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Instead of replying, I ended the call.
He stuck both of his hands into his pockets as I approached, giving me a moment to look him over. The red t-shirt he wore was two sizes too big, a trend for him, but the joggers he wore fit just right. They had to be too warm for a summery-feeling night like tonight, but he didn’t seem to care.
“What was the final score?” he asked once I got close enough, craning his neck to try to see the scoreboard. They’d already turned it off.
“40-34,” I told him, slowing until I was a few feet from him. “Connor ran the final touchdown.”
“Nice.” Much like I’d looked him over, Reed scanned me then, from my face all the way to my sneakers. I held perfectly still until his eyes came to mine, oddly breathless. I blamed it on the humidity. “Did you have fun?”
“It’s impossible tonothave fun at a Brentwood football game.”
Reed just smirked, leaning against his closed car door.
It was a subject I’d attempted to broach with him several times only to have it backfire, but I couldn’t help myself now. My curiosity was starved, not satisfied until it had an answer. I took a step closer. “Wouldn’t you have had fun if you came?Played?”
“Do you think I can’t see through your prying tactics?” he asked me, but there was an amused glint to his eye. “What makes you think I’ll tell you now?”
“We’re friends now, aren’t we? Don’t friends share secrets?”
Reed was in the middle of considering me when a car zoomed down the parking lot aisleway, its tires popping on the gravel. Without warning, Reed’s hand shot out around my wrist, jerking me into him, away from the roadway. His personal space suddenly became my personal space as I latched onto his shoulders, and even through the bagginess of his T-shirt, I could feel the firm muscles from years of sports. My world was off-kilter for more than one reason, especially as I inhaled his jasmine and green apple scented cologne.
“People shouldn’t drive so fast in a parking lot,” he muttered, looking down at me. He brushed his thumb along my cheek. My body gave a small jolt at the gentle trace that swiped underneath my cheekbone. “Your pawprint smudged a little.”
The touch, as featherlight as it was, did wonders on obliterating all logical thought. My tongue became a deadweight in my mouth, unable to conjure a single response. I did, at least, have the wherewithal to drop my hands from his shoulders.
The corner of his mouth he’d been biting a second ago tipped up as his hand fell. “Would you believe me if I told you that I hated football?”
“No.” My answer, as embarrassingly breathless as it was, came immediately. “You’ve played tackle since the fifth grade. You even played on the community teams out of season. If you hated football, you wouldn’t have been so dedicated.”
“My dad never gave me a choice.”
His expression tightened a bit at the mention of his father, something that Rachel’s did as well whenever the topic came up. It happened around the mouth and around the eyes, and try as the twins might, they couldn’t fully hide the reaction.
“He wouldn’t let me quit before,” Reed said, easing the hand that’d touched me into his pocket. “But…I can quit now.”
I had the strongest urge to put my hand back on Reed’s shoulder, to grab his hand, to dosomethingas my chest squeezed. There were these snippets in time that Reed seemed different. No longer the grouchy brother, but more vulnerable. He put on a brave face, but there was something simmering underneath the mask of expression, something that the longer I looked at it, the more it broke my heart.
“I didn’t know,” I said lamely.
“You wouldn’t have,” he replied, shrugging. “Some things don’t need to be talked about.”
“If they bother you, you should talk about them.”
“How about you, then?” He tilted his head to the side, placing his hand on the edge of the car behind me. It only succeeded in bringing him closer. “Anything bothering you?”
I’d run out of fingers if I tried counting everything that had been bothering me lately, but right now—in this moment—I couldn’t think of a single one of them. I took a step back, sneaker turning over gravel. I knew just the thing to change the subject, and swallowed hard. “I did—well, I got you something.”
“Me?”
I avoided his eye as I unzipped my crossbody bag, moving fast before I chickened out. Earlier I’d been too much of a coward, but now, with no one around, I could do this.
Careful not to tear the edges, I pulled three comic books out of my purse, patting the covers in a nervous tic before offering them out to him. “Ta-da.”
Ta-da. What was I, five?
Reed eyed the books as if they were a live animal. “What are these?”
“Books.”Duh. “Well, comic books. You said you thought reading comic books could be a good hobby to replace football, so I picked some up. I mean, Isaw themand picked them up. I didn’t go out specifically to buy them for you.”
