Chapter Twenty-Six
“It’s probably in the next county already,” Lucas said with a smile.
Coach gave him a look that he didn’t understand and went to Avery’s side. Lucas suddenly felt out of place, like he was the only one not understanding what was going on. Even Colin looked worried.
“What? What is it?” he asked.
Coach ignored him, his focus on Avery. “It’ll be all right. It doesn’t mean anything. We can just get you another one.” He put his arm around his daughter and led her away.
“Avery.” Lucas tried to get her attention.
She glanced up briefly, but her eyes slid away again almost immediately. He didn’t recognize the look on her face.
Lucas watched them walk away, not really understanding what had just happened. She acted like someone had died, not like she’d just lost her school planner.
And then there was just him and Colin standing in front of what used to be Hardy’s.
Colin leveled him with an assessing look. “I think we have some talking to do, right?”
Lucas really didn’t want to talk to him, but he wasn’t going to lie about Avery. He was in way too deep. “Yeah, I guess we do.”
He looked at Colin dead in the eye. “I am dating your sister. I really like her, and I’m not going to stop seeing her, even if you get me benched. I’m sorry, I’m just not.”
Colin nodded. “That’s all fine and everything, but you don’t know her. You don’t know what she needs.”
“What does she need?” He pulled Colin back from the front of Hardy’s as the police came to check everyone was okay and no one needed the hospital. “No wait, don’t tell me. I’ll ask her. I’m not ruining this by getting secondhand information from you, of all people.” He wondered if he’d gone too far.
“What do you mean ‘me of all people?’” he said.
“You can’t even see what’s in front of your face. You know that Lexi likes you, right?”
Colin’s eyes dropped to the floor. “It’s complicated.”
“It’s always complicated, dude. Everything is always complicated.” Because there was nothing more complicated than wanting to be with a girl when your very existence could bring the whole team down. He needed some time to figure shit out. Preferably before that evening.
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you don’t fuck with Avery. I told you to keep clear, but you didn’t listen. But if you piss her off or even make her cry, I’m coming for you. If you move too fast, I’m coming for you. And I’m serious. I’d beat the shit out of you if we didn’t need you on the team right now. Avery needs time and space and an understanding that she’s been through the worst year of her life. Hell, we all have.”
Lucas took a step back. “I know. Avery told me about it. I’m sorry about your mom. I really am.”
Colin stared at him and then opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something. Then he closed it and looked away.
“No, man. What were you about to say?” Lucas asked.
Colin looked back at him for a second. “Okay. Look—you blew off her planner like it was a joke. Last year, her planner was what kept her getting up in the morning. It’s what got her to school, got her through her homework, got her to work. Dad says it’s what keeps her going forward and not dwelling on the past. The fact that she’s lost her planner, I don’t know, man. It’s like her future has disappeared for her—you know?”
Lucas was silent. Sure, he knew she ran her life by her planner, but he didn’t realize it was a tangible part of her recovery. He wanted to shout at Colin for not putting her calendar online if it was that important, but he guessed it wasn’t his place. “I didn’t know,” he said simply.
“There’s a lot you don’t know. So…I don’t know. Take it slow, I guess,” Colin said awkwardly.
“Sure, man. I’m sorry.” He didn’t know what else to say.
By then, the whole street was flooded with people trying to help gather things that had been blown around. Firemen were steering people away from collapsing buildings.
The whole place looked like his brain. Devastation, too many people, things falling apart…
And he had no idea how to fix it.
…
Once Avery had eaten, and her father was convinced that she’d stopped shaking, she retreated to her room. She pulled up the local news on her PC and watched the coverage of the tornado. Not one weather service had predicted it or warned against it until it was overhead at Hardy’s. It seemed to have tracked from the clinic, through the intersection, over Hardy’s and the empty storefront next door, and back into the neighborhood behind the parking lot she used every day. Thank God her dad had given her a ride. Otherwise the Toyota would have been wrecked, too.
As she watched the images of the carnage the tornado had left in its path across the town, she couldn’t believe she and Lucas had gotten out of there in one piece. Instinctively, she reached for her planner for comfort but remembered again that it was gone. She tried to remember what she had planned for Sunday, but her gaze rested on the footage loop of the tornado that was on the news site. She couldn’t remember anything that she was supposed to do next week, either.
