Chapter 6 #3
Water drips down my face and neck and soaks the ends of my hair. The boot makes every step heavier, clumsier, more humiliating as the wet brick slicks under me and my backpack drags at one shoulder like a punishment.
At least the rain hides the tears.
That’s something.
I keep moving.
One ugly step.
Then another.
Then another.
My face is hot even in the cold. My chest feels peeled open. Every breath scrapes. Every thought is a blade.
I fell in love with the ‘it-guy’ and paid the price.
The thought comes clean and vicious and humiliatingly true.
Isa Calloway, who has never in her life not been chosen first.
Who has never stood in a room and wondered if another girl was more compelling, more inevitable, more impossible to forget.
Who has never had to watch a boy look through her toward somebody else and know she lost before she knew there was a real game.
I don’t know what to do with rejection this complete.
Not just no.
Not just not enough.
It’s her. It’s always been her.
The words keep replaying, steady as the rain.
I make it halfway across the quad before the boot slips on the wet stone and pain jolts up my leg hard enough to make me gasp.
I catch myself on the iron railing beside the path and stand there shaking, rain pouring off my hair, tears mixing with it so fully now there’s no point pretending which is which.
“Shit,” I whisper.
Then, from somewhere behind me—“Fuck, Texas.”
The voice hits low and rough through the rain.
“Baby girl?”
I turn.
Drew is barreling across the quad toward me through the downpour like weather doesn’t apply to him.
Of course he’s still in one of those stupid cut-off hoodies, the fabric plastered dark to his chest and shoulders, his hair dripping, broad arms bare and slick with rain. The sleeves are hacked off so unevenly they look like he got angry at them in a parking lot and finished the job with his teeth.
He takes one look at me and his whole face changes.
No grin.
No swagger.
No football-boy line.
Just alarm.
Then anger.
Then something heavier.
“Jesus Christ.”
I try to straighten.
Try to pull myself back together enough to say something with teeth in it.
What comes out instead is, “Go away.”
He ignores that completely.
Of course he does.
He’s in front of me in three long strides, one hand already steadying my elbow before I can sway again.
“No.”
The word is immediate.
Absolute.
I try to pull away.
It’s weak.
Useless.
Embarrassing.
“Drew—”
He looks down at the boot, then at the backpack hanging crooked on my shoulder, then at my face—really looks at my face—and whatever he sees there wipes the last bit of rough humor out of him.
“Not a chance,” he mutters.
Then he bends and sweeps me up.
Just like that.
One arm under my knees—the good leg and the boot awkwardly angled.
One arm around my back.
My backpack sliding off my shoulder as the whole world lurches.
I gasp and instinctively grab at him.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting you out of the damn rain.”
His voice is rough near my ear.
Warm.
Annoyed in that deeply male way that somehow makes panic feel smaller.
“I can walk.”
“With that boot? In this?” He looks down at me once, rain running off his jaw. “No, baby girl. You can be furious later.”
The sheer audacity of him would usually get a sharper response.
Right now, all I can do is cling.
Because he is huge and warm and solid and moving fast, and after the night I’ve had, being carried without having to ask feels so close to mercy I could sob over it.
So I do.
Not loudly.
Not with dignity.
Just one broken sound that leaves me the second I bury my wet face against the soaked front of his hoodie.
Drew doesn’t react.
Doesn’t comment.
He just adjusts his hold and keeps walking through the storm.
I don’t know where we’re going until I hear the chirp of a remote unlock and he kicks open the passenger door of a massive black GMC truck polished enough that even in the rain the chrome catches every stray campus light.
Leather interior.
Warm air blasting the second he opens it.
The whole thing lifted and overbuilt and obscene in that very male way that says I wanted something big enough to survive me.
He sets me down carefully on the passenger seat like I’m made of something breakable, then leans in long enough to yank my backpack in after me and slam the door before I can argue.
By the time he rounds the hood and gets in, I’m openly crying.
No pretty tears.
No controlled pageant tears.
The ugly kind.
The kind that keep coming because your whole body has decided it’s done with public image for the night.
He doesn’t say anything when he sees.
He just cranks the heat higher, peels off his soaked hoodie over his head in one hard motion, and tosses it into the back.
Underneath he’s in a gray T-shirt clinging wet to every thick line of him—shoulders, chest, arms. Rain runs off his hair onto his neck. His hands are rough on the wheel, tape still around two fingers, knuckles white.
“Put that on the floor,” he says, jerking his chin toward my backpack.
I obey because apparently my capacity for resistance drowned somewhere between the quad and the truck.
