Page 197 of Off Limits: The Firsts

This has nothing to do with Jonah, Mad, and everything to do with you. This is you realizing you can love your brother but not be beholden to our parents over life’s fate.

Over fate’s blind arrow shot in the night to ruin one person’s life and change another’s.

“Dekker? Hi.” My ears perk up the minute Callum answers his phone, and fuck if I don’t check my texts again to see if I missed one from her.

Nothing.

Almost as if she said what she said to me—confessed two things that could change my life in numerous ways like me sending that text to my dad did—but I’m afraid to face it.

Let her represent me instead of Finn. He’s dogged and well-known, same as Dekker, and yet, I feel like she has more than just her bottom line in mind from how I’ve seen her manage Callum. I’ve seen her patience with him, Guzman, and Stetson, and I’ve talked to other players who she’s secured endorsement deals for. All professional, no bullshit, all results.

And when it comes to me. Maybe . . . maybe there’s even more than a bottom line and deals.

Maybe she could love me.

Fuck if that’s not a hard thing to think out loud. Fuck if that’s not the thought that has had me tied up in knots for days.

What am I going to do about it?

Live in the past . . . or realize I can’t change the past and can only move forward?

Shit.

She followed us around the damn place and now that we’re right in her backyard and our home turf, she couldn’t bother to show up? A damn subway ride away from Manhattan to Jersey, and she couldn’t make it?

If she wanted me that badly, wouldn’t she have shown up? Tried to win me over?

So, you tell me, Hunter, what am I supposed to do?

Dekker’s words replay in my mind. The confused desperation in her voice, the pleading in her eyes, the defeat in her posture . . . fuck. It killed me.

Why am I thinking about this now?

Why am I sitting in a locker room with my teammates and not celebrating being one game closer to clinching a playoff berth?

“Yes, it looks that way, doesn’t it?” Callum says as he walks past me, his finger pressed to one ear, his cell to the other. Because of her. “But don’t say the word. Don’t fucking jinx it.” His laughter rings out.

The playoffs.

She called him to talk about the playoffs.

Sanderson doesn’t call me to talk about my games.

Shit, he doesn’t call me unless it’s to make me get in line. Unless it’s negative and unsupportive, much like my old man’s.

Fucking hell.

I lean my head back on the locker behind me.

Deal with her after the playoffs.

Deal with my representation and all the shit in my head and my questions after the playoffs.

Accomplish the one thing you need to—that you promised Jonah—and then maybe you can carve out more of a life for yourself.

“Hey!” I pound my fist against the metal locker behind me and the sound echoes across the chatter in the locker room. All the guys turn toward me as I climb on top of the bench.

Their hoots and hollers fill the room and mask my own groan as my knee aches from bearing weight on it.