And then she had a different thought. Oh God. What if someone finds it? That would be so much worse than losing it, if she were being honest. She’d written out a few of her mental pro and con lists, including one about kissing Lucas and the one about killing Billy Seymore.
She couldn’t think about that now. She needed to get a new one. Today. It would take the whole rest of the weekend to transcribe her life back into a new planner, and that was only if she got started right away.
Her phone vibrated on the desk. She grabbed it. Lucas.
She put a laughing emoji next to it and then deleted it to put the crying emoji, then she deleted the whole thing.
She snorted and then for the first time looked in the mirror. Argh. She couldn’t believe her dad hadn’t told her that she looked like she’d been rolling around in her backyard.
Wow, she needed a shower, too. But Lexi was on her way, and she didn’t want her dad to send her away. So she elected to wait until Lexi was actually there before jumping in. Lexi never had any trouble sitting on the toilet lid chatting while Avery was in the shower.
There was a long pause.
What did he mean? Later in the weekend or later in the week? As much as she wanted to see him, she felt unfocussed and, as Lexi would say, discombobbed. She needed to concentrate on at least re-planning her week so that she felt settled. And normal again. She was untethered without it. And really, really tired.
…
Lucas tried not to think about anything. Every time his mind flickered to sleeping beside Avery in her bed the night before, he redirected it to how scared he’d been during the tornado. But Avery had handled it like a champ, so he was going to, too. He was bummed that he wasn’t going to see her that night, but he understood.
When he got out, he put a Star Trek movie in the DVD player, just to stop himself thinking about Avery. Except, even as the original Captain Kirk bravely sacrificed himself to save his ship, he was still thinking about her. While he watched, he worked on Avery’s gift. He was going to give it to her next week, when it was ready.
Maybe his whole fight with himself over whether or not to play football on this team, whether to try for a local community college, or whether just to get a job somewhere…maybe his whole dilemma led him here, to Avery. He’d never felt this way about a girl before. Like he wanted to absorb her through his skin and just keep her there with him. Except that sounded really creepy, even in his own head.
He just wanted the opportunity to come clean to her. She was so good and generous and kind. He was sure there’d be a right time to tell her, where she’d forgive him for lying to her. Maybe.
If he thought he’d been conflicted when he arrived in Hillside, it was nothing to how he felt now that he had friends here. In one sense, it was so much better, but in every other way, his subterfuge was so very much worse.
The only person keeping him relatively sane was Avery. When he was with her, kissing her, he couldn’t think of anything else. Her existence blocked anything bad from touching him.
By the time Captain Kirk, Jr. had met Spock from the future, he was jonesing to see Avery again. He couldn’t wait for another undetermined “later.” He’d been stupid for not making it more specific. But he wanted to see her, like, now.
And he knew exactly what to take with him. He just needed to make a little detour to the store at the other end of his neighborhood.
He left the store with a plastic bag and started slow jogging toward her house. As he ran down his street again, his neighbor got off his porch for the first time since Lucas had moved there and high-fived him. “Good game,” he said. “Might make playoffs this year, huh?”
“Hope so,” Lucas said, a little bemused. He smiled as he walked back down the street. A few other people, just hanging out in the street or working on their cars, stuck their hands up to high-five him.
Adrenaline shot through him, and the familiar high of being celebrated flooded back. It was like he was at his old school. As he cut across the road to turn left, the guy in the undercover police car stuck his hand out of the window and also high-fived him.
He laughed out loud. Euphoria spiked through him. This was the feeling his soul had been craving.
As he left his neighborhood, the streets emptied. The wealthier citizens of Hillside were long inside their homes.
When he reached her house, he picked up, like, ten stones, chosen for their size—not so small they wouldn’t make a sound, not so big they’d break a window. But he was so excited to see her that he just threw the whole handful at her window. Talk about blowing his wad.
And then his heart stood still as she came to the window. “What the hell?” she said in her adorably annoyed voice.
“It’s me!”
“As opposed to the Easter bunny? You’re the only person who throws stones at my window!” she hissed back.
He didn’t care; he felt like he could fly. “Can I come in?”
“Sure, let me—”
“No need,” he said, taking a running jump, using a raised flowerbed wall as a springboard. He caught a downward drainpipe and pulled himself up using only his arms.
