Chapter 2 #2
There was a time when his mother was his greatest cheerleader, not so long ago he can’t remember it.
A time when she rearranged her shifts to make it to every game.
A time when her arms were the first ones he sought after a victory.
A time when her softly spoken chin up, baby was all he needed to hear after a defeat.
But that time is over.
It took him a while to realize what was happening, why she was behaving so differently, why she seemed so out of it.
Then he caught her once with some new guy and a needle in her arm.
Drugs weren’t anything new. He’d seen her high before, but not like this.
The next time he was alone in the house, he found her stash and flushed it down the toilet.
She screamed like a banshee when she found out, like someone possessed.
And he knew then, like the flip of a switch, that he was no longer her number-one priority.
She got better at hiding her stuff, so he switched to other techniques.
Lectures. Silent treatments. Screaming battles.
Punishments. Anything he could think of to make her understand everything she was missing.
And this is his latest attempt. Maybe when she sees the trophy on the shelf, she’ll realize what the drugs cost her.
Probably not, but it’s worth a shot anyway.
Tyler weaves quickly through the congratulatory crowd outside the locker room, around a corner, and down an empty hallway toward the exit.
He’s in search of an unlocked door when a lone figure stops him.
She’s sitting on a bench with her knees curled into her chest, holding a paperback about an inch from her nose, so absorbed in whatever the pages hold she doesn’t even hear him coming.
It brings him right back to the first time he ever saw her, sitting on the bleachers in the Rusu family rink, her head buried in a book, completely unaware of the world around her in a way he found so utterly foreign and so instantly fascinating at the same time.
To him, reading had only ever been a punishment, a necessary evil.
Words swarmed across the page. Letters jumped in and out of their places.
The longer he stared, the more everything shifted in a never-ending scramble his dyslexic brain was helpless to decipher.
But this girl smiled as if she had a secret and eagerly turned a page before pushing her thick turquoise glasses a little higher up her nose.
I know what you’re thinking, Alex had said as he cut to a sudden stop by Tyler’s side, jolting him from a somewhat mortifying daze.
That my sister is so lame. It’s the books.
I tell her all the time. But she’s cool.
I promise. If she comes out here, she’ll probably kick our butts.
She’s freakishly fast on skates. It breaks my dad’s heart that she doesn’t want anything to do with hockey.
But with my luck, she’d end up in the Olympics or something, so it’s better for me that she’s such a nerd.
His embarrassment at being caught staring quickly turned to something else, a sharp pinch he’d been unable to process until after she beat him to the puck six times in a row with a smile on her face.
The meaning hit while he sat undoing his laces with the musical sound of her laughter still ringing in his ears—disappointment.
She was Alex’s sister.
She was Alexandru’s daughter.
She was completely off limits.
And she was devastatingly perfect.
He knew it then, and he knows it now, which is why that oh-so-familiar pang reverberates across his chest the second he sees her.
It happens every time she’s around, no matter how hard he tries to stop it.
And apparently, he’s a glutton for punishment, because instead of backing away before she notices him, he just sinks into that ache and steps closer.
“Hey, Win.”
She jolts as if shot. The book slips through her fingers as she loses her balance and nearly topples off the side of the bench. Grabbing her chest, she pants. “Oh my god, Ty. You scared me!”
He tries not to notice how adorable she looks, but can’t fight the little upturn twitching at the edges of his lips. He’s not used to having to hide a grin. She’s the only person who can so effortlessly bring out his smile. “Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry. I’m such a spaz.” She shakes her head, then casts a furtive glance his way before turning her attention to the floor. “I’m just in the middle of a really good— Oh, there it is.”
She bends down to scoop up her book. He leans over her, intending to catch a look at the cover, but while she’s upside down, her hair falls forward over her shoulder, revealing the word spread across the back of her jersey.
Briggs.
He squeezes his eyes shut to stop the letters from swimming, then opens them back up, confident he must be wrong. But there it is again.
Briggs.
A bolt of pure heat spasms down his spine, exploding into something entirely different from the twinge of disappointment he’s grown used to—something that’s been building all along, but he still stubbornly isn’t ready to face.
He has to know if he’s seeing things.
He can’t trust his own brain.
“Is that—” He pauses, struggling to find the right words, the right tone. “Are you wearing my jersey?”
She freezes, still upside down. “…No?”
“Winnie.”
“Okay, yes.” She groans, still wincing as she rights herself and lifts those big hazel eyes.
“But it’s not what you think,” she hastens to say, color rising like the dawn across her cheeks as her pace quickens.
“It’s just— I noticed that your mom hasn’t been around as much this season, and it didn’t seem fair for you not to have anyone cheering for you, especially during such a big game.
And my mom is like the loudest person ever.
She’s a one-woman cheering section. Alex didn’t need both of us, and if I’m being honest, he could do with being brought down a peg or two.
Have you noticed how full of himself he’s been since going to high school?
I know. I’m so lame, still in eighth grade, but does he need to constantly rub it in my face all the time?
I mean, I’ll be there soon enough. And you’re so nice, Ty.
You’re like the nicest person to me. So I just thought, maybe this one time, I could be the nicest person to you, too?
