AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You ready for this?” I asked him.
He didn’t answer right away, staring down at Mira for a moment. When he looked back up at me, there was a haunted look in his eyes. “What the hell do you think?”
I exhaled slowly. That was the point, wasn’t it? Neither of us particularly wanted to be here; it was salt in a wound that we didn’t really want to reopen. But to not come would have somehow been worse.
The elevators dinged, and when Charlotte rushed toward us with an apologetic look, I forgot how to breathe.
Because the game was in the evening and the weather had cooled as the week had gone on, Charlotte’s long legs were encased in tight, dark denim. On her feet were perfectly white sneakers. Her hair was pulled off her face, braided and tied high at the back of her head.
She was wearing more makeup than I’d ever seen on her. Lush black lashes, eyes lined and smudged with something dark and smoky gray. Her lips were glossy and pink.
And she was wearing one of my jerseys.
“Well, then,” Liam drawled, “this explains a lot.”
I elbowed him in the side.
Charlotte eyed me as she approached, no doubt still trying to figure out where the hell my head was at after the time apart, and after that strangely intimate scene in the store.
I was trying to figure out where my head was too, and her looking like that while she waswearing my jerseydidn’t help matters one fucking bit.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” she said on a rush. She smiled at Liam. “I’m Charlotte. I’m here with ... him.”
He narrowed his gaze as she shook his hand. “Liam Davies.”
Charlotte glanced down at Mira, her eyes going soft and sad. “And you must be MissMira.” She crouched down and held out her hand. Chris’s little girl took it with a giggle.
She reached forward and touched the end of the red braid draped over Charlotte’s shoulder. “Red.”
I’d called her that a few times, and Charlotte glanced up at me with a twinkle in her eye. “That’s right.”
“We ready?” Liam asked.
Charlotte nodded.
We fell in step beside each other as we left the hotel, Liam hoisting Mira up onto his hip as a driver from the school opened the car door to help us in. The stadium was only about a mile away, but with the crowds downtown and Mira in tow, we’d decided to take them up on their offer to drive us as close as possible.
Because Charlotte sat next to me on the bench seat of the immaculate SUV, her shoulder brushed against my arm.
“You’re wearing my jersey,” I said, keeping my voice low and my eyes straight ahead.
She inhaled slowly. “I am.”
My jaw clenched tight. I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to tell her how beautiful she was.
I wanted to tell her that she looked like she was mine.
Fuck. My hands curled into fists on my lap.
“Where did you find it?” I sounded like I was talking with a throat coated in glass shards.
She crossed her legs, the one over top brushing against mine.
“Online,” she whispered. “I had to look a little bit, but”—she turned toward me, her expression unreadable in the shadowed car—“I wanted to wear something of yours.”
I tore my gaze away and focused on the busy sidewalks, the never-ending crowds of people wearing maize and blue.
What was happening? I didn’t know what any of this meant. If it meant anything at all.
