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I cocked my head to the side, a lock of hair falling over my forehead. I didn’t reach for it, though. “Inevitable what?”
Una sighed and rolled her eyes, acting as if I were an errant toddler. Which I probably was, parroting all her questions back at her. But I wasn’t going to let her off the hook just yet. She was trying to deflect, but I really wanted an answer. Knowing the little I did about Una, it may be the only time I had to get answers.
“The heartbreak. The pain. The moping, crying, sadness. All of it. I was protecting him.”
Heartbreak. The inevitable heartbreak. She thought she was helping him by keeping him away from Aria so he wouldn’t get hurt in the end.
Una Nielsen wasn’t afraid of love. She was afraid of getting hurt.
I stared at her, wondering what would happen if I told her I liked her. She was already not super happy with me. If I said how I felt, then maybe it would change things.
The little nagging demon in the back of my brain kept reminding me of Coach, though. How he put Una off limits. How everyone else on the team almost laughed when he said that, as if anyone would have wanted to ask her out, anyway.
I did. It didn’t get a laugh from me.
It actually terrified me. Going against Coach’s direct orders was petrifying. He essentially held my future in his hands. If I pissed him off, he could take me out of the game. Would he? I had no idea.
What was Idoing?
I shook it off. This was an honest meal. Not a date. She wanted to thank me for fixing her car. A favor I did for her. It had nothing to do with the fact that I liked her. I doubted she even knew I liked her.
If I told Una how I felt about her and she somehow didn’t run screaming… then what? It wouldn’t change the fact that Coach specifically said to stay away.
And yet, here I sat, at a table across from her, ready to confess. Something was definitely wrong with me.
Besides, the one question I really wanted an answer to was why she hated love so much. I heard Malia say it. She purposefully tried to keep her best friend from finding love with Aria. Why did it scare her? Besides getting hurt at the end, why did she not believe in real love?
“You really don’t know, do you?” I asked after a few more minutes of silence. The waiter had returned, leaving our plates in front of us.
She tilted her head, one of her braids falling over her shoulder. “Know what?”
I put my fork down and looked at her. Likereallylooked at her.
She was gorgeous, no doubt. Strong, independent, stubborn.
But there was also a vulnerability to her. She hid behind a wall of self-confidence and impermeability, not letting anyone in, not allowing any cracks. But every so often, I caught a glimpse of it.
Like right now—I asked a question that confused her. It may have even angered her, if she assumed I was insinuating she was out of the loop.
Behind the confusion, behind the frustration, was a girl who had been so burned she stopped believing in the good in life. Her examples of love were tarnished, ruining an unbelievably amazing thing for her.
I wanted to change that. I wanted her to see how wonderful love could be. How it wasn’t scary or worthless. It wasn’t only set up to fail.
She kept Ali away from Aria under the guise of protecting him from heartbreak. No one hated love unless they were afraid of getting their heart broken again and again.
“Hello?” Una waved a hand in my face. “What don’t I get?”
Taking a deep breath, I launched into the speech I had been thinking about in my head for a while now. “I like you, Una. I have for a while.”
Her jaw dropped, her eyes turning wild with the fear I knew was coming.
“I think you’re interesting. You’re confident. You’re beautiful. You’re a leader. Someone people respect. Your loyalty is admirable. There’s a list a mile long I could go on about, but by the look on your face, I don’t think you want me to.” She looked utterly terrified by each sentence that came out of my mouth.
“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, though. I didn’t invite you here to dump all my feelings on you. That wasn’t the plan at all. And the car wasn’t part of it either. I didn’t do it to trick you into a date or anything. It was just out of the goodness of my heart, and to make sure you drove around in something that was safe. I promise.”
Una shook her head and stared down at the plate in front of her. For the first time I could ever recall, she was speechless.
I didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable by what I said. I said it, it was out there, and now we could move on. If that’s what she wanted.
