“Bailey.” I lean over to grab the apple piece she snatched off of my plate, but she’s already got the thing pulled to her mouth.
Her eyes go wide, and she tightens her little muscles in an attempt to hold on to it.
“Okay, okay. Hang on.” I pry it from her fingers, checking the ends to make sure no part of it will break off and turn it, letting her run her swollen gums across it. It doesn’t take long for it to soften, and I have to take it away.
She throws herself back on her blanket, and begins to fake cry, something she’s recently discovered helps her get what she wants.
“Bailey, baby girl. Stop.” I pick her up, but she bends her back, and if I didn’t have a good hold on her, she might have just fallen out of my arms. “It’s okay, mama. Shh.”
Bouncing my upper body, I pat her little butt, offering her Binky and slowly she starts to calm, but I can’t.
She’s been increasingly testy the last few days and I can’t help but feel like I’m at fault.
They say babies can sense stress, and I’ve been nothing but a basket case.
She’s sleeping less, as am I, and it’s not good for her.
It’s not good for either of us.
How can me doing what’s right by her feel so wrong when I look at her?
I run my palm over her soft hair, and slowly she settles against me.
Tears spring into my eyes and I look to the ceiling to stop them. I should place her in her bed, but I can’t bring myself to move. I just want to hold her a little longer.
But then there’s a knock on my door.
My breath lodges in my throat and I tense, begrudgingly easing Bailey down on her play pad beneath me.
A second knock comes, and I push to my feet, my pulse beating wildly.
Bianca has a key, so she wouldn’t knock.
There’s only one other person it could be, and I haven’t laid eyes on him since I looked into his and lied my ass off.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand as I reach for the handle, but even then I pause, wondering if he’ll give up and go away, but then a third knock follows and so I tug the door open.
My heart falls to my feet as I look up into a completely different pair of blue eyes.
“Where is he?” Coach Reid snaps. “Where is Tobias?”
My shoulders lift, and I shake my head. “I don’t know—”
“No lie,” he seethes, attempting to sidestep me into my house, but I snap out of it and slide with him.
I jerk out the door, tugging it closed behind me. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
He tugs back, brow raised. “Am I not allowed in your home?”
“No.” A humorless laugh leaves me. “You’re not.”
“I’m not, yet he is?”
My spine straightens and he narrows his eyes.
“You know nothing. You sit back and revel in the fact that I’m stuck under your thumb, the same way you tried to get Milo there.”
“Guess your brother is smarter than you are.”
“Not so easily manipulated is more like it.”
“Don’t blame your shitty decisions on me,” he snaps back. “We both know you repeatedly make them. I agreed to pay for your classes when you lost your scholarship after you got pregnant. Don’t fuck that up by fucking my star player!”
My organs shrivel inside me, and I look away. “I hate you.”
“Look … sweetheart, I don’t want to do this right now, just tell me if he’s in there.”
I bite into my cheek. “I haven’t seen him, not since I ‘made it simple.’”
He cocks his head, and I’m sure he’s going to call me a liar, but he doesn’t. The opposite, in fact.
The man nods. “I guess that makes sense.”
A frown creeps over me, and I want to ask him what he means, but I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of having the upper hand yet again.
Turns out I don’t have to because he always has it.
His understanding expression quickly morphs into one of constraint. “He slept through a game, missed two practices and four days’ worth of classes.”
Oh my god.
“They worked on research papers in history, and now he’s a draft behind. His final’s due by Wednesday.”
A sharp pain zings down my spine.
And there it is, the reason for his constraint, for his sharing this information with me.
I shake my head.
He nods his.
“No.”
“Meyer, yes.”
“There’s no way.”
“You will fix it.”
“No.”
“I didn’t give you an option.”
“I can’t.”
“I said fix it!” he screams.
I jump and his hands come up as he takes a calming breath.
“I’m …” He blows a harsh breath out his nose to calm himself. “I’m sorry, but Meyer, you will do this.”
“I won’t. I can’t be near him.”
He opens his mouth, but promptly clamps it shut as he narrows his eyes on me. “You fell for the kid … like actually fell for him, as if it could ever happen for you two.”
My jaw clenches, but I say nothing, and he laughs, but it’s mocking.
He lifts his hat, then slowly puts it back on. “You’ll work with him the next two days. Do that, and I’ll transfer you back into your old department. Don’t do it and he fails, loses eligibility—”
“And you lose your championship.”
