I knew Julep walking me inside was a mistake.
I knew before I opened the door, leading with my left hand while the other lay suspended in a sling around my neck. I knew before my three roommates paused their video game, mouths wide like that of a trout before they hopped up and rushed over to help Julep with my bag.
I knew, and yet I still had to watch it happen.
I had no choice.
“Hey, sweetheart, let me get that,” Leo said, attempting to take my bag from Julep with a wink. I couldn’t help but smirk to myself when Julep pinned him with a glare and shrugged away from him, adjusting my bag even higher on her shoulder.
“Welcome to the Pit,” Kyle added, tossing his arm around her shoulder. “To what do we owe this… pleasure?”
His eyes trailed down the length of her while I gritted my jaw and tried not to boil over. I had absolutely zero right to feel any sort of possession over that girl.
And yet…
“Are you both fucking stupid?” Braden interjected, and he gave my roommates murderous glares before his eyes softened on me. “What’s the verdict, Cap?”
I swallowed, glancing down at my arm in the sling. “Cuff tear.”
That same silence that had burned my ears in the hospital fell over us then, all eyes floating to my already-swelling shoulder.
“He’ll be fine,” Julep said when no one responded. “And back before the season is over.”
Kyle grinned from where he still had his stupid fucking arm around her. “With you at his bedside? I have no doubt.” He leaned in a little closer then. “And my room is just down the hall, if you ever want to check on me, too.”
My jaw ached with how hard I clenched it, but I didn’t have time to tell him to fuck off before Julep leaned away from him and pointed her finger into his chest, her smile wide and dazzling. “Hey, aren’t you the one Riley Novo embarrassed in a game of five hundred before making you shave her name into your head?”
Kyle’s face fell flat, and he removed his arm from around her as Leo and Braden laughed so hard they both doubled over.
“I like her,” Leo stated, thumb pointed at Julep.
“Oh, joy. My whole life has been made,” she said, deadpan.
I knew without him saying it that that made Leo like her even more.
I climbed the stairs to my bedroom, Julep on my heels and the guys blessedly returning to the couch to continue the game they’d paused. Every now and then, I glanced over my shoulder and watched her take in our home with an amused, yet simultaneously confused expression on her face.
The Snake Pit was an eclectic house, filled with memories and relics of many North Boston University players past. It was first purchased in 1982, gifted by the quarterback’s dad to him and three of his friends on the team. What they thought would just be their place to crash and party at in their tenure at the school turned into a house full of history, passed on from generation to generation. Who got to live in the Pit was usually voted on by the entire team, and it was almost always the quarterback and three of the team’s top partiers.
Because balance, of course.
They needed someone to hold up the house, make sure it stayed in good shape, and made sure the team stayed on track — both on the field and off it. But they also wanted players who knew how to have a good time to keep the legend of the house alive and well. It was one of the top places off campus for parties, especially during football season.
And my current roommates made sure that reputation didn’t die with them.
Julep smiled a little as we walked down the hall to my room, her eyes wandering over the old photos and odd knick-knacks, like a lawn flamingo that had been turned into a beer bong, and a beheaded torso of a half-woman, half-fish creature that was rumored to have given the team of 1999 good luck.
They won the championship that year, so on superstition alone, that statue would remain at the Pit forever.
I nudged the door to my bedroom open, and unlike every other bedroom in this house, mine was actually clean. I made my bed every morning, usually had a candle burning to keep the bachelor smell from invading my space, and always kept my belongings tidy. Just one glance at Julep told me all of that surprised her.
“It smells like teakwood in here,” she commented as she set my duffle bag on the foot of my bed.
“Just covering the moldy foot stench.”
She actually smiled a little then, folding her arms over her chest as she started walking the edges of my room and looking around.
I pretended to unpack my bag, all while watching her as she ambled along my desk, my walls, pausing when she saw something that piqued her interest. I noted how she hovered over my copy of Atomic Habits, how her eyes lingered on the photo of me, Hannah, and our parents on the boat. Thankfully, she didn’t ask about them — just kept right on perusing until she hit my stack of CDs.
