WHEN I WAKE UP, Bex is staring down at me.
She’s holding her new camera, and she has a cute look of concentration on her face, teeth digging into her lower lip. She’s still wearing my sweater and her hair is messy, and my heart clenches at the sight.
Last night, something shifted. It’s been shifting ever since the diner, drawing me closer to her with inexorable sureness. I looked down at her, saw her flushed cheeks and the desire in her gorgeous eyes, and I almost said something I promised my father I wouldn’t tell a girl again for a long time.
And now I have the urge to say it again, so instead I grin, winding my hand around her calf. “Hope you got my good side.”
She tucks her hair behind her ear. “The natural light is so good right now.”
I kiss her knee. “And?”
“And you’re a handsome subject,” she says. “But James, this camera!”
I sit up on one elbow. “It’s good?”
“It’s amazing.” She looks down at it with a cute little smile. “Thank you. I still can’t believe you did this for me.”
“Bex?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m no photography judge, but I know you’re talented. You should be pursuing this, not resigning yourself to the diner.”
I know the moment the words leave my mouth that I pushed when I shouldn’t have. She sets down the camera, a faraway look in her eyes. I brace myself for her to rebuke me—because even though my girl is starting to accept my help, the diner is a sore subject for her—but instead, she asks something that floors me.
“Who’s Sara Wittman?”
I sit up, heart jackhammering in my chest. “What did you say?”
“Sara Wittman,” she says. “Was she your girlfriend?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Babe, how did you…”
She presses her lips together. “Tell me what happened with her. Tell me the real reason why you came to McKee.”
I know that she’s asking me something reasonable—she’s my girlfriend, she deserves to know about my past—but the part of me that still wants to protect Sara rebels against it. I haven’t spoken to her since that day in the hospital, but she still echoes in my mind from time to time. I loved her. I thought I was going to marry her one day.
“James,” Bex says, a note of urgency in her voice.
I scrub my hand through my hair. “We met last year,” I say. “She was a freshman, and her father was involved with the team, so I met her at a function at the beginning of the season. I asked her out, and I’d dated other girls before, but this was different.”
I don’t like the way Bex curls in on herself, but she keeps looking at me, so I force myself to keep going.
“Sara is an intense person,” I say. “Pretty soon we were spending all our time together. She didn’t like to be alone, and I sort of became her person, you know? She came to all my practices. We practically lived together; I had an apartment off-campus that she stayed in. And it worked, for a while. Maybe it was stupid, but I assumed we were going to get married, so why wouldn’t I want to spend all my time with her?”
Bex plays with my fingers. “And then?”
I swallow. “And then she didn’t want me hanging out with the guys from the team. Whenever I went to an away game she couldn’t go to, she called me until I picked up. I kept blowing off assignments to be with her, and eventually practices. Whenever I tried to give us some distance, she clung tighter. She said she had to come first.”
Bex’s eyes widen slightly, but she doesn’t say anything.
“Coach gave me some leeway at first, because of the goodwill I’d built up over my first two years there. But I was failing two of my classes after mid semester, including the writing one, and according to school policy, that meant I had to be benched.”
“Were you?”
I shut my eyes briefly. “No. We worked out a deal that I would make up the work I missed and come in for extra practices to prep for the postseason. And to make that work, I told Sara that we needed to cool things down for a while. Just until the end of the season.” I look at Bex, tracing my thumb over her knuckles. “I didn’t break up with her, but she took it that way. And I hadn’t realized how fragile she was. She kept saying she was fine with it, but she spiraled.”
“Spiraled how?”
“She stopped going to class. She blew off her job working at the student center. She’d always been a bit of a party girl, but she started drinking during the day and taking pills.”
Bex’s eyes widen further. “What?”
“I tried to ignore her calls because I wanted to set boundaries. I had no idea she was hurting so badly. Not until she called me the night before the last game of the season and told me she was going to—”
I break off, my voice cracking. I’d never been as terrified as the moment I heard her voice. The panic in it still turned my stomach over.
“No,” Bex says softly.
“She cut herself.” I swallow hard. “By the time I got there, she’d already done it. She was passed out, and I couldn’t wake her up. I tried the whole time I was waiting for the ambulance.”
My eyes are burning. I blink, trying to prevent the tears from coming. Bex crowds closer, winding her arms around me. I hook my chin over her shoulder. It’s easier to talk like this.
“I missed the game. I didn’t want to be away from her, not for a second and not for an entire football game. But the team lost, of course, the backup quarterback hadn’t played at all.” I squeeze Bex, shuddering in a breath. “And I didn’t want the news about Sara to become public because of me. So, when the media asked why I missed the game, I made it seem like I blew it off. Like I was irresponsible, and it had nothing to do with her.”
Bex pulls back to look at me. “Oh, James.”
“She’s okay now. Her parents put her in a program so she could get the help she needed.” My voice cracks again. “Her father was grateful that I protected her when I could have used her as an excuse to make myself look good, so when all was said and done, he helped me wipe the slate clean and transfer to McKee, for a shot at a championship and maintaining my position in the draft. I fucking hurt his daughter, and he still…”
Bex’s eyes are shining. She blinks, and a tear slips down her cheek. She kisses my cheek gently. “It wasn’t your fault.”
I shake my head. “You don’t have to pretend.”
“I’m not.” She cups my cheek, her eyes searching mine. “When I was eleven, my father left my mother. One day he just packed up and left. It turned out he had another family, and everything he built with my mother, the diner, their marriage—he threw it away in an instant.”
I stare at her. “What a fucking dick.”
She laughs shortly. “It destroyed my mother. She was pregnant, and the news shocked her so much that she miscarried. She turned into someone I didn’t even recognize, and even now, years later, she’s not the same.” Color floods her face. “She turned into someone who takes a valium with wine at noon and accidentally sets apartments on fire.”
“Bex—”
She shakes her head. “Even though I hate my father, I don’t blame him for how my mother still acts a decade later. What happened with Sara wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known that’s how she would react. She was sick, and she needed help.”
“She could have died.”
“And she didn’t. You helped her. You did a lot more than most people would.” She strokes through my hair, then presses our foreheads together.
We stay like that for a while, breathing in tandem.
After all was said and done, my father and I agreed: no girlfriends until I got into the league. No distractions.
But being able to hold Bex, just like this? I’m willing to take the risk.