The wipers slash across the windshield. Campus blurs past in watery streaks as he pulls away from the curb and drives.
I wipe at my face uselessly.
He glances over once.
Then back to the road.
“Want me to ask?”
“No.”
“Good.”
That nearly gets a laugh out of me.
Nearly.
Instead I cry harder.
He drives off campus in silence, one big hand loose on the wheel, the truck warm enough now that steam is starting to lift off my soaked sleeves.
We turn down a quieter road lined with old stone walls and cypress trees, then through a wrought-iron gate that opens onto a long drive curving toward a house lit gold against the rain.
Mediterranean.
That’s the first thing I think.
White stucco walls.
Red tile roof.
Arched windows glowing softly through the storm.
Climbing ivy dark against the stone.
A fountain in the front courtyard overflowing with rainwater.
It looks like the sort of place rich people hide in when they want the world to leave them alone.
Drew pulls up under the covered portico and kills the engine.
I stare through the windshield.
“Where are we?”
“Home.”
The word is simple.
Not loaded.
Still does something to me.
He gets out, comes around, and opens my door before I can process another question.
Then he pauses.
Looks down at me with rain still dripping off his hairline.
“I’m gonna carry you again.”
I should object.
Instead I just nod.
Because at this point, whatever is left of my pride is soaked clean through.
He lifts me out of the truck and carries me into the house.
The inside is warm stone and dark wood and low golden light. It smells like cedar, laundry soap, and something citrusy. The entryway opens into a living room with tall ceilings crossed by old beams, creamy walls, a fireplace already lit, and a couch deep enough to disappear into.
The whole place feels expensive without trying too hard.
Which annoys me on principle.
Except I’m too wrecked to care properly.
Drew sets me down carefully on a giant ottoman near the hearth and crouches in front of me.
For one second he just looks at me.
At my soaked hoodie.
My wet hair.
My mascara halfway down my face.
My boot.
My shaking hands.
Then he says, very quietly, “Okay.”
The word is strange coming from him.
Gentle.
Grounded.
He stands and disappears down a hallway.
Comes back with a towel the size of a blanket and one worn gray football T-shirt soft enough to look ancient.
He sets both in my lap.
“You need out of those wet clothes.”
I look at him.
He’s wringing rainwater out of the hem of his own shirt onto the stone floor like he doesn’t even notice he’s still soaked through.
“I’m not—”
“I know.” His voice stays low. Easy. “I’m not making it weird.”
That lands.
Because suddenly I know he won’t.
No angle.
No opportunism.
No finally got you alone male nonsense.
Just warmth.
Dry clothes.
A safe room.
He grabs another towel, then points toward the hallway.
“Bathroom’s there if you want privacy. Or I can turn around and pretend I’ve never seen a wet hoodie in my life.”
That almost gets me too.
My throat aches around it.
“I can do it.”
“I know you can.”
A beat.
“Still don’t have to.”
He turns before I answer and walks to the fireplace, broad back to me, hands braced on the mantle, head tipped slightly down to give me every inch of dignity I still have left.
My fingers shake as I peel off the soaked hoodie.
Then the shirt beneath it, cold fabric dragging over skin.
I dry off as best I can with the towel, blinking through fresh tears because there is something so humiliating about undressing heartbreak alongside rain and being treated with gentleness when you feel least deserving of it.
The T-shirt is enormous.
Soft from too many washes.
Faded Stanford across the chest.
It smells like detergent, clean cotton, and him underneath it.
By the time I’ve pulled it on and wrestled my wet sleeves into a sad little pile, I’m shivering again.
“Okay,” I say.
Drew turns.
Looks at me once in the shirt that hits mid-thigh and the boot and the tear-swollen face and the towel still clutched in my lap.
His jaw tightens.
Not hunger.
Not triumph.
Something like hurt on my behalf.
He walks back over, lowers himself onto the couch beside the ottoman, and says quietly, “Come here.”
That’s it.
No flourish.
No charm.
No fake Texan accent.
No swagger.
And because I have absolutely nothing left—because I am so gutted and cold and broken open I can barely hold my own bones together—I let him help me up from the ottoman and into his lap on the couch like I weigh nothing at all.
One careful movement at a time.
One arm behind my back.
One hand guiding the boot so it doesn’t jar.
Then I’m there.
Curled sideways against him in his giant T-shirt, my good leg folded awkwardly on the cushions, his arms wrapping around me slow and sure until I’m entirely surrounded.
Warm.
Huge.
Safe enough that my body gives up the last fight it had in it.
The first sob tears out of me before I can stop it.
Then another.
And another.