Maybe? But it’s weird, right? It’s weird. I won’t ever do it again. I swear. I—”
“It’s not.”
She swallows and folds her lips into her mouth, the picture of uncertainty. That burning deep in his chest intensifies. A lump thickens at the back of his throat, so for a moment he can’t speak.
“Weird, I mean,” he clarifies. “It’s not weird. I’d say it’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me, but your dad pretty much adopted me into the family, so I’ll give you the number-two spot. It’s the second-nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”
Elation slowly morphs her face, lighting a twinkle in her eyes, crinkling them at the corners. She tucks her hair behind her ear to hide a smile. “Really?”
He slips his hands in his pockets before they get a mind of their own and falls beside her on the bench, unable to fight the pull. “Really.”
“Well, I could do it again. Next season, I mean. If that’s something you might, um, want.”
Might, um, want.
The very thought sends his blood rushing.
He clenches his jaw to stifle a groan. Yes, he wants it.
He wants it too damn much. He’s ready to throw all his gear on and win another championship right now.
He feels cheated that he just played an entire game completely unaware she was wearing his name.
The breadth of his reaction causes a slow-motion horror show inside his mind as the realization he’s been doing his best to avoid announces itself with flashing lights.
No, Tyler thinks. No. No.
But he can’t deny it anymore. He can’t pretend.
Not when he’s sitting there with his entire right side hyper aware of the three inches between their bodies and his brain on overdrive fighting the tailspin she’s flung him into.
That feeling he gets every time she’s around isn’t disappointment—not anymore.
It’s longing.
I like her.
Fuck.
I really like her.
He needs to say something. She’s staring at him with those hopeful doe eyes, and he needs to say something—anything. Well, not anything. But something. Now.
“I would,” he confesses softly, hating himself on the inside.
He should be shutting this down, but he just…
can’t. The idea of looking up in the stands to see her in his jersey is too strong a pull.
By the time next season rolls around, she’ll probably forget anyway.
Let him at least have the dream for a few meager months. “I’d really like that.”
“Then I’ll do it.” She peeks at him, grins, looks away.
He should go—find the rest of the team, board the bus, leave—but he doesn’t.
“Can I ask you something?” he says instead, because there’s a question he’s wanted the answer to for as long as he’s known her. She looks up with an open expression and nods. “What do you like so much about books, anyway?”
Winnie laughs outright, as if that was the last thing in the world she expected. For a moment, he wonders if he should be embarrassed, but he’s not. In fact, the sound makes him want to laugh too, so he does, softer and not so freely, but it still leaves him feeling lighter in the end.
“I don’t know…” She sighs, thinking.
He doesn’t mind the silence. He’s always found it so revealing. And right now, it’s saying everything she doesn’t know how to express. It’s brimming with energy and life, a train zipping from one stop to the next while all the reasons dance inside her head, too many to explain.
“I guess I like the escape. I get to be, well, anyone really, except myself.”
That’s silly, he thinks. Not the escape part. He understands that. But the idea that she should want to be anyone else when she gets to be herself.
“What are you reading now?”
“It’s this fantasy book about six outcasts who have to work together to free this prisoner from an ice fortress. It probably sounds strange, but it’s really good. I promise.”
“Yeah?”
“I can’t put it down.”
“Can you read me some?”
She narrows her eyes with a curious air, then cracks the spine. “Sure. I’ll start at the beginning of this chapter. It might be a little hard to follow, but this scene is great, even without the backstory.”
He drops his head back and listens. It’s the most relaxed he’s felt in he can’t remember how long, sitting there surrounded by her voice, allowing himself to get lost in it.
They don’t make it very far before someone breaks the moment—people he doesn’t recognize, searching for a way out—but it’s enough that he understands what she means.
For the first time in his life, he finds solace in a book, instead of stress.
It’s a gift that Alex wasn’t the one to come traipsing down the hall. Tyler understands this, so he gets up to leave, but she stops him.
“Hey, Ty?”
He looks back over his shoulder. “Yeah?”
“Maybe this isn’t my place, but I know how much time you guys spend on a bus, so if you want to keep going, or you know, start from the beginning like a normal person, they have the audiobook at the library. You might like it.”
He likes the sound of her voice more, but he doesn’t say that.
He just mutters, “Thanks.”
A week later, though, her suggestion still lingers.
So he goes to the library, gets a card, and checks it out.
The narrators don’t sound a thing like her, to his initial dismay, but the more he listens, the more he feels her there.
So he keeps listening, and damn if she isn’t right. To his complete shock, he does like it.
He likes it a helluva lot.
Until the day Alex snatches his phone after practice.
“What are you doing on this thing all the time? Do you have a girlfriend you never told me about or something?” The moment his friend takes in the screen, he goes still. A confused expression crosses over his face. “Isn’t this the book my sister was reading?”
“Yeah,” Tyler admits, no way out, though he tries his best to keep his tone casual. “She was talking to me about it after the game. I thought I’d give it a try.”
“Huh,” Alex replies.
Alarm bells go off in Tyler’s mind—not because of what his friend says, but the strange look he offers as he says it. For the first time since they’ve known each other, doubt colors his gaze. It freaks Tyler out so much he never steps foot in the library again.