“You’ll kill your—” she started to say. But before she finished, he was at her window. She was so close, he could have kissed her. But for a second, his own life preservation came first. “I have amazing muscle control, I know, but if you don’t stand back and let me in, I’m just going to fall into your father’s flowerbeds.”
“Oh my God,” she said, leaping backward.
With no footrest, he used the last of his arm strength to heft himself into her window and collapse on the floor, panting.
She stood next to him for a moment, just watching him catch his breath.
He held out his hand. “I may need mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”
She grinned and took his hand, but instead of allowing him to pull her down beside him, she sat astride him, which frankly did nothing for his ability to breathe but did bad things for the distribution of blood around his body.
“I thought I said I’d see you tomorrow?” she said, arching her eyebrows disapprovingly.
“Later. You said later. This is later. Besides, I couldn’t wait to see you,” he replied, raising his hands to touch her but keeping them in the air because he was suddenly unsure of where to touch her, when all he wanted to do was touch her all freaking over.
“Are you trying to levitate me?” she asked, looking at his floating hands.
“I don’t need to levitate you,” he said, dropping his hands on his stomach. “You’re already an angel.”
“Don’t make me barf. That’s…” She hesitated, looking to the side as if trying to recall something. “Yes, that’s the worst line anyone has ever used on me.”
“I brought you something,” he said, nodding to the bag around his wrist.
She squinted at it and worked it off his hand. Inside the bag was a heavily discounted journal.
“It’s not an actual planner,” he explained. “It’s just a placeholder, so you can…” His gaze caught on the rows of folders, notebooks, and planners that lined her wall. “Oh. I guess you’re already prepared to make a new planner.”
She leaned down and kissed him. “I love it. It’s so thoughtful. I’m going to use it tomorrow to brain dump everything I can remember from my planner. I love it,” she repeated.
He grinned and grabbed her hands in his. “So, how are you really? You looked pretty shook up when you left Hardy’s.”
She blew air out, and the tickle of toothpaste-scented breath skated over his cheeks. “I was. Weren’t you?”
“I guess. I mean, I think I was more excited that we survived, to be honest. No one got hurt—that was some kind of miracle.”
“I hadn’t heard that. They found everyone from the houses in the streets behind the store?” she asked.
“As far as I know. The TV said that everyone had a lucky escape. It was lucky. We were lucky.”
“I was lucky that you were there,” Avery said, her eyes softening.
“I was lucky you got me the job there, so that I could be there,” he countered. “You are literally the best person I’ve ever known.” His heart rate kicked up as he realized he was going to tell her how he felt about her. “I was nobody when I arrived in Hillside, and you helped me when you didn’t have to, you got me a job, you introduced me to friends, and God, I can’t get over how kind you were to me. I’ve never met anyone as…” He searched for the right word. “…giving as you are. You’re completely selfless, and I love that about you.” There. He’d kind of said it again.
Her eyes closed, and she swallowed. She said nothing, though. But he heard her long, shaky intake of breath.
He sat up and scooched her down to his thighs, nuzzling her long hair away from her ear. She swallowed hard. He had her.
She got off his legs and stood, holding her hand out to him. He took it and climbed to his feet. For a long second, they stared at each other. What had he done in his life to deserve her? He couldn’t think of a thing. Nothing that would explain how this angel had picked him up from the dark place he’d been in and changed his life in so short a time. She was a miracle. His miracle.
He picked her up, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. She kissed him. Oh man, did she kiss him. Her mouth set him on fire.
He pulled her closer still, needing to feel her against him. The darkness in the room amplified every feeling, every touch. He needed to put her down so he could touch her. He turned around and sat on the bed so she was sitting on his lap with her legs still around him. Only then could he smooth her hair back and kiss her neck.
She used her legs to squeeze him closer to her, and his head just about exploded. Along with pretty much everything else.
He stopped kissing her and hugged her. He didn’t want to do anything that either one of them would regret. Not at least until they were comfortable to talk about it. Shit, but there were parts of his body that were strongly objecting to his decision.
He pushed her hair back and held her face in his hands. “You’re amazing,” he whispered. “You’re the best person I’ve ever met.”
She tensed in his arms, and he leaned back.
“You okay?”
“I have something to show you,” she said with what looked like a forced smile. What was going on?
She climbed off his lap and went to her PC. “Do you want to see Brady’s Balls? They have amazing new footage of your second touchdown.”