She picked one up, chuckling before holding the cover of Jay-Z’s The Blueprint toward me. “You know you can listen to music on your phone now, right? In better quality.”
I shrugged. “I like to take my Discman on my morning runs.”
She looked like she was trying not to laugh as she picked up the ancient white and gold relic that still miraculously worked. She marveled at the corded headphones before unclipping the lock and looking inside.
“Green Day,” she commented. “Nice.” She paused, shaking her head as she shut the cover again. “You really run with this?”
“Every morning.”
“Why?”
I stilled, the truth to that question making my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth. It had been Hannah’s, and I’d teased her for listening to it even back then because we both had iPods. But she’d insisted that CDs were better, that there was something cool about them. She thought everything about the 90s and early 2000s was cool, even though she wasn’t even born until 2003.
When she and Dad had disappeared, I’d snuck into her room every night, slipping her earbuds into my ears and playing the same CD she’d left in that Discman over and over.
Crazysexycool by TLC.
It took me years to be able to change it.
“I guess I’d worry less if that broke than if my phone did,” I lied. “Plus, it feels kind of nostalgic.”
Julep smiled as if she appreciated that answer before she moved on to looking at all the posters hanging on my wall — the largest one of Tom Brady.
“So, you run every morning, huh?”
“I do. Part of my routine.”
That made her quirk a brow and turn to face me. “You have a routine?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“At twenty-one?” She snorted. “No.” Then, she moved over to my window, the one that overlooked the garden. “Is this part of your morning routine?” she asked, nodding toward it.
“Yes.”
She shook her head, leaning a hip against the bottom window frame as she faced me. “It’s kind of strange, you know. That you’re a college quarterback and you like to garden.”
“And you’re a college athletic trainer who likes to pole dance.”
The corner of her mouth sparked up but died quickly.
And suddenly, as if all the sources of free-flowing air in the house had been plugged, the air grew thick and heavy. It was like we both realized at the same time that we were standing just a few feet away from each other in my bedroom.
Alone.
I’d been so focused on football since the season started that I’d almost forgotten how striking she was, how her long, brown hair flowed over her shoulders, her thick lashes framing those endlessly dark eyes. I’d almost forgotten those lean, tan legs and the narrow angle of her waist. I let myself take her in, let my gaze wander the length of her before slowly climbing back up.
She didn’t shy away. She didn’t cover herself or adjust her stance or make any sort of comment — though we both knew I was raking my eyes over every inch of her. She stayed perfectly still and calm until I found her gaze again, and then she tilted her chin a little higher, and the only thing that gave her away was the slight bob of her throat.
“I’ll let you get settled,” she finally said, her voice softer than before. She pushed off from where she’d been leaning against the frame and made her way toward the door. “Limited movement,” she reminded me, spinning to pin me with an aggressive finger point.
“Wait.”
She halted mid-turn, something… new in her eyes as she paused for me.
I hooked a thumb over my shoulder toward the en-suite bathroom. “Aren’t you going to help me shower?”
Julep blinked, and then scoffed, rolling her eyes and turning for the door again. “You’re lucky I don’t drown you in the shower.”
I gave her a toothy smile then, even though she’d already turned and couldn’t see it. But before she got all the way out the door, I called, “Thank you.”
She paused again, her back still to me as she hovered in the doorway.
“For having faith in me back there.”
Her back tensed, and then her shoulders deflated, and she angled her chin down and back toward me, her eyes flashing over her shoulders before her gaze was on the floor again.
“I don’t have faith in anything,” she said.
And then she left.
Julep
Two days later, I woke up at the ass crack of dawn from a nightmare.
It was a nightmare I was familiar with, one that made no sense but somehow always filled me with terror no matter how many times I had it. I could never even remember it when I woke. All I could grasp was that I was in a dark house with no walls or windows, that I was cold and scared, and that I had the distinct feeling that I’d slipped off the face of the Earth and was lost somewhere in-between where I was previously and where I was supposed to be now.
After the panic subsided, the sweating kicked in, and just like it had countless nights since Abby died, my brain started in on playing its favorite game of attacking me and keeping me awake with endless questions that had no answers.
