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His hand was warm on my hip, but a shiver still ran through me.
When I didn’t speak up, he continued. “Come August, kids will be returning to school. Practices will start up, and I’ll be in full-season football mode—practices, meetings, managing the staff and players. Addressing problems.”
I smiled to myself. I had caught only glimpses of Wyatt in coach mode, but I knew that on the field, he was in his element.
“Sounds busy.” I mentally started ticking off the tasks I knew I could help him with to make life easier. He’d need to keep his calendar tidy, and I would love the extra time I might have with Penny if her dad had an away game or late night.
“I think you should take the job.”
My tongue felt thick, and my heart dropped to my butt like a stone. All I could manage was a confused, “What?”
“The job. In LA. You should take it. There’s really no other choice.”
I straightened, bracing myself against the rocks and the chill that had settled over me.
This is it. The moment you hand your heart over and he laughs in your face and crushes it in his fist.
“I haven’t even submitted my callback. And there’s no guarantee that I’d even get the job.”
An all-too-familiar line formed on Wyatt’s forehead. “Then you should submit it. And of course you’ll get the job. I watched you convince an entire town that Bowlegs was having a torrid affair with a knockout like you. Jolly and Ant are still confident that you secretly married him for money.”
I laughed at the absurdity of the town rumor mill, but my stomach was tight.
Wyatt wanted me to leave, and this was his out.
“Oh, I... um. I guess I hadn’t really thought about LA in a while.”
Lie.
I had thought about it every single day and almost deleted the video more than once. I should have done it.
“Hey.” Wyatt edged closer and moved a wet piece of hair from my forehead before tipping my chin to look at him. “I don’twantyou to go. But you need to see this thing through. Set a goal and go get it. It’s what I did with football, and I got to live my dream because of it. Now it’s your turn.”
Tears swam in my eyes as I fought back a sob. Instead, I buried myself into the warmth of his shoulder so he wouldn’t see me fall to pieces.
Could I believe his words? That he didn’t really want me to go but thought it was best in the long run? Or were those just nice words so I wouldn’t feel the sting of him leaving me once summer was over?
He’d salvaged the rest of the evening by showering me with attention and sweet, reassuring words. The conversation with my mother and herwinds of change, along with the sinking feeling that, deep down, I might actually wonder how things would have turned out if I did submit my callback tape, nagged me.
I loved Wyatt. If that were real and true and meant to be, I had to believe it would all work out in the end.
So, despite every fiber of my being screaming that it was wrong, that night, while I lay alone in my bed, I pulled up the Grinstead Casting Agency email and finally hit send before I cried myself to sleep.
33
WYATT
“You look like shit, big brother.”My little sister, Kate, smiled down at me as her hand slapped on my shoulder.
I scooted out from the booth at the café and rose to wrap her in a bear hug. Her wavy brown hair had gotten longer, and she looked a little too thin, but she was finally home.
“Ol’ Catfish Katie is back in Outtatowner!”
She shoved me hard in the shoulder. “Knock it off with that shit!” She looked around the café to see if anyone had heard me. “It’s Kate.JustKate.”
“Yeah, okay.” She knew as well as I did that dumbass nicknames were about the only thing people remembered about you when you left. That and the time you stole your aunt’s car to do doughnuts in a parking lot just to accidentally break an axle when you lost control and slammed into the curb.
I grinned at her, remembering how afraid she was to tell Dad, and how I’d taken the heat for it so she could still go to prom.
