“You look like you’re going to throw up.”
I glared at my brother, who grabbed the waste bin on the other side of his hotel bed and put it on the mattress between us, patting the plastic assuredly.
“I’m not going to throw up.”
“I don’t know, sweetie,” Mom said, sitting on the edge of the bed and placing the back of her hand against my forehead. Her hair was the same deep shade of brown as my own, thick and silky other than the bit of gray peppering the roots. She was slight like me, too, barely making a dip in the mattress when she sat next to me. “You do look a little pale.”
Gavin stifled a laugh as I peeled Mom’s hand off my head and pinched his side.
“I’m fine,” I said, with more of a bite than I intended. I forced a soothing breath before smiling at my mother. “I promise. Just a little nervous.”
“That’s to be expected,” Dad said, sitting on the arm of the couch behind Mom. He pulled her halfway into his lap, wrapping his arms around her waist while she smiled and leaned into him in return. “Our baby girl. Playing in the Blackberry Bowl on New Year’s Eve!”
Mom teared up immediately, swiping her tears away as soon as they fell. “We’re so proud of you.”
Dad’s eyes shone with that pride as he assessed me, like he was just realizing I wasn’t a little girl anymore. His eyes were the same shade as mine, a warm brown laced with green and gold, and looking at the two humans who gave me life and helped me get where I was today made me loose a sigh.
My annoyance faded altogether, and I smiled — genuinely for perhaps the first time in weeks. “Thanks, guys.”
“And Zeke!” Mom added, clapping her hands together with stars in her eyes.
My stomach dropped.
“He’s going to have a record-breaking return,” Dad said. “I can feel it.”
That genuine smile I’d worn was gone now, replaced by one that fell as flat as a pancake.
“You sure you don’t want to get the vomiting out now?” Gavin asked, nudging the waste bin toward me again.
I smacked his arm as our parents laughed, Dad giving Mom’s backside a little love tap as they both stood. “We’re going to run out and grab something for dinner. You sure you can’t join us?” Mom asked me.
“Can’t. Team meeting soon, just came to say hi.”
“Well, we’ll have plenty of time to hang out after the game tomorrow night,” she said, kissing my forehead. “And celebrate.”
She winked at me when she stood, grabbing her purse as I tried to overcome the nerves that were riddling my stomach. She started singing “Celebration” by Kool & The Gang, wiggling her hips with her hands in the air, and Dad joined in on the chorus one time before laughing at the deadpan looks Gavin and I gave them.
“Any requests, Gav?” Dad asked on their way out.
“Not seafood.”
“Sushi? Got it!” Mom said, and they giggled themselves into the hallway, shutting the door behind them.
Gavin poked a thumb over his shoulder. “Your parents.”
I smiled, leaning back into the stack of pillows against the headboard. I didn’t mean to, but as soon as it was quiet, I slipped into my thoughts, a tornado of kicking drills and game circumstances that might land me in a sticky situation. I ticked through the weather report, noting the wind possibilities, and visualized my kick being good each time I kicked it despite the Louisville Thunder defenders’ attempt to block it.
Somewhere along the way, those thoughts drifted from football to Zeke — a pattern I should have been used to at this point but was still immensely annoyed by. I thought time would help, thought distancing myself would start to patch every tear he’d left behind.
But when you’re on the same team with the person who broke you, there is no such thing as true distance.
Every day, I saw him. Every day, I watched him pull his shirt overhead, watched his muscles flex as he replaced it with a practice jersey or pads or nothing at all before stalking to the shower. I heard his voice calling out encouragement to our teammates, smelled his body wash when he brushed past me, felt his eyes on me when I was doing everything I could to keep mine off him.
He was inescapable.
And the worst part was that I wouldn’t escape him even if I could.
The masochistic part of me was thankful to have those stolen moments, to run into him in the weight room or kneel next to him in the team huddle. I longed for an accidental brush of our hands, or to look at him and catch him staring at me.
I wanted to know he still wanted me, too.
It was sick — that much I knew. Just like it was sick that I clung to him the day Coach told us we were playing in the bowl game, that I cried and held onto him, silently begging him to fix it, to fix me when he was the one responsible for the damage.
His words that day had haunted me every second since they left his lips. Everything he said was sincere, that I knew just from how he suffered getting them out.
