Chapter Twenty-Eight

The next morning, Colin barged in her bedroom and found her still in bed, hugging her pillow. She hadn’t moved all night and didn’t feel like she’d slept at all.

Colin was up in her face. “Don’t think I didn’t hear him leaving late last night,” he said, poking her through her comforter. “I figure you can make me breakfast so I don’t tell Dad.”

“I don’t care if you tell him. It’s over anyway,” she said, honestly struggling to find the energy to even talk.

Colin was silent for a moment, and her weary gaze met his. His brow was furrowed. “What did that bastard do?” he asked with surprising intensity.

She sat up. “Nothing. It was me.” She looked at her brother and swallowed. “Sit down. There’s something I should tell you.”

He sat on the end of her bed, and she recounted everything, from what she overheard in the store through last night.

“Dad’s going to be fired?” Colin repeated.

“No. Well, yes. I don’t know. If we don’t get to playoffs, I guess.” She rubbed her head. “Lucas thinks I’m horrible and manipulative,” she moaned.

“You are,” Colin said.

She just closed her eyes, hoping he’d go away. She felt him stand.

“Look. There’s not much we can do about Dad except annihilate the Tigers on Friday. If we do—we’re there. Lucas got us over the threshold of points that we would need, as long as we win this game.”

“I don’t even know if he’ll play,” Avery said in a small voice.

“Even if he doesn’t, we’ve won games before he turned up. We can win this one, too.” Colin took a roll of washi tape from her desk and started throwing it up in the air and catching it again. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell Dad about Mr. Duchamp.” He paused. “Yeah, okay, I guess I can.” He blew out a puff of air.

“Look, he’d never admit it, but Lucas is probably just waiting for Mr. Hernandez to show up. Just like LeVonn. But Dad hasn’t even mentioned if he’s coming this season. You know, if you want to make good with Lucas and have him see that you’re actually kind and not selfish and manipulative, then why don’t you talk to Mr. Hernandez? Or email him or something?”

Their dad called for Colin. With a roll of his eyes, he stomped out of her door and down the stairs like a herd of cattle heading to be fed. Colin was a complete ass, like, 95 percent of the time, but maybe, just maybe, this time he had the answer.

She sat at her desk and hit her head purposefully against the keyboard. No. Not everything was gone. Lucas was gone, and her planner was gone. Lexi was still here, her family.

What’s left of my family.

The notebook he’d brought her smiled up at her from the desk where she’d left it the night before. Damn it. She had to take action. She refused to sit by and just let Lucas think she was a horrible person. She was going to put together footage of LeVonn and Lucas and send them to Mr. Hernandez. No, not just Mr. Hernandez, but a bunch of college scouts.

Lucas hadn’t talked about college, but surely a guy that into football would go if he had an athletic scholarship. He’d made so much progress the last couple weeks. He was totally good enough to get the attention of a scout.

She opened Facebook, went to Brady’s Balls, and started copying some of the videos posted to the page. She’d get the email addresses she needed from her father’s laptop downstairs.

This was going to fix everything. She could feel it.

Once she’d sent the emails, she felt better. Like she had put something positive out in the world. For the first time in weeks, she felt calm, without any anxiety peering at her from around the corner. She’d shared the horrible burden of their dad maybe losing his job with Colin, the team was poised to make the playoffs, and she’d done something good for two boys who meant the world to her.

Even if Lucas still hated her, even if he thought she was the worst person in the world, at least she could help him get a tryout at a decent college. Maybe one day he’d forgive her.

…

Lucas spent his Sunday at Hardy’s Hardware, helping the boss clean up. The town had provided huge dumpsters for every building that had been hit—which had included Hardy’s, one of the buildings at the clinic, a warehouse directly behind Hardy’s, and a few houses behind that. When he’d seen the footage on the TV, he’d marveled at the clean line of destruction it had made through that tiny part of town. It was amazing that they’d managed to ride it out in the stockroom.

His mind kept going back to Avery, the things they’d shared, her expression when they’d been holding on to each other. That part of her felt true. He wasn’t sure about the rest. On a base level, he knew that he’d seen the real Avery, but it didn’t really make a dent in the feeling that she’d lied to him.

His own hypocrisy was killing him. He was lying to her about who he was. Technically, his name was actually Lucas Black—his mom had changed their names back to her maiden name when they moved—but he wasn’t ready to tell anyone his truth. Not now, and probably not ever. He shouldn’t have gotten close to anyone, let alone the girl he had fallen for. Her judgment and horror over what he risked would kill him.

He threw piles of sodden drywall into the dumpster with maybe more force than it warranted, but it felt good.

Toward the end of the day, Mr. Hardy sent him home. He walked slowly back to his neighborhood, wondering what he would do when he got there to take his mind off his whole freaking life.

Every step led him further down his rabbit hole. He shouldn’t have done any of this. When his mom had driven them three days across the state, it had felt like he was entering a different world. A world that wouldn’t possibly know about an eighteen-year-old kid who’d fucked up at school. No one knew him, and the chance of anyone putting Lucas Black and Lucas Westman together had been as remote as him landing on Mars.

But he’d been so filled with the feeling that life had been unfair to him that he was willing to turn a blind eye to the fact that he was still doing the wrong thing. It was a different wrong thing, but he’d felt like he deserved the chance.

He didn’t.

But in his self-righteous haze, he’d pressed on. It had felt like a good idea when he hadn’t known anyone whose life he was affecting. And once he did know, he’d convinced himself that the risk was worth the benefit to the team.

How could he be so selfish?

Avery and Colin had been through much worse than he had. Much worse. And they just got on with life without doing anything just because they felt like life had been unfair to them.

Hell, Avery had just been trying to ensure her family didn’t have to endure another loss.

Lucas stopped in his tracks.

What he did now would determine the rest of his life. He couldn’t go bounding between morally dubious actions because his father left him, and because he liked the adulation of being a winner or because it wasn’t fair that the college had gotten away with what they’d done and he hadn’t. Life was shit. Life wasn’t fair. But his shit, unfair life had brought Avery into it. And she was literally the best thing that had happened to him in the past few years.

He had to do the right thing for once, regardless of the consequences.

He was going to suck up the shit storm.

He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, pulled out his phone, and called Coach to make an appointment to see him Monday.

There was no backing out now. He was going to man up.

Finally.