Page 83 of Scoring Lessons

Her hands raked through my hair then cradled part of my jawline. She squeezed gently. “Any time.”

I didn’t know if it had been the weight of the moment or the way she made me feel like I could finally breathe again, but my body moved on its own and hugged her.

She embraced me without an ounce of hesitation. When she straddled me, I only hugged her tighter as I tried to hold back a fresh set of tears.

“Everything will be okay,” she murmured in my ear, soft and warm, like the sun in your face after a rainy day.

“I don’t see how.” My words were raw. The realest they’d ever been.

She cradled my face once again, forcing me to look at her. “You are one of the most resilient people I know, Wesley.” Though her face was expressionless and serious as ever, her words were filled with so much conviction that it almost convinced me, too. Her grip on my face tightened. It tethered me to her, like there was this invisible string between us that was becoming stronger and impossible to break. “And sometimes it’s okay to not be okay. That doesn’t make you any less of a man.”

What does it make me, then?

“It makes you human,” she said quietly.

It was then that I realized I’d whispered the question out loud.

“I feel anything but.”

She pressed a hand against my chest. If she could tell the way my heart beat faster at her touch, she didn’t show it. “It doesn’t make it any less true.”

Being strong had always come naturally to me. Showing how over-consuming the sadness was made me feel like there was something fundamentally wrong with me. Like I was weak.

That wasn’t the image I wanted to portray.

But being anyone but myself around Olivia was becoming harder every day. It was oddly freeing. I didn’t know how we’d gotten to this point. Much less the why.

Maybe it was because she’d shown me some of her messy parts, too. The ones she thought made her imperfect. Though to me, they were quite the opposite.

Olivia was strong-willed. Brave. Brutally honest. Worthy of everything she wanted and more.

I just wished she knew it then, too.

TWENTY-ONE

OLIVIA

SUCH A GOOD STUDENT.

Time change when traveling to LA was always a bitch.

I was grateful we landed a day before the game, since some of the guys had endorsements to attend to.

It was barely three p.m. on a Friday, and after I left the hotel’s gym, my body was ready for dinner and a nap.

When I reached my floor, I found Wesley with his arms crossed, leaning against my door.

“What do you want?” I asked as I made a shoo motion for him to get out of the way.

“We’re in LA,” he said.

“Yes, so?” The door beeped when I pressed my key against the reader.

He followed after me. “It’s Friday, and we don’t have a game until tomorrow afternoon.”

“Is there a point to these facts I already know?” I gave him a dry look then dropped my workout shoes in the closet.

“It means we get to scratch another fun date off your list.” He smiled.