He grinned back, excited again. “I saw something on Brady’s Balls earlier—but I’m not sure it’s the same. Let me see it,” he said, getting up.
He stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. He swore she tensed again, so he casually removed them and perched on the side part to the desk instead. His excitement took a dip. What was going on? Was she really still traumatized by the tornado? He couldn’t blame her if she was, but he wished she’d tell him so that he could help or something.
“Look,” she said, her gaze firmly on the screen. She clicked on the play button. Brady’s Balls had only posted, “Offered without comment #SupermanPlaysFortheHammers” on the video instead of his usual play-by-play post. It was taken from the right side of the field, allowing a clear shot of Lucas leaping a good five feet in the air to get the ball and hitting the ground running. For a second, it did look like he was flying. His excitement ratcheted up. He’d gotten his game back. Thanks to Avery.
She’d single-handedly restored his confidence, his skills, his happiness at playing. It was as if he were flying again. His spirit soared as he spun her around and took her hands. “What can I do to repay you for giving my life back to me?”
Her eyes flashed. Was that panic? Or fear? Or did she really want to kiss him? It was hard to tell in the dim light of her room. “Is everything okay?” he asked.
“You can kiss me,” she said, leaning toward him.
As soon as his lips touched hers, he felt home. At peace with his life. She kissed him until his breath became shaky. He pressed his forehead against hers as he tried to regain control of his need for her.
She laughed, breathlessly. “I think you get more turned on by watching yourself score a touchdown than you do by me.”
He laughed, too. “I mean, if you’re asking me to choose…” He let his voice deliberately trail off as if he were figuring out how to tell her that she came second to football.
She fake-punched him on his arm.
“Thing is, I wouldn’t have that”—he pointed at the screen—“if you hadn’t wanted to help me. If you had decided that I wasn’t worth helping. It’s all you, baby.” He paused. “But let’s look again, just to check.”
She laughed out loud and then slapped a hand over her mouth. He looked at the corner of her PC. It was one a.m. He had no idea it had been that late when he decided he needed to see her. “Sorry, I didn’t realize it was so late,” he whispered and picked her up off her chair.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and let him put her down on her bed. She blinked real slow at him, sending needles of heat through him. He had to stay in control. He didn’t want to scare her or go too far on their first non-date. Hell—that was right. They hadn’t even been on a date yet.
“I guess the tornado blew away our first date, huh?” He stood and dragged his hands through his hair.
She grabbed his hand. “We were lucky,” she said again.
Of course she was right. People could have died, and here he was whining like a toddler. She always saw the stuff that he couldn’t. She really was a good person. And she was his. He pulled her up so she was standing next to him. He tucked her hair behind her ear and let his hand slide through the cool silky strands.
Her hair was what made him notice her. He remembered stretching his fingers as if he could imagine the feel of her hair through his hands. And now he could do it any time he wanted. He leaned down to kiss her, but as he did, his eyes skittered toward the PC screen again.
“Busted!” she said and pushed him away laughingly. “If you want to go look at Superman again, you should. You deserve it!”
He laughed and sat in the chair, almost groaning when Avery’s vanilla-scented hair brushed against his face as she leaned over him to restart the video. She pressed play, and he watched himself fly again. Shit. How had he done that?
And then he saw the number of views at the bottom of the video: over a hundred thousand. In one day?
His blood ran cold, and the top of his head went fuzzy. He forced himself to take deep breaths. What were the chances that anyone from his old school or his old football conference would see the video? He’d never heard of Brady’s Balls before he’d come across state. And then he saw that it had more than thirty thousand shares, too. That was bad.
He hunched over the keyboard and watched the video view number rising. He had to stop this. Dammit. He scrunched his face up, angry at himself. Angry that he was so stoked when Avery said that she loved watching him play, that he totally passed on getting off the team because he thought he could play hero for the other guys. Well, no more. He couldn’t risk it. But…would he lose Avery if he left? All the flash cards, all the time she’d carved out of her damn planners to see him would have been for nothing. Like he was just throwing her help back in her face.
She glowed in the reflected light of the screen. She looked happy.
Ice ran through him as he glanced at the post again. At least there was no mention of his name on this one. Hopefully, no one would put Lucas Black and Lucas Westfield together, or else the Hammers could get totally busted from the playoffs for having a suspended player on the team.
And that would be the end for LeVonn and a bunch of other players, too.