AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She’s already turned to the bookshelf, riffling through the tomes. Onto the next problem for the day. “Monday.”
3
SEBASTIAN
This early in the morning,the house is quiet.
I rise from my plank, breathing through my nose, and pick up a set of fifteen-pound dumbbells for the next round of exercises. Cooper, by my side, does the same. There’s no need to talk, not when we’ve done this routine together, the exact same way, for years now. Sometimes we play music, but today there’s nothing. No distractions except the ones inside my head.
We could have gone to the gym on campus, the nice 24/7 one specific to athletes, thanks to his position on the hockey team and mine on the baseball team, but he’s leaving on a post-semester road trip with his girlfriend, Penny, in a few hours, and wanted extra time with the cat currently sitting on the staircase.
She blinks her enormous amber eyes at us, unnervingly intelligent. I’m more of a dog person, but Tangerine has grown on me. Cooper and Penny rescued her last fall, and she’s become a permanent fixture in the house since. I still haven’t fully forgiven her for leaving a dead mouse in my cleat, but she’s cute. I can’t tell if being her sole caretaker while they’re on the road trip and our little sister, Izzy, is in Manhattan for an internship, will bring us closer together or end with her attacking me in my sleep.
She swishes her tail back and forth, as if she’s considering it, while we work through the exercises. After the last one, I set the dumbbells on the floor and swipe my hand through my shaggy hair. Baseball hair, Izzy always teases. It’s longer than Cooper’s now; after his team went to the Frozen Four—and won—his girlfriend begged him to trim the beard and cut off some of the mop.
He glances at me. “You’re quieter than usual.”
“I’ve been up for a while.” I stretch; my shoulder protested that last set of reps. During a game a couple days ago, I slammed against the warning track as I chased a deep fly ball. Got the ball. And a bruise. We still lost. Four games in a row now. If we’re going to make the playoffs, we need to right the ship—fast.
He makes a sympathetic noise. “I thought that had been getting better.”
I shrug as I take a sip of water. “It comes and goes. I didn’t manage to fall asleep last night. Got to practice my knife skills, though. And watched a documentary about bread making in France.”
He shakes his head. “I was wondering about all the chopped onion in the fridge. Your hobby is weird sometimes, dude.”
“They were diced, not chopped. And call it weird all you want, but you eat everything I make.”
“Happily. It’s fucking delicious.” He sets down the dumbbells and stretches. Tangerine pads over on light feet, winding around his bare legs. He picks her up, hugging her to his chest. She purrs contentedly. “That sucks, though. Do you want to talk about it?”
“You all set for the trip? Still visiting James and Bex first, right?”
“Sebastian.”
My adoptive brother’s deep blue eyes are full of concern. He reaches out to squeeze my shoulder. “Was it…”
A nightmare? One of the persistent, sickening nightmares that years of expensive therapy didn’t squash completely? Never mind how hard his parents—my adoptive parents—tried?
I swallow. There’s a sudden knot in my throat. “No. Not a nightmare.”
Not a maw of crushed metal and broken glass. Not blood on leather seats. Not a scream, cut short thanks to a severed windpipe. I can call up the memory so easily, even a decade removed. You don’t look into your mother’s lifeless eyes as an eleven-year-old and not remember it like someone cut open your skull and branded the image there.
Cooper’s grip on me tightens. He told me once that he can tell when I’m lost in the memory. We were fourteen, sitting under the bleachers during one of our older brother James’ many Friday night football games, each with a stolen beer in hand. A rare night in the fall when Cooper didn’t have ice time, and I didn’t have a training session. It was October, the Long Island air finally turning crisp after a late-season heat wave. Something about the sudden rain triggered it, I think. We were dry, and safe, and the game was still going on, but I froze as I stared at the downpour, and Cooper had to shake me to drag me into the present.
Now, I shrug off his grip. “I just… I couldn’t sleep.”
His gaze turns shrewd. “Because of her.”
I’d never tell Cooper, because he has a strained relationship with his father that’s only just getting better—and our own relationship was strained for a time earlier this year, when his piece of shit uncle came crawling back to New York and tried to swindle him out of his trust fund—but when he makes that face, he looks just like Richard Callahan, down to the furrowed brow.
The Callahans all look alike, with their dark hair and deep blue eyes. No one would ever mistake them for anything but family. Richard Callahan, quarterback legend. His son James, two years older than me and Cooper, now finished with his first year in the NFL. Cooper, my best friend and near twin. Our little sister Izzy, a vibrant ball of energy with a wicked volleyball serve and enough swagger to get her in trouble left and right.
I’ve got my dead mother’s blonde hair and my dead father’s green eyes, and the last name Callahan now; I’ve used the name on the back of my baseball jersey ever since I turned twelve. Cooper and his family have been my family for a decade, thanks to a pact Richard and my father, Jacob Miller, made when they were just young men with hopes for futures in the NFL and MLB. Richard and Sandra welcomed me into their family with open arms after my parents’ deaths, and I’ll never not be grateful.
Given all that, we’ve been brothers long enough that Cooper knows when I’m holding back. I pet Tangerine between the ears. The silence is confirmation enough: I haven’t gotten Mia di Angelo out of my head.
Enjoy watching me leave, Callahan.
Her words taunt me. Over a month later, they still echo in my mind. One minute, I had her in my bed, in my arms, so close to more. The next, she fled—and told me to watch her leave, like I’d never see her again. Ihaveseen her since, because she’s Penny’s best friend and it’s impossible to ignore someone going to the same university, but she’s acted like every hookup, every conversation, every moment we shared meant nothing.
