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“I’m surprised to see you here, honestly. When you weren’t back by the time I crashed, I figured you’d scored with your pretty little Bubbles and slept over.”
“I did. Or I was.” I lifted my water bottle and sucked it back before folding myself down on the workout bench nearby, leaning forward and propping my elbows on my knees. “We hooked up last night. Then this morning everything turned to shit.”
Romero leaned against the wall across from me, his arms folded over his chest. “You wanna talk about it or keep beating the hell out of yourself?”
I heaved out a sigh and drained the rest of the water before crushing the bottle in my hand and tossing it in the trash a few feet away.
“I don’t even know where to start.”
“How about with what happened this morning?”
I went through everything from waking up and thinking things were fucking perfect, realizing Presley wasn’t in the bed with me, then how everything took a wrong turn the moment she came out of the bathroom, and finally the fight that ensued before she inevitable kicked me out.
He rubbed at the back of his neck. “Jesus, man. That’s brutal. I’m sorry.”
“We’ve got history, and most of it’s been pretty ugly,” I admitted. “As much as I hate to say it, I get why she freakedout. I haven’t exactly had the best track record where she’s concerned.”
“You know, if I’m being honest, I don’t really understand the dynamics between you guys. I mean, it was clear from watching y’all that there’s something between you, but when I mentioned it, she jumped at a denial. Were you two friends? Something a little more?”
I brought my hand up, rubbing at the ache that suddenly bloomed in my chest when I thought back to everything that had happened between us over the years. “She moved to town when I was twelve, and I swear to Christ, Rome, from the first moment I laid eyes on her, I wanted her. It was like something sprang into place between us, a tether that bound me to her and made it impossible to get her out of my head. I’ll admit, I was a little shithead when I was a kid, and I did what all little shitheads did to the girls they crushed on.”
“You tortured her.”
“Yeah, basically.” The tiniest smile tugged at my lips as I thought back to all the times her face would get red right before she’d rip into me for being a little twerp. “I had a gift for pushing her buttons, and I got off on it. She was just so goddamn sweet to everyone. But when I jabbed, she went off. She didn’t cry or run to tell a teacher. She gave as good as she got.” I gave my head a little shake. “Most of the time, she gave even better. She was better than me, smarter, stealthier. I forced myself to compete with her as often as I could to see if I could live up to her standards, if I could be good enough. But I would have been lying if that didn’t come back to bite me in the ass a lot of the time.”
Romero’s brows winged up in curiosity. “How so?”
My heart beat hard, lodging itself in my throat as I thought back to one particular competition I hadn’t even meant to force us into.
“I’ve told you about my dad.”
Romero snorted, his top lip curling up in disgust. “That piece of shit? Yeah, on the rare occasion you got enough booze in you, you shared. Don’t know the guy well, but I know enough from you that it’s safe to say I hate the prick.”
“The feeling’s mutual. Believe me. Anyway, I knew if I had any chance of getting the hell away from him, I couldn’t be beholden to him for anything. That included college. He wanted to dictate where I went, what I majored in. Hell, even who I hung out with. I couldn’t stand the fucking thought of four more years under his thumb. His plan was for me to go to his alma mater, play ball where he did, where he was the big man on campus. Basically, he wanted me to live in his shadow. So I went behind his back and applied to OU. I ended up getting a sweet ride from OU. It wasn’t far enough away, but I could deal.”
It didn’t hurt matters either that I knew Presley had already been accepted there. “But if I disobeyed him, I knew he’d cut me off. The scholarship was great, but I needed money to live on, so I started to apply for every grant I was eligible for.”
His gaze lit with understanding. “Ah. And let me guess who else was going for those same grants.”
“If I’d known, I would have backed out, but by the time I found out, it was too late. Her folks weren’t as well off as mine. They couldn’t afford to simply write a check for her to go to college.” Christ, I still remember the day she got in my face about that one, how low I felt, how I wished I could make it all better for her.
“So that’s the deal with you guys? A couple grants?”
I scrubbed at my face, a dry, humorless laugh pushing from my chest. “Christ, I wish. It would have been a hell of a lot easier.”
I told him everything, from how I was finally building up the courage my senior year of high school to make a move beforemy father stepped in with his threats to ruin her father, basically taking a steaming shit on the only good thing I could have had in my sorry-ass life. I told him about college, how I fuckingfinallymade her mine, and how goddamn happy I’d been. Then I told him how my old man managed to ruin that for me as well.
“Jesus,” he grunted, rubbing at his temples like he was trying to sort through everything I’d dumped on him. “Talk about twisted.” His eyes met mine, full of bewilderment. “This is some daytime soap opera shit, man.”
“No shit,” I grunted, pushing up and moving to the glass-fronted mini fridge I kept stocked with water. I tossed a bottle to Romero before taking another one for myself and twisting it open. “When Dad called and she answered my phone that morning in my dorm room, my heart fell right out of my chest.”
“What did he do? He made another threat?”
If only.
I shook my head and forced down the lump that had formed in my throat as I thought back to that awful morning. “It started that way to get me to play ball. Threatened her parents again if I didn’t get rid of her.” Bitterness coated the words that came after that. “I did what that evil bastard wanted and made Presley feel like shit when I pushed her away, and you know what he did? That fucker went ahead and got her old man fired from the job he was on anyway. Just to prove he could. He didn’t go full out, of course, didn’t ruin his reputation completely, but he wanted me to see exactly what he was capable of if I didn’t do as he said. I lost the only girl I’d ever cared about, the only one I wanted to be with, and he did it anyway. To prove a fucking point.”
Romero blew out a “Fuck me,” on a deep breath. “Jesus, Beau. I knew your dad was a piece of shit, but this is next level. She thinks you rejected her. She let her guard down, let you in, and thinks you had a change of heart.”