His eyes narrow. “Yeah, you’re right, but think of the boy, huh? Since you’ve been loose with your morals, yet again, put yourself in his shoes. You have the chance to help him, and it’ll be on your conscience if you don’t.”
Tears form in my eyes without permission. “This will do more harm than good, you have to know that. It might help you through this final stretch, but what happens to him after that?”
“That will be his problem.”
“He trusts you.”
“And he lost that when he let a girl get in the way of his game.”
“Some people are human on the inside, not machines.”
“Some people are stupid.” He walks backward. “I’ll tell him where to be and when.”
“What if he doesn’t show?”
His feet halt where he stands, his tone one of resentment. “We both know he will.”
I look away and then he’s gone.
And because I seem to be drawn to pain, I go inside, open my computer, and go straight to the university newspaper page.
My heart drops as I read over the articles from the last week, every one of them blasting Tobias and documenting his ‘downward spiral’ as they’re calling it.
There are shots of him fighting on the field, walking into the bar, and even one of him passed out on the courtyard picnic table.
My chest grows tight, it’s as if a sheath of anguish is suffocating me from the inside out.
I did this.
I stole his happy and if I don’t do what’s being asked of me, I’ll be responsible for stealing his future. He has no idea the man he admires is a malicious asshole who’ll destroy him if he’s wronged. Nothing is more important to Tobias than this next step, then accomplishing the goal he set out to make, to achieve what so many have sworn he couldn’t.
Tobias is made up of dirt and sweat, of the game, and without it, he’ll be lost.
It’s his life, his future.
I can’t let it slip away.
I have to help him, no matter how much it breaks me in return.
My stomach is in my throat, my heart is at my feet, and my mind is as muddled as ever.
I knew, just as the man who sent him knew, that he would show up today.
It’s a sick kind of torture, but a necessary one.
I’ve had my laptop open and notes out on the picnic table for the last ten minutes. I’ve tried to speak, to engage in work-related conversation, but Tobias has yet to say a word.
He hasn’t opened his bag.
In fact, I’m not even sure he brought his bag.
The man has yet to move.
But he’s staring.
His eyes are searing my skin, making my nerves dance on end and my muscles tight at every angle.
Clearing my throat, I try not to fidget or shake as I turn my laptop toward him, but his hands fly forward, and I yank mine back just in time for him to slam the screen closed.
My eyes jump to his and his glare sharpens.
“Are you for real right now?” he snaps, his palms tightening into a fist on the tabletop.
He stares, the anger in his gaze fighting to hold still, but dissolving with each passing second. He’s waiting for me to respond, to say something, anything, I imagine, but I couldn’t speak if I tried.
Because now that I’ve looked up, finally meeting his deep blue eyes, my insides liquify. Everything stings, burns like a festering open wound a sharp point is being pressed into.
He has dark circles that only come from lack of sleep, his normal scruff is five times sharper, and he might have even lost a few pounds. But none of those compare to the lost look in his eyes.
The confusion.
The hurt.
The hate?
“Talk to me.” His forearms clench. “Talk to me …”
“Tobias, please.”
“Don’t. Don’t Tobias me.” He jerks forward, reaching for my hand, but I pull it back, placing it in my lap and the ache in his gaze reflects the feeling in my chest. “Why are you doing this?”
“Stop.”
“I won’t. I’m fucking not.” He shoots to his feet, stepping around the table, slowly dropping to his knee beside me, forcing us eye to eye.
My pulse pounds against my temple, in my throat. Everywhere. All over, and it only gets stronger when his knuckle comes up, squeezing my lungs and bringing my gaze to his.
A harsh, choppy hiss slips past my lips and I clamp them shut.
“Talk to me.” He frowns.
“You should go.”
“I said I’m not, so stop trying.”
My resolve is cracking, so I jerk free, shoot to my feet, and shove my things in my bag, but he stops me, so I let it all go and take off.
“Meyer!” he shouts, dashing after me, but his voice grows farther away. “Damn it, Meyer. Hold on!”
I pick up the pace, thankful the place we met is on the edge of campus and all I have to do is make it across the yard, through the alleyway and into my front door.
His footsteps thump behind me, so I start to run.
I forget to look down the road before I cross and scream when a car comes close to hitting me, having to swerve out of the way as I dash into the street.
“Fuck! Meyer!”
Tears stream down my face and my body shakes, but I keep running.
