Page 62 of The Game Plan
His eyes search mine. “I want to make it right. Please, Savvy, let me make everything right.”
I toss my arms out to the side. “How?”
“You’re going to think I’m crazy—”
“More than I already do?”
He tilts his head, hazel eyes begging me to let him continue. “I know it’s crazy, but what if…what if we actually got married?”
I laugh again, but there’s no humor in it. “You’re insane, actually, insane.”
“Am I?” He leans in, voice rising in desperation. “You’d have healthcare. Financial security, so you don’t have to work so hard. A name on your baby’s birth certificate instead of a blank father space. And I’d have—” His voice catches before lowering into a whisper. “You. I’d have you.”
My chest squeezes, and I find it too overwhelming to breathe.
And dammit, I want Grant Campbell. I’ve wanted him since I was eighteen—a scared girl in a new city, hell, a new state, far from everything familiar. He was the first person to speak to me at college orientation. The first to break through the walls I’d built. The first to see past the facade and meet the real Savannah.
But he doesn’t know what this admission does to me.
I’m six years old again, sitting around a craft table in kindergarten. We’re nearly at the end of the school year, and today’s project is creating a craft for Father’s Day. When I sheepishly told my teacher I didn’t have a dad, the kids in the class started whispering and making fun of me.
On my eighth birthday, I mistakenly asked my mom to tell me about my dad and why I never received a gift like my cousin, Ridge, who would get a card and gift card in the mail from his dad. Ridge’s dad left when he was five, but he always sent him a birthday gift. I never got one. Instead, I had my mom yelling at me and crying on my birthdays, asking why I had to make my dad leave.
Fast forward, I’m ten, hearing my mom laugh with another new man in the other room while I eat cold leftovers alone in the kitchen because she was too busy with some guy to help me use the oven—our microwave had broken a month prior.
I’m twelve years old, asking my mom to please stay home with me and not go to the bar. Every time she goes to the bar, she leaves me alone for the night, sometimes not returning for a day or two.
After spending my thirteenth birthday alone, Ridge found me crying in my room. He settled in bed next to me until I explained why I was crying. My mom hadn’t been home for a week. She found another new guy and said she’d be back. But six days later, there was still no sign of her. Instead, I sat at the kitchen table and waited for her to bring home a store-bought cake, sing“Happy Birthday,” and tell me she loved me. Only, she never did. After that, I moved in with my aunt because Mom never came home. She called my aunt and explained she needed to live her life without the reminder of what life could have been like. I was a burden to her, and she washed her hands of me.
I’m eighteen, smiling for pictures with my sorority sisters after being recruited into Delta Zeta. My ‘Big’ is standing behind me, arms wrapped around my shoulders, both of us smiling widely. That is, until they abandoned me when I appeared pregnant and scared. They preached the sisterhood was supposed to be for a lifetime; that is, until someone does something frowned upon, and then you’re nothing more than the dirt on their Louboutins.
That was me, though.
Always smiling and pretending like it didn’t hurt.
I clench my jaw as the memories pile like bricks on my chest. Tears burn my eyes, but I fight to keep them from falling. Instead, I straighten my shoulders and put my wall back into place, like always.
“You don’t want this,” I whisper. “You think you do, but eventually, you’ll realize it's more hassle—thatwe’remore hassle—than it’s worth, and you’ll walk away too.”
His face twists as if I’d slapped him. “Sav, I would never—”
“Don’t.” I shake my head, not ready to hear false promises.
Everything about this situation has my guard up and my heart breaking.
This was the dream. Get the prince, fall in love, and live happily ever after.
Too bad my life is the cruel joke, the plot twist everyone predicted.
The girl fell in her mother’s footsteps, and now she’s relying on a guy to solve her problems.
“Don’t make promises. I’ve spent my whole life watching people leave, and I swore I’d never let someone do that to my daughter.”
“I’m not them.”
I’m not them.
Three words. Three words that have me sucking in a ragged breath. Because no, Grant Campbell isn’t them.
