CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
LINA
A few weeks ago while Grant was watching game tape, I offhandedly mentioned that I could throw an amazing spiral.
I’m not saying he didn’t believe me, because he’s never that quick to underestimate me, but he did seem skeptical.
He peered up at me with suspicious eyes and sweetly said, “I would love to see it.”
That’s how I got here. The whole reason Grant asked me to come to the training facility with him was so that he could see me throw a football—something he does practically every day.
I refused to show up with him. As mean as it sounds, I had other things to do today, and Grant tends to stay at the facility for hours longer than I would ever like to.
However, I agreed to meet him here once he was done with his film session.
He’s waiting for me on the turf when I walk in, shirtless with athletic shorts and a backward baseball hat on.
The second he spots me, he stands and jogs toward me, pulling me into his arms for a quick kiss. For a moment, it feels way too cliche for my liking, but I find myself leaning into his embrace anyway.
“How was your day?” he asks, keeping his arm around me as he guides me down the sideline of their practice field.
“It was fine. I worked on some homework for my international policies class. Did you know that in the 90s, Norway mediated more peace agreements than anyone else despite their lack of military presence?”
He smiles down at me, staring for a long moment before bending to retrieve a football off the ground. “You’re the only person who can make something like that sound sexy.”
I can’t help but roll my eyes while his hand falls to the back of my leg, caressing the fabric of my leggings. “That means you weren’t listening.”
“I always listen to you,” he insists. “You’re just too smart for me. My brain is still in red-zone defense, and you're talking foreign policy.”
Grant spins the football in his hands as I mockingly throw my arms up in the air. “It’s so hard being the beauty and the brains of this relationship.”
All he does is grab me by the hem of my— his— Yale football crewneck. I thought it was fitting for today’s activity. “Hey, give me some credit here, pretty girl. Notes of New Haven calls me the ‘Campus Heartthrob. ”
I snort. “Did you write that article? Or just fund it?”
This time, he rolls his eyes. Then he tosses me the football. “Enough stalling. Let’s see what you’ve got, hotshot.”
“What? No warm-up?” I tease. “You’re just going to throw me in the deep end headfirst?”
He takes a few steps back, giving me room to throw the ball. “This is me respecting your confidence.”
“Okay.” I grab the ball by the laces before pulling my arm back over my shoulder and releasing.
Grant catches the ball with ease. If he didn’t, I’d be worried, considering we’re only about ten yards away from each other.
He raises an eyebrow, and I know he’s trying not to look surprised, but I know that he is.
“Beautiful,” he says and then tosses it back to me.
I catch it before asking, “Any pointers?”
“I think you got it,” he tells me encouragingly.
“Okay,” I say, backing up a few steps. “You better run.”
Grant arched a brow. “You’re throwing deep?”
“I’m not here to fuck around.”
I point toward the far right side of the field, closer to the end zone. This time he doesn’t hide the uncertainty in his eyes. Honestly, it only eggs me on.
“Better catch it, Heartthrob .”
“If you underthrow me, you lose all trash-talking privileges.” He starts jogging toward where I told him to go.
Ignoring him, I plant my foot as I launch the ball toward him.
It cuts through the air in a neat spiral, arching just enough so Grant barely has to reach for it. When it lands perfectly in his hands, he looks down at it in complete shock.
The throw wasn’t insanely far. A bit over twenty yards, but for my first pass, I’d call it a success.
“Still skeptical?” I cross my arms, tilting my head.
There’s something about the way he saunters back over to me, ball in hand as he looks me right in the eye, that has my knees going weak. It doesn’t help that his stupidly defined abs are all my eyes care to focus on.
I’d like to be cocky right now. I’d love to laugh in his face and say, “Ha! Told you!” But the words don’t leave my mouth as he gets closer.
Grant stops right in front of me. His chest is rising and falling, even though he barely broke a jog. We both know he’s doing it to make me feel important, and my heart soars because of it.
It may seem childish, but there’s something so sincere about someone wanting to make you feel like the most impressive person in the room. Grant could easily show me up, and despite his usual arrogance, he doesn’t want to.
“You’re lethal,” he says, so close now that the football is pressed between us. “ God, I’m so into you right now. It’s seriously unfair.”
I laugh, not at all shocked by his bluntness. “You really know how to flatter a girl.”
He reaches out with an inked hand, placing it protectively over the side of my neck before kissing my temple. My eyes fall closed at the way he makes every nerve in my body settle instead of panic.
Grant Vandenberg has successfully rewired my mind. He’s made it easier for me to be myself again, not because he’s fixed me, but because he’s proved to me that vulnerability and trust are not things I need to run in the opposite direction of.
He’s opened a whole new world of softness. He’s shown me that closeness isn’t always something that can unravel a person.
“Want to keep going?” he asks, fingers grazing my collarbone.
My shoulders hitch, but his grip stays strong. “I don’t want to show you up or anything.”
“I’ll take it easy on you,” he says sarcastically, a bright smile plastering his face.
“You can pretend you’re not trying if it helps keep your ego intact,” I retort, taking the football out of the crook of his arm. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
He takes a few steps back, not bothering to hide the way he looks me up and down. “I think we both know I help you sleep at night.”