I just wished his apology was enough.
“Okay, now I’m not even joking — you really look like you’re about to vom.”
Gavin’s voice snapped me back to the present, and I sighed, managing a small smile. “I told you, I’m fine.”
“Liar.”
“Just nervous.”
“Liar.”
I frowned at him. “Don’t be mean.”
“I’m not, just calling you out for what you are.”
“Gav—”
“I know about you and Zeke.”
My mouth hung open, and then I slowly closed it, swallowing and considering my next words carefully. “What about us?”
“Everything.”
Panic lodged in my throat, but it was erased quickly, washed away by fury as I gritted my teeth. “He told you.”
“I pried it out of him,” Gavin clarified. “And only because I told him I could handle you lying to me, but not him.”
“I wasn’t lying,” I started, but then I sighed, noting Gavin’s expression. “I didn’t mean to lie. I just… we weren’t sure what it all was. And when we figured it out…”
“Everything blew up. Yeah, I know the whole story, so spare me.”
I crossed my arms. “Okay, well, if you’re not going to yell at me for… whatevering with your best friend, then why are you attacking me like I’m on trial?”
“Because I’m sick of seeing you mope around. You and Zeke, both.”
I rolled my eyes. “Sorry my mood offends you.”
“It’s not your mood. It’s your attitude, and your stubbornness, and the fact that you could both put this behind you and be happy the way you wanted to if you’d just sit down and talk. And listen.”
“We’ve talked,” I said. “And it doesn’t change what he did.”
“And what exactly did he do?”
“He—”
“Before you say he stole my paper, I want you to think really hard on that and consider if it’s true.”
I sighed. “Gavin, I don’t want to do this. Especially not now.”
“Too bad. I do.”
“I have a big game tomorrow.”
“And you have a conversation with your twin brother tonight.”
I fumed. “He was careless. And selfish. And lazy. I showed him my paper to give him a place to start, to give him ideas, and instead he abused my trust and copied enough to warrant both of us getting suspended from the team and almost from school.” I threw my hands up before letting them smack against my thighs. “Like — what are you missing here?”
“Do you really think he meant to do it? That he did it to hurt you?”
“No,” I said instantly. “I think he did it to help himself. He wasn’t thinking of anyone else.”
“Sure about that?”
The way Gavin asked that question, one brow arching into his hairline, it made me flush so hard I unzipped my midwear jacket. I knew there was no way Zeke would have told him about that particular part of that day, how Zeke was rushing through that paper so he could have time with me before a long day.
But it made me think of it, of the role I played, of how I might have acted if he was teasing me like that.
I shook my head. “Zeke and I are fine,” I lied. “Okay? We’ve come to an understanding. He gives me my space, I give him his, we’re teammates. That’s it.”
“That’s not it. Not for either of you. And you’re both making yourself sick trying to convince yourself otherwise.”
Any attempt at an argument died in my throat at his words, at the memory of Zeke holding me under that cloudy sky as I clung to him just as much.
“Riley, I want you to think about it — really think about it. You know Zeke. You know his family, and ours, how different they are. Think about how he cared for both of us growing up, how he treats our parents like they’re his own, how he did everything to help me adjust to life after the accident.”
“That he was responsible for.”
“And he wasn’t the only one!” Gavin shook his head, exhausted. “I was just as much at fault as he was.”
My stomach turned, the memory of my birthday flashing in my mind. But Gavin didn’t know about that, didn’t know what Zeke had told me.
“I got in the driver’s seat hammered that night,” Gavin continued.
Hearing it from him struck me even harder than when Zeke had told me, and I closed my eyes on a hot exhale.
“I damn near crashed the car myself. And Zeke stepped up because he figured out of the two of us, he was the most sober.” Gavin’s nose flared. “It was a stop sign hidden behind a low-hanging tree, Riley. Even in broad daylight, it’s hard to see. Car accidents can happen to anyone, at any time, regardless of intoxication. Zeke didn’t even have enough booze in his system to blow above the legal limit. Did you ever think of that? He’d have been in jail or juvie, at best, if he had, would have had to pay off a D.U.I. in more ways than one.”
I sobered at that, a thought I hadn’t even considered — likely because I’d been so caught up in what had happened to Gavin that I couldn’t think straight. I never stopped to sift through the details of everything, to think about the intersection and how it was known for being dangerous.
