Page 72 of The Triple Play

“You don’t understand.” She breathed in desperately, her chest shaking, and I moved on instinct, lifting my ass up and sitting down beside her. I reached out, my hands on her shoulders, pulling her into me?—

She placed one single hand on my chest, an unspoken insistence to keep the distance between us.

I stared down at her like she’d grown a second head.

“Sweetheart,” I swallowed. “Please don’t tell me you’re taking him seriously.”

Her chin and lower lip wobbled violently. “I just need time to think.”

I felt like she’d punched me in the fucking throat. “Annie.”

“Look, I, I—I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a spoiled brat,” she croaked. “But I have this, like, trust fund that my mom set up for me before she…”

She swallowed hard, tearing her gaze from me, looking anywhere but at me.

“And I’ve been living half off of that and half off what I make at Smokey’s, and it’s enough to give me the time I need for music.” Her voice was cracking violently, her cheeks growing damp, and I was trying to wrap my mind around what she was saying but I was struggling. “My dad moved it under his control while I was gone. He’s threatening to take away access altogether if I don’t do what he wants. And I can’t… I can’t…”

I blinked rapidly, my hand wrapping around her wrist gently, stroking the smooth skin on the underside. I didn’t think my words through in the slightest, didn’t need to. “Then move in with us. We’ll take care of you and you don’t have to work a day in your fucking life, Annie. You can just do music. Fuck him, fuck the trust?—”

“It’s the only thing I have left of my mom.” The words were broken, spoken through sobs, and I had to stop myself from falling right into them with her.

I knew that feeling. Knew it so well.

“I just need time to think,” she said again, her voice quieter, barely more than a whisper.

I took a deep, steadying breath, my brain trying desperately to keep the brewing anger and hurt I kept shoved down into a neat little jar locked tight, but it was so hard when she was both opening up to me and shutting me out. “I know how that feels,” I rasped, squeezing her wrist gently. “I lost my sister when I was fifteen. I don’t have anything of hers left.”

Her head lolled down, her forehead resting on her upper arm as she kept it outstretched, palm against my chest. “Then you understand why I have to consider this,” she mumbled. “And why I need you to go home.”

Chapter26

Annie

Ifelt hollow.

Two weeks without contacting them felt like torturing myself. Every night, I lay there in my bed, staring at my phone, ignoring text after text after text from Elliot, tempted to call Cole or Xavi or Colton. Every night, I’d fallen asleep in their clothes, in Cole’s pajama bottoms and Colton’s shirt and Xavi’s zip-up. Every night, I’d wanted to cave, but I couldn’t figure out what I was doing. I couldn’t find it in me to choose from impossible choices.

They’d lost the game in Denver. I’d watched from my couch, had seen Xavi get a five-minute penalty for instigating a full-blown fistfight on the ice, had cried when the camera zoomed in on him taking a hit to the jaw, his visor dislodged and giving too much of a clear shot.

Hell, I’d practically cried every night. But that night was bad. I hadn’t watched any of the other games after that, I couldn’t bring myself to, but I’d checked the scores — loss in Denver, loss in Denver, win in Atlanta, win in Atlanta.

A part of me wished I could wipe them from my mind. At least then, maybe I’d be able to sleep and actually feel like it was helping me.

But as I lay there with my knees tucked up to my chest in my bed at four in the afternoon, I picked up the phone for the first time in weeks — I just wish I’d have had the strength to do it for one of the guys instead.

“Hey,” I said, the word a little dead, a little dull.

“Well someone sounds far less chipper than they did the last time we talked,” Zoe said cautiously, her breath huffing as if she was walking.

“I sound incredibly chipper.” I didn’t.

“Wow, depressedandlying? What’s gotten into you?” she mused, and I rolled my eyes, wishing she could see it through the call. “Are you at home?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“I’m coming over.”

“What?” My eyes bulged, a sudden jolt of adrenaline making me feel far,farmore awake. “What do you mean?”

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