Page 61 of Under Pressure

He jostles a shoulder, pink lips quirking. “It’s one of the reasons.”

“Are you going to tell me the others?”

“And ruin the suspense? No, baby. Not yet.”

“It might help me be a bit more believing if I knew why exactly you’re so set on this.”

Setting his empty bowl down, he scrubs a hand down his face. When he rights himself again, he’s twisted on the couch, his body language completely open. I hold still, cupping my container of food.

“Do you remember the first time we met?” he asks, his voice low and so, so soft.

My gut tingles with warning. “Not as well as you do. I wasn’t paying much attention.”

“I’m not talking about at the coffee shop. I mean in school. When we were kids.”

His arm stretches out along the back of the couch, and I flinchwhen a bold finger brushes my shoulder, running a hot line along the seam of my shirt. My stomach hollows as I repeat his words to myself. The confirmation that he remembers what I do is unexpected.

“That depends on what you think happened back then. I guarantee we don’t remember those years the same way,” I say, swallowing when I hear how cold I sound.

His eyes tighten at the corners, but he doesn’t pull his hand away. “We didn’t talk much. Our circles were different. But I know you came to watch our ball games every once in a while. You’d sit on the highest level of the bleachers either with your hood up or a baseball cap on that would slip down your forehead and shield your eyes.”

“I didn’t know you were watching us.”

He shakes his head. “Not ‘us.’You. I only watched you.”

“Why?”

“You fascinated me.”

The noise I make in the back of my throat gives away how unimpressed I am with that. “Wow. How lucky was I?”

“I don’t mean it like that—” He palms my shoulder now, blowing out a ragged breath as he adjusts his positioning on the couch cushion. “You were in the band and only ever hung out with those same two people. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to things outside of baseball back then. My friends at the time were just . . . I don’t know. Placeholders, maybe? They gave me the right image for the guy I needed to be then. The popular jock with college scouts nipping at his heels. Fuck, that makes me sound like a douche. What I mean to say is that you fascinated me with how you didn’t give your attention to anyone you didn’t want to. You didn’t care about having a thousand friends or hiding what you were interested in. Not even your friends could distract you from what you were focused on, and I doubt they would have even considered it with how openly honest you were about what you needed from them.

“Like that time you found the rabbit behind the dugout? Youshoved Jacobi out of the way when he tried to take it from you, and all but bit the head off of Kyla when she insisted we call animal control. There was no taking that thing away from you, even before we knew if it had rabies or some other contagious disease. You may as well have been dealing with it by yourself because there was nothing anyone could have offered that you couldn’t have either done or found yourself. Your fierce independence made me notice you. It was exciting to see someone so passionate about something that wasn’t their responsibility. The only time I ever felt half as passionate about anything was when I first started playing baseball.”

I remember that day . . . but not the same way. When I found that rabbit, I was leaving the baseball diamond because Beck’s shit-ass friends had noticed me watching the game and couldn’t help themselves when the urge to give me a hard time arose. They tugged on my hat and teased me for coming just to creep on Beck before stealing it and whipping it over the back of the bleachers.

There was no reason for them to be picking on me, but while Beck saw me as some fierce, independent girl who didn’t give anyone the time of day, I was still too fragile. My soft heart made me an easy target for loud-mouthed boys to get their rocks off by being jerks to. His friends were shitty, and because he kept them around and didn’t insert himself into their shit, I wrote him off the same way.

Up until recently, I didn’t regret doing that.

“I gave it to my nan, and she kept it for me. The rabbit,” I breathe out, too stunned to say anything else.

Beck laughs. “Yeah, I bet you did. What did you name it?”

“Polly.”

“Yeah, it did look like a Polly.”

“No, it didn’t, but I let Callie choose the name. It became her pet the moment I brought it home that night.”

“You’re close with your sister, right?”

“Very. She’s my best friend.”

He nods, giving me every inch of his attention. “I’ve always been jealous of people with siblings.”

“Your parents never wanted another kid?”