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“I really didn’t mean to make you worry,” I said, like that was some version of something I might want to say one day, but it really wasn’t.
He bent down and kissed my head anyway, brushing my hair back, looking at my little scab in the dark where he couldn’t see it, but I could feel it, closing up, going away a little more each day, a little more every minute.
“I know that,” he murmured.
“I really didn’t even think about… No one ever cares what I do.”
“I do. I don’t… I don’t want to…” He sighed. “I know you raised yourself. I know you’re more independent than I’ll ever be probably. I don’t want to take that away from you. But…”
“You wanna raise me,” I said, and he laughed.
“Maybe a little. I just want you to know you’re somewhere where someone’s always looking out for you. Where you really are safe. Where I’d be very upset if you left and didn’t come back.”
I listened to those words, how they were about me, but how they weren’t, and I suddenly saw him so clearly there in the dark. How afraid he was, how hurt he was, how well he hid it because someone always had it worse. His damage didn’t show in gaping holes all over his body where everyone could see, but it was there. His fears, his scars, his worries. And every time the light changed and I got a glimpse of something, I had feelings. Big, tear-people-apart feelings. Whatever you wanted to call them.
I wrapped my arms around him and pressed tight against him until there was no space between us at all. “I won’t leave you,” I whispered, and I meant it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“You look rough,” I told Walkerwhen I showed up to algebra Thursday morning, barely making it before the bell. The bags under his eyes were as dark as the ones Ellis kept on display, and when he smiled, he looked even more exhausted.
But he was smiling, and it’d been a minute since I’d seen that.
“Look pretty rough yourself,” he told me. “Long night studying?”
“You sound like fucking Ellis,” I muttered, yawning, and he caught it and yawned too.
“You guys fall asleep out there?” I asked him.
“Nah. Well, he might have, he was still there fucking around trying to kick in from the fifty when I left. But we were there til the sun came up.”
I blinked my tired eyes wider. “Jesus, seriously? Doing what?”
He shrugged and shook his head. “Smoking. Talking Ollie. Playing catch. Running routes. Trying to get the rhythm back. He knows alotof stats. Likedecadesof stats. Like his brain is a fucking computer, just spitting it out.”
I snorted. I’d been in those one-sided conversations, though not in a while. “Yeah. He’s weird with numbers. His dad was a Shark, so he knows like every stat on every player all the way back to then. So are you guys… okay?”
He sighed and slumped down in his desk. “I don’t know. I guess. I kind of… I feel like I went a little crazy since I found out all this stuff. Like I’ve been trying to tear my life apart. Like, you and me, that night at my house...” He cringed.
“Dude, we’re fine. Everything’s fine. Your parents set your life on fire at the start of senior year. Of course you’re gonna lose your shit. Act weird. Divorce is a mess. We all just wanna help you through it, you know.”
“Yeah. I know. It’s just… I went off the fucking deep end. It’s easy to blame it all on Ellis. I kind of… had to, I guess, to stay standing. But it’s me losing my shit the last few weeks, not doing all my extra hours of practice, showing up late, being an asshole, not him. I tanked us both. I tanked us all.”
“Fuck that. No tank talk. Look, Ellis… He gets in your head. You weren’t wrong. Believe me, I get it. You’re dealing with shit and everybody’s staring and he makes his dumb jokes, you just wanna crawl in a hole. Not saying treating him like shit and punching him in the mouth was the best thing you could have done… but honestly, it’s probably the best thing you could have done. It takesa lotto get through to him. But he’s gonna hear you now. How were you guys looking at the end? How’s your rhythm?”
Walker sighed. “Better, I guess. But it’s not back. We’re not reading each other. I wish I’d punched him in the mouth on Monday, I guess, really got on top of this.”
“You’re just a little rusty is all. You can power through.”
“I don’t really ever remember you being a hype train guy,” he said, smirking. “Almost like you’re in a good mood these days.”
I rolled my eyes, shifting around in my seat where I had some nasty purple marks blossoming on my thighs. Nobody would notice them, they just looked like ordinary getting-slammed-around-and-falling-on-your-ass marks, I had bruises like that all the time, butIknew what they were and honestly, it was hard to sit still, almost impossible to sit without grinning. “Yeah. Almost.”
* * *
“Where are the cards?” I asked, when I hit up study hall fifth period, and Caleb stood up from the table like he’d been waiting for me.
“No cards today. Field trip.”
