AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My eyes must give away my thoughts because he starts backpedaling real quick. “You misunderstand me, Finn. You should take it as a compliment. That’s how I meant it.”
I jostle in my seat; this conversation is too intimate, and I want to be anywhere but hereoron the basketball court outside this office.
“I don’t know the details, but you’re worked up. Stressed. Whatever’s going on in your mind, you need to fix it. Right the situation.”
Coach’s words are wise but will change nothing.
He points to his head. “Repair whatever’s going on here first, then everything back out there will come together.” His finger moves in my direction. He’s referring to the court on the other side of the wall.
Coach is right, but I wish he wasn’t. I don’t want anything other than to be happy again and the longer I sit here, the more I realize I haven’t been in a while.
Not since my little family left me…
Basketball helped the first time, but it was also as much of a distraction as the girls who would endlessly rotate themselves out of my bed every night for years.
None of them matched the contentment I’ve had these last few months.
Not a single one.
I shove up from my seat. “I’ve got to go.”
Coach doesn’t try to hold me back, not that he could, because I am already halfway out of the office and reaching for the headphones in my bag as I pass my agent.
He mentions something, but I don’t hear it because I’m too busy scrolling on my phone for a decent playlist.
A laugh escapes me, bubbling right up and out from nothing as I realize something. The shock catches me so off guard I nearly scare myself. I’ve been scrolling for what I swear is forever but is only minutes when a thumbnail cover of an ocean comes up.
I can’t focus on the song because all I can see is the stupid picture and what Hailey’s dad said to me in the hospital. I rip the headphones off my ears and replace them with the car keys I had shoved in my bag.
Who needs music when I know there’s only one thing that can help me and it’s not the harmonized voices to some lyrics? I haven’t needed music to fill the void for months…
Not since the first part of summer.
fifty-one
Hailey
CHAPTERFIFTY-ONE
Hailey
“You know your food would taste better if you actually ate it while it’s still hot, right?”
I blink, slowly turning my gaze away from the sliding glass doors and down at the full plate of food below me.
My mother frowns. “Not hungry?”
“The tides are turning,” I answer instead, as I shove my fork back and forth, pretending like I’m interested in taking a bite.
“Are they? I hadn’t noticed.”
Of course, she has. My mother and I have always been alike in this sense. Both of us are obsessed with the water. Besides, I know what she’s doing. The game she’s playing at.
I’m not in the mood to share what’s really going on, so I play along. Deflecting again and not explaining what she’s been trying to get out of me since she, Aiden and I came back.
“High tide,” I state, inclining my head. The end to another day. The routine of expecting this one thing is as easy as breathing in the saltiness of the air outside.
This is home. If the ocean is my soil, I’ve chosen to plant my roots here for both my son and me.
