Chapter 10
Our away game on Friday went well, and we came away with the W.
Everyone was in a good mood as we returned to school that night, but I sat subdued, contemplative, and just couldn’t find it in me to be excited with them.
No one mentioned pranks or feuds or the soccer team and instead talked about the party at the Beach on Saturday.
After Cody graduated last year, the Hickory Bend party scene had moved from our side of the lake to Hickory Cove on the other side with the popular man-made beach, unimaginatively named the Beach.
The city put a lot of money into making it fun with several volleyball nets, bonfire pits, picnic tables, and BBQ areas.
Plus, it was right next to a huge marina and backed up to trees, so if anyone got tired of the sand and water, they had options.
For me, I was thankful I could take Sasha. She’d get a date out of it, and I didn’t have to spend the hours alone with her. A part of my conscience nagged that I should feel bad about it, and maybe I did.
I stared at my phone while getting ready before heading to Sasha’s, thoughts drifting away from her. If I texted Jack, would I get the same high his little smirk gave me yesterday? Would I feel something that football or a date with Sasha wasn’t giving me?
Scotland’s national animal is the Unicorn.
Yup. He hadn’t even responded, but the mere thought of Jack checking his phone and reading my words was an electric jolt to my lifeless heart. I rubbed my left pec as I waited.
Princess
The fuck?
You said you wanted a backlog of facts so we’d have plenty to tell Trent.
Princess
You totally missed the point. The facts should be about each other.
Jack had to be shaking his head at his phone while that little furrow between his dark brows grew deeper.
Yeah, okay, so do you like unicorns?
Princess
Fucking random, dude.
Princesses like unicorns and pink, right?
He left me on read, but the ear-to-ear grin and adrenaline spike was all the proof I needed.
Whatever this was had reached new levels of intense. The bad part was how quickly it became addicting and how quickly it faded, leaving me hungry.
“You’re awful quiet tonight,” Sasha said beside me.
I turned down the volume on the music in my truck, having made it a little higher so she wouldn’t talk. Obviously, that hadn’t worked as planned.
“Yeah.” I scratched through my hair. “Sorry. Uh, I like your skirt.” I like your skirt? What sort of bullshit was that?
“Thanks. I got it last weekend when Momma took me shoppin’.” And there she went. “I’d had to pitch a fit first ’cause she wanted to go to Montgomery, but I made her take me to the Summit …”
I relaxed with a sigh, tuning out Sasha’s rambling about her and her momma. It hadn’t been a lie, so why did it feel like one? I did like her skirt. Sasha always dressed cute.
Her long, wavy hair was pulled over her shoulder, and she toyed with the ends as she talked.
Her pink lips smiled a bit as she went on about whatever.
In the low lights of my truck, her eyes sparked every time she glanced at me, and even more when she caught me watching her before I refocused on the road.
“What?” she asked with a wide smile. Dropping her tone, she added, “You wanna skip the party?”
A future flashed before my eyes. Twenty years condensed into two seconds, featuring our wedding at her daddy’s church, our two kids, and a dog that dug holes in the yard. Our divorce, my gray hair, and her death grip on a youth she’d outgrown.
I shook my head. “Uh, nothing,” I said to the first question, ignored the second one, and got out of my truck.
I’d parked at the Beach at some point in my distracted nightmare.
No. I certainly did not want to skip the party.
At least, not for any of the horny reasons written all over her face.
Reasons that would assuredly lead us to a future I undeniably wanted no part of.
Sasha followed, then tucked her slim arm around mine, and we headed for the sand. Many classmates from school were here, and being a public area, there were some I didn’t know too.
I upnodded Nick and Michael but stayed with Sasha while she paraded me around her friends.
It was this thing we did at every party.
I played the boyfriend—reaffirming to everyone that someone wanted her—long enough she was fully claimed or something, then she’d release my arm, and I’d mumble something about catching up with the guys.
She’d kiss me before I left her side, then I’d get a break for an hour or so.
And that was exactly how it went tonight.
We went through the motions of dating, but in truth, it had become a lie. There was no doubt in my mind Sasha would probably stay content with what we had, but I couldn’t say that for myself any longer.
While my girlfriend smiled at me across the bonfire, where she stood and chatted with her friends, shooting me kissy faces every so often that I smiled in response to on autopilot, I thought about a guy.
