Page 61 of Forever Relentless

“Really? Emotionally?” He shook his head. “You process like an auditor. Methodical and thorough.”

That almost made me smile.

Dustin nudged me with his elbow, heavy and familiar. “You’ll get there.”

“Well, I hate to tell you, man, but I’m twenty-one. I’m in no hurry to get there.” I nudged him back. “I’d have swallowed my own tongue if someone had told me in January you and I would have been having this conversation. The notorious Dustin Slater, slayer of hearts and women’s virtue, all loved-up.”

Dustin laughed out loud before slowing to a stop, his eyes on the ground. “Shit.” He blew out a breath.

“What is it?”

He was silent for so long that I began to fear the worst.

“This is going to sound so corny,” he mumbled, his eyes still focused on the concrete. “But . . . I hadn’t noticed my world was broken until she walked into it.”

Jesus, that was cringey. What the fuck did I say to that birthday-card word vomit?

“Um . . .”

He shrugged. “Yeah.” He glanced at me and looked away quickly. “I’m fucked.”

I watched him as he started to walk away.

“I won’t tell,” I teased slightly as I caught up with him.

He turned, with no hesitation. “Yeah? I think she needs to hear that from me, right?”

She was never hearing it from me, that was for sure. “Absolutely.”

We walked the rest of the way to the dorms in silence, and I couldn’t help but think about what it would be like to feel something before you’d tested it for structural weakness. To let it settle around you without checking for leverage points and exit strategies?

Dustin moved toward things, trusting them to hold. I’d spent most of my life making sure I was the thing that held.

Fast wasn’t my way off the field. But maybe inevitability was its own kind of certainty.

I thought about Briar again, not consciously; she just popped into my brain. Like a whack-a-mole. Only I didn’t have a stick to whack her with. I grimaced. Okay, that was harsh. I would never hurt her.

Briar didn’t feel fast — she felt inevitable. She felt like a problem I’d been walking toward long before I knew her name.

Chapter 14

Briar

Had my ceiling always been pale blue? I’d been staring at it for ten minutes, trying not to think about a text I hadn’t answered, and the ceiling had been the only thing willing to distract me.

I lay in my bed for a little longer, staring at the unmistakable blue hue of what I thought was a previously white ceiling, and began to resent both the blueness and the fact that I knew I was procrastinating.

“Alabama fucking blues,” I grumbled as I got out of bed. The glare I gave my phone as the snooze alarm went off again didn’t help. “Six thirty is not an acceptable time to get up in this shithole to go to that goddamned stadium and look at those pricks.”

I didn’t feel guilty for being such a bitch.

Okay, maybe I felt slightly guilty for being a bitch.

“No. Fuck ’em. I don’t feel guilty.”

The shower was hot, possibly too hot, but it matched my mood today, which one might say was ‘on edge.’ But that one would be punched in the face if they said it out loud.

As I blow-dried my hair, I glared at myself. I was styling it to ensure it covered as much of my face as possible. I didn’t care what the jumped-up linebacker from hell said. Mason and I looked alike; everyone said so. So big, brawny, dark-haired sexiness . . .