To her credit, she ignored me if she noticed at all, turning on her heel and sashaying a few steps before she was almost hit by Hernandez doing a tricep strap workout. She dodged his fists just in time, nearly stumbling into a leg extension machine before she did a little spin and avoided that, too.

I watched her pinball the entire way out of the weight room, and didn’t realize how much I liked the distraction of her until she was gone.

And the only thing left to think about was Maliyah.

Chapter Four

Clay

“You’re just going to love him, Clay,” Mom said through the phone, the sound of dishes clattering in the background telling me she was working on dinner.

I was on my way across campus after a grueling day of camp to meet with Giana for our little PR refresher, and I was not in the mood to hear about Mom’s latest boyfriend.

But I didn’t have a choice.

“He’s a real gentleman. And he’s serious about business.” She paused. “And about me, which is refreshing.”

I tried my best to harness a smile even though she couldn’t see me, mostly so it would help me sound like I believed her. “He seems great, Mom.”

“You’ll see. When you come home for Christmas.” There was a pause, and then, “So, tell me about you. How’s football?”

I sighed before answering the question, which I really was grateful for. I knew Mom was in a good place because she asked, because she didn’t spend the whole call wailing about herself and her problems. Not that I minded when she did that, either. I was there for her no matter what.

Still, after so many times repeating the same narrative, I had a hard time believing this man would be any different from the rest.

My poor mother was stuck on a spinning Ferris wheel of heartbreak she couldn’t get off of ever since my dad left when I was eight.

The cycle went like this:

Mom would meet a new guy, usually at Le Basier, the ridiculously overpriced restaurant where she waited tables in Los Angeles. Mom was a looker — I got my sharp green eyes from her, and my naturally tanned olive skin — and she’d always bring home the kind of guys who were enamored by her beauty. She was charming on top of it, which usually meant the men slipped willingly into her web and were content to be consumed by her energy.

The problem was that once the relationship started getting real, once the shine wore off and they realized my mom could be a lot to handle, they left.

And they always left her with even more scars than she had before.