It was still dark as I flopped back and forth on my bed, trying and failing to fall back asleep before I finally ripped the covers off and angrily stormed into my bathroom. I looked like hell, dark circles under my already dark eyes, skin pale and dull. I splashed some water on my face before hanging my hands off the edge of the bathroom counter and staring at my reflection.
But I didn’t look long.
Because the longer I stared, the more likely it was that I’d see her.
Abby may have been younger than me, but we had often been mistaken for twins. We had the same long, thick, shiny, dark hair, the same lean frame, the same button nose and full lips. Our biggest differentiator was that her eyes were neon blue and mine were shit brown — and I used to tell her that all the time, how jealous I was of her eyes.
I wondered if she’d be proud of me.
I’d only been in Boston for five months, since Dad moved us here for spring training, but it’d been the best five months I’d had since she’d died. I’d had a few drinks, sure, but I hadn’t smoked, hadn’t sniffed or snorted or popped anything other than Advil. I was focused at school, and on my work at the stadium — so much so that even Dad trusted me enough to let me live on my own.
He now trusted me enough to let me lead rehab for his quarterback.
I hoped this was the first real step in me changing for the better, in me turning my life around. Then again, the little shred of hope I held was pitiful because I knew who I was at the root of everything.
A monster.
And the only reason I was here, doing everything that I was doing, was because my father didn’t deserve to have his heart broken any more than it already had been.
I checked the time on my phone when I ambled back into my room, groaning at the ungodly hour. The sun hadn’t even started peaking over the horizon yet. But I knew sleep wasn’t happening, so I quietly changed into shorts and a sports bra and slipped in my headphones before making my way downstairs.
It was dark in the living room, save for the soft bit of blue streaming in from dawn through the window. I left the lights off as I stretched and got warm, and then I slowly slid the coffee table out of the way as quietly as I could.
Once it was in the corner, I wrapped my hand around the pole.
That first touch of cool chrome was like a bucket of ice water dousing the flame of guilt and panic and pain I’d woken up with. It soothed me immediately, and I took my first deep breath of the morning, walking around the pole before I lifted my inside arm high and did a dip, flying backward into a goddess spin.
That was my last bit of true consciousness for the next hour.
After that, I slipped out of my mind and into my body, letting it move in whatever way it wanted to with the cool, dark living room as its stage.
Sweat beaded on my neck, sliding down the crevices of my chest and along my abdomen the more I moved. My breath became shallow and ragged, and yet I kept on, finishing one trick sequence only to start another. Tricks turned into flows which slowly turned into dance, and before I knew it, I was slinking on the floor, exploring movement with my arms and legs and torso.
I didn’t come up for air or consciousness until my body demanded hydration, and I padded barefoot over to the kitchen long enough to fill a cup up with water, drain it, and fill it again. I ambled over to the window then, sipping from my glass as I watched the sun’s warm rays spread across our lawn and the one across from it.
The longer I stood there, the more my breaths evened out, and I let my mind wander to Holden.
He had been moody the past couple of days — though, rightfully so. I knew without probing too much that he likely wasn’t sleeping well with his injury, and the fact that he was in the stage where all he could do was rest had to be driving him mad. He wanted to skip this part. He wanted to get to the day when he could start doing something about it, start working toward recovery and, ultimately, his return to the team.
So far, he’d only been able to sit on the sidelines in the shade and watch his team practice. And he did. He watched every second of practice, showing up early like he usually did and always being the last to leave, too. Then, he came to us in the training room, and we checked in on him.
There was nothing for us to do yet, either.
Right now, he just needed to rest.
I was staring up at what little of his window I could see from this angle, wondering if he was sleeping in or trying to make up some new morning routine since most of his usual one was off-limits. But then, I saw movement through the old, rotted, wooden gate that led to their side back yard.
I could only see through the slats of it — though they were wide from poor installation or passage of time or both — but I saw enough to know it was him piddling back there in the garden.
Mostly, because I’d put money on no one else in that house even being awake at this hour, let alone working in the back yard.
I gritted my teeth, slamming my cup down on the coffee table.
And then I whipped open our front door.
