Page 55 of Goal Line
I don’t wait to hear what Reese says next. I don’t want to know anything about this plan, and I don’t want to watchthem together. Instead, I speed diagonally across the courtyard toward the entrance of the math and science building, where my next class starts in ten minutes.
Everything is blurry through the tears filling my eyes. Behind me, I hear Luke call my name, so I put my head down and walk even faster, which is probably why I don’t see anyone in front of me until I’ve run smack into him.
I stumble backward from the impact, but he reaches out and grasps both my shoulders to steady me. When I glance up, Warner James is staring down at me, amusement forming creases near his eyes. Warner transferred here from our rival high school earlier this year and has always had some sort of vendetta against Luke.
He’s flirted with me every single day for the past few months in English class and told me, just last week, that if I ever wanted to make Luke jealous, I should come find him. And like a freaking angel, he’s appeared right when I need him most.
“You okay?” he asks.
“No.”
He glances over my shoulder, then back down at me. “This about Hartmann?”
“Yes. Is your offer still open?”
He smiles down at me like he knows he’s about to get his way. “Always.”
“How do you feel about prom?”
“I’m not opposed.”
He reaches out and wraps his hand behind my neck, at the same time I reach up and fist the fabric of his button-down to pull him closer. “Ask me.”
“Go to prom with me?”
“Absolutely,” I say and push up onto my toes to kiss him. We’re not in the dead center of the courtyard like Luke was with Sadie, but enough people are around that this won’t go unnoticed. Which is exactly what I need—a perfectly good distraction so I don’t have to face the heartbreak from hoping that Luke had feelings for me, only to find out he was going to ask Sadie Fucking Montgomery to prom.
He pulls back from the kiss and looks down at me with a self-satisfied smile before quietly saying, “This will be fun.” And then he’s looking past me and pulling me to his side with an arm around my shoulder. “Hey, Hartmann. Did Eva tell you we’re going to prom together?”
Luke’s gaze shifts to my face, and I’m not even sure what I see in his eyes. He looks hurt that he’s hearing this information from Warner and not from me. But I can’t focus on that, because I’m too busy pouring all my energy into holding back my tears.
I’ve never been the sentimental type, but a revenge date to prom, when I really wanted to go with my best friend, was not how I planned to end my senior year.
“Oh, honey,” Morgan says, her hand covering her mouth as she shakes her head. I can’t tell if she’s laughing at me or horrified that I’d dared to hope Luke had feelings, only to watch him cozying up with the cheer captain in public. “Did you guys ever talk about that?”
I sigh as I watch her bring her wineglass up to her lips, wishing I could have a drink right now to help me relax. Pregnancy is such a mind-fuck—on the one hand, it’s got mybodyconvincing me that I want Luke again, and on the other, it’s got mybraintricking me into thinking he could feel the same way.
The hormones have to be responsible for my heightened sex drive. That, and the fact that sharing my apartment with Luke means I don’t have the ability to satiate those needs because he’s always around. Even this afternoon in the shower, I could barely make myself come because all I could think about was that it would feel so much better if the man just on the other side of my bathroom door was the one touching me.
Goddamn, the need to have sex feels fucking overwhelming, and knowing that I can’t only magnifies the feelings.
“You okay?” Morgan asks, snapping me out of my fantasy of Luke and me in the shower. “You’re kind of flushed.”
“Sorry, just...” I shake my head to clear my thoughts, trying to remember what she asked in the first place. “Yeah, we kind of talked about it, later on. He actually tried to play it off like the only reason he went with Sadie was because I was going with Warner—like that wasn’t what he’d planned all along.”
Morgan tilts her head, studying me. “How’d you feel about that?”
“I don’t remember,” I say with a shrug, even though, of course, I damn well remember.
At some point before prom, Luke had saidI thoughtwewere going to go together, as if he hadn’t been the one planning to ask Sadie. The only reason I was going with Warner was to cover up how hurt I was that he’d chosen her over me. So instead of being honest about my feelings, I’d teasingly said,You flatter yourself,as if the thought of us going together waspreposterous.It’s a phrase that has stuck with us for nearly a decade.
“It seems like”—Morgan raises her eyebrows—“maybe you guys need to talk about that?”
“Me and Luke?” I practically screech. I can think of nothing more mortifying than telling him the truth.
“Yeah, you and Luke. I think it would be good for the two of you to have an honest, open conversation about how you feel about each other.”
“I think we’re well established on the fact that we’re just friends.”
