Page 71 of Scoring Lessons

“Why did you miss practice, then? Did you injure yourself last night or something?” I was covering my bases, because knowing him, if he were to get injured, he wouldn’t have said anything and pushed through it like it was the answer to everything.

My question was met with silence.

Okay, then. I was officially entering freak-out territory.

“I’m opening the door, so you better be decent,” was the only opportunity I gave him to react before I pushed the door open.

The room was impossibly dark thanks to the blackout curtains, but the light filtering through the hallway allowed me to take it all in.

There was something I knew for certain when it came to Wesley. He was meticulous. I remembered it vividly, because I thought it was odd for a teenage boy to be so clean. Henry was the literal opposite. But that was the right of passage for teenagers, except for Wesley. He tried to cause as little trouble as possible for Mariana since she’d raised him all by herself. It was one of the things I admired about him. He loved being helpful. He also had a presence that made it difficult to be unhappy or worried. It was like he shone this bright light when he was around. It was contagious.

This was all to say, I wasn’t sure what room I’d waltzed into, because it wasn’t his. Dirty clothes were scattered across the space in multiple piles, as well as shoes. His gym bag was next to the door, and through the open zipper I could see more clothes. To-go protein shakes he hadn’t cleaned littered his side table.

“Olivia,” Wesley growled in frustration, but I couldn’t see him because he was underneath his dark-gray duvet. “Get out of my room.”

I stayed completely noiseless as Daisy walked through the mayhem and jumped on Wesley’s bed. With her nose, she’d lifted the duvet enough to get access to his face and lick him.

“Hey, Daisy pie.” His voice was groggy and rough.

My heart did this thing where it skipped a whole beat at the new nickname he’d given to her.

He loved Daisy. And I loved the fact that he did. Daisy was the most important thing in my life, so much so that I endured endless fights with Jack because of her. He never liked her. He even tried to convince me a few times to get rid of her, but I never budged. Wesley embraced her, and I liked that. I didn’t know why it was important to me, but it was.

I took a deep breath before I stepped closer and took a seat on the edge of the bed. If it had been any other person, I’d have walked away by now. But it was like my body had taken a life of its own and refused to let this situation go. Refused to give up on him.

Was this normal between us? Nope. But I think we’d passed that stage the day I moved in with him.

“Look at me,” I ordered.

He turned with a sigh, the duvet rustling as he sat up and leaned against the headboard.

His hair was disheveled, his usual lazy curl resting against the lines of his forehead. His dark-blond stubble was longer than usual. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and even underneath the shitty lighting, I could trace every lean muscle of his chest, his upper arms. When my eyes landed on his face once again, it was hard to miss the dark circles.

“Why did you miss practice?” I asked again, quietly.

His chest expanded in a long inhale, like he was mulling over the words. “You were right. I’m injured.”

When we were kids, he used to do this thing where he would look at his fingers and fidget with them when lying. The alarms inside my head went off at the movement.

I knitted my brows. “You’re lying to me.”

“Olivia, please, drop it.” His tone was on edge, a little snappier than usual.

Worry settled in the pit of my stomach like a heavy stone, weighing me down.

I hated it, mostly because this was…Wesley. He wasn’t supposed to matter to me. But it was safe to say he no longer fit into any box I’d built for him.

His green eyes had dimmed, now a deeper, almost hunting shade.

I gripped the duvet and peeled it off him. “Get up.”

“No.” He tried to grab the duvet, but I was quick to throw it on the floor.

“You have five minutes to put on some warm clothes.” I turned around, and Daisy hopped off the bed, hot on my trail.

“Where are we going?”

“We’re taking a walk.”