Page 162 of Jaded

I wince, sorry that I spoke, that I, once again, made it about me. “Not really. More of the same old stuff.”

“So, if you’re not gonna talk,” he flicks ash off the end of the cigarette, “then it’s on me to do all of the conversational heavy lifting.”

“Metaphorically and literally,” I agree. “Because you could definitely outlift me.”

“Are you worried about the tournament?”

“We’re not talking about me,” I protest, giving him a nudge in his oversized biceps. “You’re the one having the absolute day from hell.”

“Doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to have a shit day too. And honestly . . .” A pause for a drag. “You’ve got more than enough reason.”

I let my eyes flutter closed. “Sure. I guess. I don’t know.”

A beat of silence. Two.

And then, he asks, “Want to know something about me?”

My eyes pop open. Our breaths are twin clouds of warmth in the cold. And without realizing I’m gonna do it, I shift closer to nestle myself under his arm. “Tell me anything. Everything. I am here to listen.”

His fingers weave over my shoulder blade, tracing featherlight patterns through my jacket, sending a wave of soft heat through my skin. “When I was in high school, I played for the school team.”

I close my eyes, let his words wash over me. Let his low, chocolate-smooth voice soothe me. And I listen.

“Most people took one look at me and thought, well that loser kid’s going nowhere. Because they compared me to—” He cuts off sharply. Like he’s choked on his own words.

“Compared you to Jesse,” I supply.

“Jesse. And my dad. Rey Taylor.” He pulls on the cigarette, blows out a slow, quiet exhale. “Obviously, I wasn’t as good as either of them, so who cared?”

“Damn.” I open my eyes to peer into the clouded green crystal of his. Out of focus. “That’s pretty heavy for a kid.”

“Yeah.” His voice is a murmur against my cheek. “But I was gonna prove them all wrong. I wanted it. I wanted it so fucking bad . . .”

I nod, and sadness clutches at my lungs. “I know what that feels like.”

“I know you do.” His arm tightens around me. “But I never really believed in myself.”

“Hard to believe in yourself when no one else does, right?” I ask, words barely a whisper. “Especially when you’re seventeen.”

“But ithadto be my destiny, because what else was there?”

A vise squeezes my lungs in an icy grip, choking my breath. I know that feeling too. To want something so badly you’d break for it. Over and over and over until you can’t unbreak.

“And when you’re a stupid seventeen-year-old kid,” he says, “the universe isn’t afraid to come smack you down. Tell you that everything you thought you were or were meant to be was wrong.”

Those words resonate so deeply, I feel it viscerally, in my gut and in my bones. They hang between us, like the clouded ghosts of breath in the icy air.

“And what”—I choke out finally, so low I barely hear myself—“are you supposed to live for if your dreams are a lie?”

“Exactly,” he breathes. An escaped beam of light streaks through clouds and snow to cut a sharp curve through the green of his iris, the black of his pupil. “I got so lucky Syd came along."

“So what was your smackdown, then?” I ask.

“Myself. My own stupidity.” He holds out the hand with the cigarette, and we both stare at his bruised knuckles. “I fucked up. Coach kicked me off. And it was like . . . Like how could I have been the one to destroy my own purpose?”

“That’s exactly what the darkness feels like,” I murmur, still staring, transfixed, at those tattooed fingers as they lift again. “How do you fight yourself? Your own shortcomings?”

“Right,” he says, and his voice goes so soft I almost miss the next collection of words. “But I don’t think your darkness is a shortcoming.”

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