I just wanted someone to blame.
Zeke was the easy target.
“I know it hurt you to see that happen to me, and trust me, it killed me, too,” he confessed. “But — look at me,” he said, smiling as he spread his hands out over himself. “I’m here. I’m alive. I’m happy. I’ve got a great girl, a great group of friends to play basketball with, and a great future ahead of me.” He paused. “And I know even if I wasn’t okay, I’d have Zeke. And that alone tells me I can make it through anything.”
I picked at my fingernails, digesting everything he’d said.
“Zeke struggles in school. He struggles more than I think you understand.”
Those words sank into my skin slowly, like a remedy clearing the fog I’d been living in for weeks now.
Another thing I hadn’t considered.
How Zeke’s dyslexia might have played into the way he wrote the end of that paper.
If he was cross-referencing mine, if he was trying to rush to hurry… he could have easily mixed things up.
But if that was the case, why wouldn’t he just tell me that?
I almost laughed at myself the moment the thought crossed my mind.
He wouldn’t tell me because he wouldn’t be trying to pass the blame or make an excuse. Just like the night of the accident, he was accepting full fault.
And he thought he deserved every bit of punishment I was dishing out.
“Look,” Gavin said after a moment. “You can hold onto this forever. You can use it as an excuse to not give yourself what you really want, to deny yourself and Zeke happiness, to attest you’re doing the right thing by punishing him for his mistake. But that’s all it was, Sis. A mistake.”
Emotion surged in my chest, tears pricking the corners of my eyes.
“Or,” he countered. “You can forgive. Forgive, and understand that we’re human. We’re not perfect. And one day when you make a mistake, you’ll want someone to afford you the same grace.”
I closed my eyes, trapping what moisture had gathered in them as I let out a long, slow breath. I thought about that first game I blew, how Zeke forgave me without a second thought, how he didn’t even consider that I was less than, that I was a failure, that I no longer had what it took to be a starter.
He saw my potential the entire time.
Not only that — but he had been hell bent on making sure I saw it, too.
And Gavin was right. Us, me and him, our parents — we’d been like a safe haven to Zeke ever since we met him. Not that his parents weren’t amazing, because they were. But when he needed a break from the pressure, when he needed someone to love him exactly as he was.
He came to us.
And even if you hate me for the rest of your life, I need you to know that I love you.
Zeke’s words slammed into me like a train, so hard and unexpected that I gasped and covered my aching chest with both hands.
He loved me.
He loved me, and I’d turned my back on him, judging and executing him at the first sign of him not being perfect.
Because that’s what it had been before that day everything crashed down — perfect.
I’d let my stubbornness keep me from comforting him, from seeing the truth that he didn’t mean to hurt me. That pride wouldn’t even let me consider forgiveness, let alone give it to him.
I’d pushed him away in the name of protecting myself, all the while ignoring everything he’d given me, and the fact that he needed me, too.
When I opened my eyes again, it was like putting on glasses after walking around blind for weeks. I looked over at my brother, and then, without warning, I launched myself at him.
He caught me in his arms with a surprised oof, chuckling a little as he held me in a tight hug.
“It’s okay,” he said.
And that broke me.
I cried like I’d never cried in my life, and for the first time, I didn’t fight it. I let the tears come, let them wash away the last few weeks, and maybe even the pain I’d held onto in the years before that. It was a baptism in a hotel room, and my brother was the preacher.
We stayed like that a long time until I finally pulled back, wiping at my face and apologizing profusely as I wiped where I’d soaked his shirt next.
But Gavin just smiled and held up his pinky.
I eyed it suspiciously, cocking a brow.
“One more promise,” he said, wiggling the digit. “That you will do whatever makes you happy from this moment on. Regardless of what you think you should do, or what you think other people think you should do.” He paused. “You’ve given a lot to the people you love. Let us return the favor.”
I smiled, holding up my pinky, but I held it away from him. “Even if it would make me happy to try to play in the NFL?”
Gavin’s brows shot up at that, a loud belly-laugh echoing through the room. “Especially then.”
I laughed, too, hooking his pinky with mine before I rested my head on his shoulder, looping my arms around his.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“For helping you pull your head out of your ass?” he asked. “Anytime, Sis. Anytime.”
