Page 99 of Jaded

“That’s very impressive.” I lean in to swipe a piece of ground beef out of her pan. “There’s no way you know that.”

Brenda finally turns to point her spatula at me, her face pressed into stern, dictating lines. “You’re pissy and moody and pretending not to be.”

“I am not.” Lie.

“You can tell me now or you can tell me later,” Brenda says, going back to her stirring. “But my advice’ll be the same either way.”

“I’m just . . .” I clench my teeth tight. Cross my arms over my chest. “Trying to figure out the right things to do. In every aspect of my life.”

“Aren’t we all.” Brenda sighs. “One thing I know for sure, though. Just ’cause something’s right, doesn’t mean it’s easy.”

Don’t I fucking know it.

Sometimes that makes you want it more—the challenge. And the thrill of that quest makes you chase all the wrong dreams. Sometimes it makes you question whether you’re on the right path at all.

“The right thing isn’t always obvious either,” Brenda continues, like she reads my thoughts. “Usually takes a lot of soul searching.”

I lean my elbows back onto the counter, and I wonder how much of her words—her wisdom—are based on her relationship with my father.

Twenty-five years ago, she walked in and picked up the dangling threads of another woman’s broken home life: a disillusioned father still lamenting his ruined career; his talented first son following in his hallowed footsteps; the forgotten second son, cut adrift by neglect and abandonment.

What made her decide to enroll me in that first squirts league?

My gaze skates sideways, to the wood-framed photo hanging over the kitchen counter beside the stove.

It’s the only picture she has of her late ex-husband, Rey Taylor. He looks sonormal—one arm wrapped around Jess and one around me. So paternal. Almost happy.

But photos so rarely tell the full story.

My childhood was a roller coaster of wanting him to notice me—to be proud of me—and wishing I was invisible. I was the accidental bonus kid that forced him to stay at his factory job when all he wanted to do was coach. I was never as good as Jess; therefore, I could never be anything but a disappointment, a let down.

But when I was twelve and Jess left for college, I became something else—a spark to the ember of his ire.

The memory of that fear lives etched in my bones.

“You need help setting the table?” Avery Bennett hops into the kitchen like a bunny, yanking me back to present-day Earth. “I’m at your service.”

Brenda drops her spatula into the pan, snatches it up before it can start to melt. She whirls on me, eyes wide with shock. “What the hell did you do to him?”

“Nat didn’t do shit,” Avery says, whipping open one of the cupboards to start extracting plates. “There’s gonna beopen tryoutsfor the Dingoes,Jesse Taylor’s coming to watch, Syd’s doing social media for the Dingoes, and it’s all thanks to Oliver James.”

The name hits me like a bolt of lighting, like a strike that lights me up from the inside out. How can those two simple words have such a profound effect—evoke a response that’s at once visceral and emotional: a fizzing tumult of my insides, a riot of thoughts, a pang of terror.

So many fucking things, two small words.

Oliver James.

The little ghost I shouldn’t want—for so very many reasons. The little ghost I hope never stops haunting me.

The little ghost who I know will leave this town, and my too-small life, the moment the scouts catch wind of him.

Chapter 24

Nat

Normally,I’dbeplayingmusic in the tow truck—I subscribe to Sirius XM for the sole sake of the long-ass repo rides—but tonight, I keep the Dingoes game blaring through the speakers.

Dark desert scenery blurs through my windows, around the edges of the road painted in grey and gold by the truck’s headlights. Luckily, the two jobs I’m after tonight aren’t too far out of town.

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