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I clear my throat. “Yeah.”
“I didn’t come all this way to thank you for a painting, Saylor.”
“I know. You came to issue an ultimatum.”
“It’s not an ultimatum.”
I straighten. “It sounded like an ultimatum.”
“Well, it wasn’t one.” His hand lands on my knee, a warm weight I don’t want to shake. “Me wanting you doesn’t mean much if you don’t want this too. Me coming here doesn’t matter if you keep running away.”
I glance around the field. Everyone has gone now, thankfully. I grab his wrist and lie down, pulling him with me.
“No stars again,” Beck comments.
I laugh. “Shut up.”
“I missed you too,” he says. “You hung up before I could say it.”
I gnaw on the inside of my cheek. “Hallie was calling me to take more photos. I didn’t call planning to hang up on you, if it makes any difference.”
“That was your dad earlier?”
“Yeah. He came up for a game, with his new wife.”
“About damn time.” There’s bitterness in Beck’s voice—bitterness on my behalf—and it hits me square in the center of my chest.
I’m used to Hallie coaxing me toward peace. My best friends spent last night making polite chitchat with my dad. No one has ever told me my resentment toward my father is valid. With three words, Beck just made it clear to me that’s how he feels. I knew he understood my commitment to soccer. But it’s hitting me all over again, how he really knows me.
I clear my throat. “How’s your family?”
“Good. Sophia asks about you a lot.”
“Is she still dating Karl?”
“No. That appears to have ended for good, thankfully. She’s talking about taking a break from boys, but that’s never lasted long in the past. Sophia is…Sophia.” Affection floods Beck’s tone. “She wants to text you, but I told her not to. Guess she listened, for once.”
“Why not? She can text. It’d be nice to hear from her.”
“Because you talking to my sister but not to me would have been terrible for my ego.”
“Please. Your ego is just fine.”
He rolls his head toward me. “Do you think I do this shit with other women, Saylor? Because I don’t.”
“You brought lots of other women to meet your family. You told me. So did Sophia.”
“That was different. There were a few years…a few years where I needed the distraction. When it was way easier to bring a girl over to my parents’ than talk to them about how overwhelmed I was. I was a kid. Those girls…none of them meant anything to me. I knew you’d be different the second you commented about my shoulder.”
“You were that sure I’d go for the asshole, how dare you talk to me act, huh?”
“I’ve never been sure about anything when it comes to you, Saylor, except you’re the one person who can make lying in the grass feel more thrilling than skydiving.”
My eyebrows rise, surprised. “You’ve been skydiving? Or is that a metaphor?”
“Once,” he tells me. “It was a rush.”
“You weren’t worried about breaking a leg?”
