chapter 34
“Emily.”
A girl. A small part of me, the one that still drew hearts and flowers around the words Ty Stern in my notebook, wept. His biggest mistake was a girl. I swallowed hard. “Was she your first love?”
“My only.” A new look crossed his face—somber. It haunted his eyes and closed off his features—his jaw tight, mouth hard. “You ever think you could love someone too much?”
I hadn’t. But in a way, a seven-year-old girl’s way, I had.
There was a reason I never thought about my mother.
A reason I avoided women, their perfumes and hugs, their kind words and motherly gestures.
Some things were too painful to mourn. My love for her had been too great for my little heart to handle. “Yeah,” I said softly.
“Emily was ten.” He reached over, pulling the ball gently from my hands. “She was my little sister.”
I said nothing. I couldn’t ask, couldn’t bring myself to voice a question he wouldn’t want to answer.
When he finally spoke, his voice was wood, no life in its syllables, no movement in his eyes.
“I forgot to pick her up from gymnastics. I had practice; it ran late. She walked home. Didn’t make it.
” His mouth tightened, voice growing thin.
“It was getting dark. She didn’t look, ran across the road toward our house. A truck…” he stopped.
I reached over, covering the ball with my hand, his fingers moving, reaching for mine, our hands looping together around the ball. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, leaning into his chest, his other arm wrapping around my shoulders, pulling me tight.
We stayed like that for a long moment, the tension leaving his body slowly, one muscle at a time, his fingers still tight through mine.
When the jet started its descent, the sun peeking over the New York coastline, I got up slowly, carefully crawling over his legs, my fingers gentle in their pull from his grip, his body still curled around the space where I had been.
I felt off balance, settling back into my seat.
So many of my impressions of him changing, his skill on the field fading in my mind, the details of Chase Stern emerging as everything I felt about his blurred.
I had thought, with all of my fandom, all of my research, all of his stats and interviews and press, that I knew him.
Maybe I didn’t. Maybe there was more than talent and ego stretching those veins.