Page 27 of I Wanna Text You Up

But it’s too late to turn backnow.

“Like…donedone?”

“Donedone.”

I let out a breath, and he shifts in his seat like talking about it is making him physicallyuncomfortable.

“What about… I thought you were playing with some junior league team nextyear?”

The corners of his mouth quirk up. “Not junior league, babe, minor, and it was never official. We were just in talks, but now it’s completely off thetable.”

Babe.

I don’t know if it’s that word or what he just confessed that knocks the breath out of me. “Wow,” is all I canmanage.

“Yep,wow.”

Sadness seeps out of his voice and I want to reach out to him, tell him how sorry I am that he’s lost hisdream.

I know if anything happened to my hands and I couldn’t pick up a pencil or paintbrush anymore, I’d belost.

And that’s exactly what Caleb sounds like rightnow.

“Did you at leastwin?”

A chuckle escapes his lips and he shakes his head, pulling his cap off and running a hand through his thick mess of curls. He stares down at his lap with a grin, fiddling with the cap and bending the rim to just the rightposition.

“Well?” Itease.

“Yeah, Iwon.”

“Good.”

I ease the SUV into a parking space and neither of us speak as we load our arms with bags of groceries and walk them up to theapartment.

“Do you have a certain way you want this arranged?” he asks once we’ve brought everythinginside.

He begins pulling things from the paper bags and I notice the way he favors his left hand, the one not in a brace. He’s been doing that the entire night—at the store, while we were eating, and now. I want to ask him more about his injury, but I also want to give him space on thesubject.

“Not really. I don’t use my cabinetsmuch.”

“Mind if Irearrange?”

“Have atit.”

I pour a glass of the fresh-squeezed orange juice we bought and take a seat at the countertop bar. Caleb drags his phone from his pocket and clicks a fewbuttons.

“We have Wi-Fi,right?”

“This isn’t the dark ages. Of course we have Wi-Fi.”

“Password?”

“XGonGiveItToYa69. Caps the beginning of eachword.”

He gives me a blank stare. “Is this more of that Breakfast and Beatsshit?”

“Or the fact that DMX isamazing.”

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