Or should I say, ninety percent of them — the other ten were reserved for Mom, especially when I applied for a student loan late last night. It hadn’t been something I’d needed up until this point. My scholarship covered my tuition, books, dorm, and fees, and even gave me enough to live on — especially considering most of my meals were at the stadium.

But I had drained my savings helping Mom pay bills and get by, and rent was due next week.

It was a small loan, one I hoped I could pay off easily once I was drafted with a signing bonus. Still, my ribcage ached when I hit the submit button, when I got the automatic approval and realized I was in debt for the first time in my life.

It was so easy to do, and now, I understood why so many people were crushed beneath the weight of it.

“Don’t worry,” I’d told Mom after the loan was secured. “I will take care of you.”

“You always have,” was her response.

I still wasn’t over my anger with my father, either. I couldn’t understand how he could so easily turn his back on his family when we needed him.

But then again, we weren’t his family — not his primary one, anyway. We were a past life, one he clearly wanted to leave behind.

I sniffed against the fierce wind, a cool resolve sinking over me along with it. We didn’t need him. We would be just fine.

It had been a tornado of emotions over the last week, especially over the last seventy-two hours, and I couldn’t contain the hope that bubbled in my heart at the thought of telling Giana how I felt about her and having her reciprocate it.

I could see it already, her eyes watering as I pulled her into me. I could feel her lips on mine, her body melting as I held her, could taste her tongue and hear the sweet moans she saved only for me.

But there was a niggling fear tickling at my stomach as I approached her building, because I knew the other way this could go, too.

The truth was I didn’t know where her head was at, where her heart was at.

And the only way to find out was to put my own on the line.

I lifted my hand to ring the buzzer for her apartment, but before I could, I heard my name behind me.

“Clay?”

I turned, finding Giana shivering in a jacket I knew couldn’t be keeping her warm in this cold front that had swept in over the city.

Her eyes were dark, underlined with a deep purple that told me she hadn’t slept, her face red and blotchy like she’d been crying. Or maybe it was just the wind. Either way, she looked how I felt — emotionally drained.