I lunge forward just to shove him. He barely moves. “There’s not going to be any room for me in your bed at the rate your head’s growing.”
“Throw the damn ball, Eva.”
The nickname hurtles through my head, pressing my lungs against my rib cage like a linebacker.
“Shit,” Grant curses. “Sorry. I didn’t mean?—”
The first time he tried calling me Eva was the day I showed up at the training facility pretending to be his girlfriend. I immediately shut it down.
“Evangelina was my mom’s name too,” I tell him, my gaze fixated far away on the goalpost. “She saw Gilmore Girls and thought passing on her name to her daughter was a good idea. Everyone called her Eva and me Lina.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeats, stepping closer again. “It slipped.”
No one has ever called me Eva. It was reserved for my mom. Dr. Eva Everhart.
After she died, it was a reminder too sharp to face. It’s why I snapped at Grant that day.
Now that he’s said it, though, it makes me realize how long it’s been since I’ve heard her name out loud. Not just written in a eulogy or on a flower card.
It makes me wonder if this is my chance. My chance to rewrite the ending I’ve been running from—to make the loss of her life about her and not about me.
It’s also what makes me tell him, “You can call me Eva.”
For a long time, I thought that not thinking about her would be the easiest way to recuperate from her loss—to get back to my normal life. My brain doesn’t have the capability to forget, but even trying seems to be its own kind of loss.
Grant’s eyebrows shoot up. “What?”
“It feels like a part of her. It doesn’t feel fair to me to lock it up and pretend like it doesn’t exist. Maybe this is how I can keep some part of her alive.”
A smile grows on his lips, like he’s beyond proud of me. “My mom used to call me G,” he then admits, pushing a strand of hair out of my face and behind my ear.
I remember how I tried calling him it once. He had nearly the same reaction to G as I did to Eva. It’s just another similarity between us—bridging the gap between our grief and each other.
We’re both smiling as I throw the ball back to him, and for once, the weight of a memory doesn’t knock the wind out of me.
* * *
I leave Grant at the facility when his coach gets there, and when I make it back to my apartment, I take the elevator up.
Except when I step off, I see someone standing outside my door from down the hall. My brows furrow, then my body freezes, refusing to move any closer.
The frame is familiar, even from this distance. Too familiar.
A nauseating deja vu rolls through me. Her hair is shorter than it used to be, maybe even a bit darker. My brain has committed her to memory in the same way it has everything else. For once, I wish my brain would let me blur the edges and smudge the picture. It never will.
I should turn around. I should walk away. But the fury that flares through me won’t let me. It knows that there’s nothing else this type of anger could be channeled toward.
Forcing myself, I take a few steps toward where she stands, my tennis shoes squeaking against the hardwood floor.
She turns, and I can tell she wasn’t expecting it to be me by the way her eyes widen and her mouth opens.
“Don’t say anything,” I say.
Bria steps aside when I get close to the door. I pull my key out of my pocket and shove it into the lock.
If she says anything, I will be forced to remember it for the rest of my life, and no apology could undo what she’s done. There’s no point in letting her take up any more mental real estate than she already has.
“Lina—”
“I said don’t! ” My head snaps to look at her. “I don’t know why you thought I’d ever want to hear from you again, but whatever reason you’ve conjured up in your mind, it’s void. Just leave me the hell alone.”
Bria flinches back at my harsh tone, and for a split second, I see the version of the girl who was once my best friend. Who got me through high school. Who I thought would be my maid of honor.
That girl died the moment I found her in my bed with my boyfriend.
She wants to rewrite history into a version that makes what she did seem less cruel, but I won’t let her.
Not when the last memory I have of her is from the moment I opened my bedroom door, hearing her moans echo around my room.
The way she pulled my blanket around her naked body and my boyfriend.
How she tried to chase me down the hall until I hit the stairs.
She knew there were still people down there.
I never saw her again. She and Gage must have gotten dressed and snuck out while I was passing out champagne and getting drunk at my mom’s wake. I didn’t see. I’m glad I didn’t.
Somehow, my eyes water without a word leaving her mouth. I won’t let her speak her piece, but I deserve to say mine.
“You were my best friend. ” My heart pounds in my chest while her regretful gaze swallows me whole.
“It was my mom’s wake, and you just couldn’t wait to fuck my boyfriend.
You couldn’t be there for me for just a few more hours.
I was going through the worst week of my life, and you made it even worse. That’s not fixable.”
Silence stretches like the ocean that’s already between us.
Bria looks away, unable to meet my eyes. That’s all the acknowledgment I need.
The lock clicks with the turn of my hand. I push the door open and step into my apartment. I don’t close the door yet.
I look at her one last time. I deserve for my last memory of her to be something different. One where her betrayal isn’t just a mistake. It’s an ending.
I don’t slam the door. I close it softly.
Eden is standing a few feet in front of me when I finally turn around. Almost like she knew.
She doesn’t ask what happened, and I don’t explain.
A single tear falls down my cheek, and without a sound, I fall into her arms.