad as I felt. My eyes were bloodshot and sunken. I knew if Cam could see me now, he’d have a thing or two to say. It was one of the reasons I’d stopped going by his house for Sunday morning breakfast.
But there was no avoiding him today.
I’d promised Jase I would show up at theirs today. No matter how much I didn’t want to. Because she would be there too.
* * *
