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But now I know that she’s like me.
If her tears today, the heartbreak in her eyes are any indication, she’s been stuck in the past like me. And all I have done is make things even more difficult for her.
What kind of an asshole am I, huh?
What kind of a fucking asshole am I who’d do something like that?
What kind of an asshole not only breaks a heart but repeatedly stomps on it?
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Chapter Eleven
Three years ago, I saw a guy on the soccer field and fell instantly in love.
Despite the fact that he was my brother’s rival and someone my brother absolutely hated. Despite the fact that a few days later, at our first interaction, I hated him as well and promised myself that I’d get over him and move on.
I didn’t.
At least not right away.
Instead what I did was the exact opposite: I ran after him. I chased him around. I did everything that I could to make him love me back. The only explanation that I have as to why I did all of that is that I was foolish. And naïve, and believed in fairy tales and romance novels. I believed, despite all the initial signs, that there could be more to him than being an asshole jock. After all, look what he had to live through and overcome. Look how similar he is to my own brother, whom I love to pieces.
So I decided to give him another chance.
Which meant following him around. Showing up at his soccer games and practices — much to my brother’s dismay. Showing up at his house to hang out with his sister, although I will say that me hanging out with Callie wasn’t only because of her brother; I would’ve done that regardless because she was my best friend, but still.
It also meant when I couldn’t show up to see him — because I lived at a boarding school in New York and he was in Bardstown — I’d text him or call him, DM him on social media. All in the hopes that he’d see me as more than his rival’s little sister.
Because that’s how he saw me most of the time.
Most of the time, he called me his pretty little stalker — when he wasn’t calling me his Firefly — and dismissed me. I’d show up at his games and he’d barely pay me any attention. I’d show up at his parties and he’d be too busy with his friends to spare me a glance. I’d text him and sometimes he’d answer hours later and when he did deign to answer back, he’d be standoffish and condescending and low-key threaten me to use these texts against my brother.
He never did though.
He never outed the biggest secret that I’d been keeping from my brother — that I was obsessed with his enemy.
And like a crazy little fool, I took that as a positive sign.
I took it as ‘he’s got more to him than he wants me to see.’
Especially when he’d do something sweet — out of the blue and totally randomly. Like the time he got really mad at me for driving down from New York for his game when there was a storm. Or when he got jealous and warn his teammates off me at parties. Or all the times I’d go to see Callie and he’d practically order me to sleep over because it was so late.
All those times, I wanted to tell him.
I wanted to say that I loved him. That I’d loved him since day one, since the very first moment I saw him.
But I’d refrain.
I wanted everything to be perfect. I wanted to be confident and secure that he’d say those words back to me.
So when, thirteen months ago, he showed up at my dorm room in the middle of the night, unexpectedly and out of the blue, I thought that was it. I thought that was the night when he’d tell me that he loved me and I’d finally get to tell him too. And my confidence and my happiness only grew when before I could even blink, his mouth was on me, giving me my first kiss and simultaneously taking all my breaths away.
I mean why else would he have been kissing me, right?
He’d never done that before. And neither had he ever come for me or chased me around or initiated any contact with me. I’d been the only one doing the chasing up until that point. So all signs were pointing toward him being there for what I hoped he was there for.
Somehow we ended up on the bed, with me naked and spread open, half out of my mind with joy.
And lust.
And need and love.
But then he said something. Something about not wearing a condom, which multiplied my joy. Because of course that had been my dream, right?