I hear him shout something at the driver, as if it was their fault, and what sounds like a fist against a hood, but I don’t look back.
I’m at my front door a minute later, reaching out and gripping the knob, and then his large palm comes down over mine, freezing me there.
My bag is tossed at my feet, and he grips my upper arm, jerking me around with a gentle force.
“What’s the matter with you?” he nearly shouts. “You almost got hit!”
“Go.”
“Stop telling me to go.”
“I can’t …” My chest heaves. “Please, I can’t.”
“Can’t what?” he asks, and the longer he stares, the more his shoulders fall. “Can’t what, baby?”
“Leave!” I scream, my cheeks warm with my own tears and Tobias jerks away from me, his eyes roaming my face as he backs up, giving me the space I’m demanding but don’t really want.
“What’s really going on, Meyer?”
His tone is so soft, my cries are no longer silent, but breaking through my throat.
He opens his mouth to speak, but the door at my back creaks as he does, and Bianca meets my eyes, a question in hers.
Should she stay or go?
My lip twitches, and I nod, so she slips out, squeezing my arm with worry in her gaze.
It’s okay, B. Go.
She nods back, climbs into her car and pulls away.
We both watch her go, needing that free second to breathe, but then her taillights are out of sight, and all that’s left is us.
Tobias rubs at the scruff on his jaw, slowly looking to me.
“I don’t want you here.” I manage to keep my voice from breaking. “Please go.”
“I don’t get it,” he mutters, defeat weighting every part of him down. “What did I do? I’ve replayed every minute I’ve spent with you over and over again and I don’t get it. Was it the article? Or maybe the party? I only wanted to show you off to my friends. If you weren’t ready for that you should have told me. I just … I thought you were comfortable with us and that you might have needed a night out with people your age, that maybe you’d enjoy it, but I don’t need that,” he rushes. “I don’t. I can give up all that.”
“Tobias, please.”
“I know I fucked up, I-I know I’m not someone who deserves you.” He looks away, self-loathing drawing his features tight and making him pace. “But I thought, with you I thought maybe I was … god, I am just a fucking jackass.”
I don’t mean to, but my body moves one step toward him, and it’s a move he doesn’t miss.
His gaze slices to mine, and I think he’s stopped breathing.
I should move backward, heed the warnings whispering in my head by reclaiming the space between us, but the broken man in front of me drowns out the voices, freezing me in place.
His jaw clenches, his fingers twitching at his sides and slowly, very, very slowly, he inches toward me.
My hands plaster themselves on the door, and I’m not sure I’m breathing.
He starts to say something but is cut off by Bailey’s soft cry from inside.
A burning sense of relief shoots through me and I spin, rushing for her room, but it was a false alarm.
She was searching for her Binky, and she found it, her eyes still closed and her breathing once again soft.
I hang my head in my hands, tears pricking my eyes and slipping from the edges as I try not to make a sound, praying he’s gone when I walk out of the room.
He’s not, and what’s worse.
He’s inside, standing right outside her room, the weight of the world resting on his wide shoulders.
I close Bailey’s door and he steps closer.
I shuffle to the side, desperate for air that isn’t infused with his scent, but he catches me by the arm, holding me back.
“Tobias.”
“Tutor Girl,” he rasps, swallowing as he shuffles closer.
God, he’s such a beautifully broken man.
Misery blanketing his features, and hopefulness lining his eyes, he reaches up to touch my face, wincing as I wince.
Shaking as I shake.
“Don’t make this harder.”
“Don’t deny me when you want me.”
My muscles twist, a tornado whirling in my abdomen as the caution sirens blare in my head. My hand shoots up, latching onto his wrist and I clench my eyes closed.
“Please,” he breathes, the heat of his body nearer. “Baby, please.”
My nostrils flare with a fraught, rocky inhale. “You don’t understand … I can’t.”
He’ll never allow this …
“Please,” he begs, his lips skating along mine, they’re so close.
“I can’t.”
He’ll destroy my entire world …
“I’m losing my mind. I’m fucking fried. I can’t think, eat, sleep.” His hands begin to tremble. “Tell me you don’t feel the same and I’ll walk away, right now.” He shifts closer. “Say the word, baby, and I’m gone. I swear, just … say it. Tell me you don’t love me back.”
I shake my head, my eyes opening, locking onto his as I crack from the inside out, my words repeated, but this time as a tender confession. “I can’t.”