A guy who hated me and had never said anything nice to me.
A guy who left me on read but I itched to text again anyway.
A guy who stood next to his brother, talking with his soccer teammates, and hadn’t once acknowledged me tonight.
And fuck me, if that didn’t make me think about him more.
This unexplainable hate for another person, which was so unlike me, might’ve taken a jump and landed on borderline obsession.
I glanced at him dozens of times and had to finally admit to myself I was doing so in hopes he’d be looking back at me.
Once. Once was all I needed. Once to know that he knew I was here, that he recognized me.
Or maybe I was hoping for more. When our gazes crossed, would I find indifference or violence?
Would he stare at me in silence again? A silence that said so much.
Why did I want to be in Jack’s head as he was in mine? What had me so entranced with him? Why was I starved for his attention?
Jesus, I was going fucking crazy right now, sliding deeper into this fixation. Dozens of people around us, and no one had a clue how badly I needed another shot of Jack.
Fuck me, was I—crushing on Jack Rutledge?
I had my phone in hand, firing off a text before I’d made the decision to do so, needing answers. The only way I could think of to get them was by hitting that drug again.
Rude. Aren’t you dying to get in your New Cal Fact quota for the day? Good boys like you always do as they’re told.
Yes. Okay, yes. Desperate. Needy. Hollow.
The message said delivered. Jack hadn’t glanced at me or his phone. Motherfucker.
But I had my answer.
The first step was admitting it, owning it.
I was a Jackaddict. There. Done.
What now? Hell if I knew.
“Earth to Cal,” Nick said beside me and nudged my shoulder. “My dude, you are a thousand miles away tonight.”
I huffed and nodded. “Yeah, suppose so.”
“You think Jack’s gonna start shit?” Michael asked. Jamie and Asher were in our little huddle of teammates, and they came to attention when he spoke.
“Why do y’all hate each other?” Asher asked.
“Fuck if I know,” I said honestly.
“That’s a great reason,” Jamie said.
“It started back in the summer,” Michael said. “The soccer team had to use our field for camp.”
“Oh.” Jamie rolled his eyes. “I get it. You guys didn’t piss on your territory enough before someone else did?”
Asher snorted, and Michael growled, “Careful, or I’ll piss on you.”
Jamie didn’t miss a beat. He may have been smaller, but I’d swear he was the only one brave enough to face off with Michael. “You’d better be careful. I might like that sort of thing.”
The guys burst out laughing, all except Michael, who snarled at his grinning stepbrother.
When the laughter had died down, I said, “No, to answer your question. I don’t think Jack’s gonna start shit. We’re already in too much trouble.”
Nick slapped the back of my head. “Then stop staring him down, or he’ll think you are gonna start the shit this time.”
“You think we’ll be ready for Cooper Prep next week?” Raul asked, and thank fuck the conversation moved off me and back on to football.
Time dragged. Jack didn’t reach for his phone, probably knowing a text from me waited for him. He brooded as I salivated. He focused on the group around him as I spun out of control. He sipped a bottle of something, and every time he tilted it to his mouth, I swallowed.
The yellow glow of the bonfire danced over him, darkening the shadows here and there.
With the dropping temps, long sleeves covered his arms, but I imagined them all the same.
Jack was well-built, more muscular than I would’ve pegged soccer players.
Really, he and Ty were more muscular than half the football team.
Like many athletes our age, we’d lost the baby fat because of all the working out, but the angles in his face were different from mine.
I had more of a squared jawline where his was sharp.
His dark brows slashed over his eyes and straight nose.
His neck wasn’t thick but not skinny. It fit, I supposed.
Attractive.
A low punch caught me in the gut as the word bounced between my ears.
Jack Rutledge was attractive.
And not in the appreciate-the-hard-work-he’d-put-into-his-body sort of way. Well, not only.
I hadn’t seen him without a shirt, but even hidden away, his shoulders were rounded, meaty. The material was loose at his torso and narrow hips. And I already had the vision of his legs in his uniform that wouldn’t go away. Yeah, Jack had nice legs. Long and muscular—
“You’re doing it again.”
I jolted and snapped around to my right. Asher stood a few inches shorter than me with an all-too-knowing grin spreading on his face. He didn’t smile often, preferring to be all emo with Jamie, but he certainly was now.
“You don’t know shit,” I muttered, trying to play it off, but not, apparently.