Page 22 of Fighting Spirit

You’re not on your phone?

@allbreckugunther

nah, I don’t have the app otherwise I spend all day on it.

@ainsleyrow_

Got it, should be there in 30.

@allbreckugunther

See you soon! Thanks Rowan!

Even as I listen to the familiar sound of the engine turning over, I know that I’m in way over my head.

Chapter Eight

ROWAN

Rowan

I think I’m outside

Ishoot off the message to the number Ruth sent me. The freezing rain starts to soak through my shirt as I stare up at the apartments, waiting for her to message me back. It’s a nice building, red brick with a freshly swept walkway and a well-maintained potted tree outside the front door.

I lean against the wall separating the front yard from the street, hoping nobody spots me here. I don’t buy into this rivalry bullshit too much, but some of the other guys on the team take it pretty seriously. If it got back to any of them that I was hanging out around the Allbreck campus, they’d have some serious questions.

I already had a text from Taylor telling me not to put the moves on her after they all left, something about ‘fraternizing with the enemy’. I didn’t mention that considering my demisexuality, I wasn’t really a ‘moves’ kind of guy. Certainly not with a girl I’d known for less than an hour.

“Rowan?” a voice calls from above me. I look up to see Ruth hanging precariously out of a window on the upper floor. My heart seizes and I take an instinctive step forward, as if I can catch her when she inevitably falls to her death.

“Ruth! Jesus, get back inside!” I bark.

“I am inside!” she calls back with a grin, looking nothing like the frightened woman I’d sat beside on Thursday night. “I’m a little tied up at the minute. Can you come up?”

I flounder for a long moment, not knowing what to say. Going into Ruth’s apartment? Where she lives? I’d planned on dropping off the gloves and never seeing her again. Ideally, I’d never think about her again, but if the way my thoughts had been plagued by her was anything to go by, that isn’t going to happen any time soon.

“Uh, I could just throw them?” I blurt out before I’ve thought it through.

Her laughter escapes in a peal. “Come on, I’ll buzz you in!”

Before I can reply, she’s ducked back inside, leaving me gaping at the space she used to occupy. The buzzer sounds and I move without thinking, pushing the door open before it locks again and I have to start throwing pebbles or something.

When I hit the second floor the sounds of loud country music echo out into the hall from a propped open door. A pink hand-painted sign is hung from a screw in the wood, announcing the ‘Walcott/Heatherly Residence.’ I tap gingerly on the doorframe and call out.

“Come on in!” she yells from somewhere inside. I obey, stepping into the space that smells like clean soap and burnt cookies. The hallway is littered with shoes, and there’s a coat that’s fallen from the hook by the door. Bending to pick it up, I listen out for Ruth, struggling to hear her over the Shania Twain that blares at an almost ear-splitting volume. “In the kitchen!”I slip out of my shoes, not wanting to trudge water through her home as I follow her voice.

The kitchen is even more of a mess than the front hall. Fabric, thread, and other random bits of material are scattered across every available surface, and in the middle of it all, there’s Ruth. Wild hair cast about her round face, a loose sundress hanging from her toned shoulders as she peers down at the green and fuzzy something in her lap.

When she notices me enter, she looks up, her gaze locking with mine as a slow smile spreads across her mouth. “Oh good, it’s you.”

Oh good. It’s you.

Fuck my life.

“I realized I was way too eager to invite you in.” She hits me with the grin she’s been wearing since her head popped out the window, a far cry from the way she looked the last time I’d seen her. “You could have been an axe murderer or something.” As she speaks, she leans over to her phone and shuts off the music. The sudden quiet almost makes my ears ring, though I can still faintly hear the noise of a TV from another room.

“I thought the axe murderer lived down the block?”

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