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“I bet,” she said, that tiny smile still on her lips as she continued to stare out at the horizon. I would have liked to have her eyes on me, but at this point, I’d take what I could get. “And you never came back? Not even once, just to visit?”
I shook my head, bending my knees toward the sky and draping my forearms over them. “Nope. Not until I moved back.”
“Why did you? Move back, that is.” Apparently, I was the only one struggling to find the courage to bring up the harder topics. Presley dove right in. “If you wanted out of this place so badly that you didn’t come back once in ten years, why come back now?”
“My job?—”
She gave me a look that let me know she thought I was full of it. “I get that OU is right around the corner, but you could have lived closer to the university.” Leave it to the girl who never hesitated to challenge to call me on my bullshit.
There wasn’t going to be a more perfect opportunity if I’d created it myself. Breathing deeply, pulling that fresh, salty air into my lungs, I answered her as honestly as possible.
“You don’t live closer to the university.” Her chest stuttered on a broken gasp as her head whipped around in my direction. “Truth is, I thought about living somewhere else, somewhere... not here. But I knew I couldn’t set myself up one town over when I knew you’d be here.”
Something flickered in her eyes, something almost sad, before she blinked it away and looked across the water. Her throat worked on a swallow. “Don’t,” she said hoarsely, like she had to drag that one word out.
“Presley—”
“Just stop, Beau,” she said, almost pleading. “I don’t know what game this is, but I don’t want to play.”
Christ, I was such an asshole. I took a deep breath, willing my heart to stop knocking so fucking hard against my ribs. We sat in silence, the air around us tense and full of static electricity, before it finally became too much for me. “You didn’t tell Colbie about us.”
Her eyes rounded, growing cartoonishly wide. “What?” she asked in bewilderment. “Of course I didn’t. There’s nothing to tell. It didn’t mean anything.” She pulled in a sharp breath. “Wait. You didn’t say anything, did you?”
I shook my head, trying my best to ignore the stabbing ache in my chest. “No. I didn’t tell her.” Her whole body slumped on a sigh of relief that fucking killed me. “But it sure as hell meant something to me.”
She shook her head, either in disgust or disappointment. “Well, you sure have a fucked-up way of showing it,” she clipped, the brown of her eyes turning to cinnamon as her anger rose. “You know, you’ve got a lot of nerve showing up all these years later and bringing that night up, like it was something more than it was. Like it was somehow special.”
My jaw ticked. “It was,” I said on a low growl. “Itwasspecial.”
She barked out an indignant laugh, shaking her head in shame. “I thought it was. At least until we woke up the next morning and you did what you always do.” She reached up and tried dragging her hands through her hair in frustration before remembering it was tied up. She quickly yanked the elastic out, her movements jerky and agitated as she threw it back up, this time twisting it into a knot on the top of her head. “You know what? I’m not doing this.”
I quickly shot to my feet when she did, my heart sinking into my stomach as she snatched the mat up and shook it out before she started rolling it up.
“Bubbles, I didn’t?—”
“Don’tcall me that!” she shouted, her words picked up and carried along the waves. “God, do you really get that much of a kick out of watching me suffer?” She threw her arms wide, dropping the mat in the process. “Oh, there’s Presley, living her life,” she said in a deep, mocking tone. “Wonder what I can do to ruin her day today.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do. Presley, I know I fucked up, and I’m sorry.”
“It’s not you, it’s me. I’m the idiot who let myself think there was actually more to you than what you’d shown me time and time again, year after year. I’m the dumbass who let myself be fooled. The poor, pathetic cliched college girl who lost her virginity to the hotshot football player.” Her laugh was full of pain, and I felt it flay me open. “Honestly, what did I expect to happen?”
“That night meant something to me,” I gritted out, my molars grinding together so hard I was afraid I might crack them all.
“You have a funny way of showing it,” she said dryly. “I let you fool me twice, Beau. But you know what? It isn’t going to happen again.”
I was losing her, she was about to run away from me. The panic gripping my chest threw me into action, and I reacted without thinking. My arm shot out. My fingers wrapped around the back of her neck, and I did the one thing I’d wanted to do every day since walking into that reunion and seeing her for the first time in ten years.
I yanked her against me and slammed my mouth down on hers in a kiss that I’d been craving for more than a decade.
Chapter Fourteen
BEAU
Past
I tookmy time in the showers, standing under the spray with my head hanging down for so long that by the time I toweled off and walked into the locker room, it had cleared out and I was the only one left.
I’d taken my time, moving as slow as possible on purpose because I didn’t want to deal with what I knew was coming. I was in a shitty mood, and it didn’t have a damn thing to do with our loss tonight. We were still eight and one with a clear path to the playoffs, but none of that was going to matter. Hell, the fact that we were still the number one ranked team, that no other school had a record as good as ours, wouldn’t matter either. Not to him. Even with every game we won, my bastard of a father would still find a reason to bitch and belittle me. Tonight’s loss was going to add fuel to that fire.
