Page 69 of No Rhyme or Roughing
I could hear the longing in his voice—not for me as a partner, but as a friend. That’s how we’d grown close. I hadn’t treated Jameson like some celebrity. We’d become friends first, and he had so few of those. He was lonely.
“Hey,” I said softly. “Calm down. It’s all going to be okay. You know that, right?”
“But the news?—”
“Fuck the news. Baby, they don’t matter. No one else does.”
At the term, his breathing quieted. I’d cared for Jameson on some level. It wasn’t love, but it was more than I normally felt.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You are?” I had trouble believing him. His cheating hadn’t hurt as much as it should have. It only reminded me how broken I was.
“You were good to me. We were good together.”
We weren’t,but I let him have that.
“I really want to see you.”
“That’s not a good idea, Jamie.” How did I tell him I’d moved on the second I walked out of that studio? That I didn’t even want him calling me? He was part of my past, and I’d fix my career on my own. But for now, I wanted to move forward.
“Please.”
“No.”
“Syd.”
“Don’tSydme. You have to hear me, okay? It’s best if you stay away from me. I’m not saying this because I can’t resist you or want you to come anyway. I’m saying it because we need to stay out of each other’s lives.”
“But—”
“Goodbye, Jamie.” I hung up and sighed, lifting my eyes to find a freshly showered Ryder staring at me. Intense. Unreadable.
“Hey.” I pushed off the wall. “You were amazing tonight.”
He didn’t respond. Before I could say more, Teddy hip-checked him. “What about your big brother, Sydy? Tell me how perfect I was.”
“Um.” I looked him up and down. “Cool jazz fingers, bro.”
A teammate snorted as he walked by, but still, Ryder said nothing.
Teddy’s grin didn’t slip. “I hear we’re going to a train wreck of a dinner.”
I cringed. “Sam invited you too, huh?”
No parents to provide a buffer, no coaches to behave for, just the four of us who’d known each other since I was a baby and Sam, the girl who came in and wrecked it all.
Scratch that. She didn’t wreck it. The boys fighting over her did.
Ryder looked from me to my brother. “Invited youwhere?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
RYDER
This was a nightmare.
And I wasn’t the only one who thought so.
