“I do want you here.” He grabbed my wrist so I couldn’t walk away.

“Clearly you don’t or you wouldn’t be so pissed that I showed up.”

“I’m pissed because I don’t want your one week of being grounded to turn into two weeks.”

I just stared at him. “Why does that matter?”

He sighed and let go of my wrist. “Scarlett, you’ll miss my first game of the season if you’re grounded next week too.”

I swear my heart stopped beating as I stared up at him.

The corner of his mouth ticked up.

I couldn’t help but match his smile. “Really? That’s why you didn’t want me to come tonight? So I wouldn’t be grounded for longer and miss your game?”

“I’m kind of used to you cheering for me super loudly.”

God, I’d been so mad at him. But that…actually made sense. And it was nice that he wanted me there. Really nice. I was Axel’s #1 fan. I always had been. “I don’t cheer that loudly, Axel.”

He laughed. “You really do.”

I smiled up at him. And just like that…we felt like us again. But that was one of the problems. We only ever felt like us when we were alone. If anyone else was in the room with us, he acted differently. More distant. Dismissive. And it had been a really long time since we’d been alone.

He’d stopped coming over to my place as much. We used to sit on my bed doing homework together most nights. And by that, I mean eating snacks and laughing. God, he always used to make me laugh instead of cry. And I couldn’t remember the last time we’d done that. Just us. I was pretty sure it was before high school. Before he had practice after school every day.

“I would never miss your first game,” I said.

“So you’ll let me take you home?”

Honestly, him taking me home didn’t sound that bad. It would just be the two of us… But was that actually what he wanted? Because I’d waited a million years for him to ask me out. As far as I was concerned, this was the perfect opportunity. But he wasn’t asking. It still kind of just seemed like he wanted me out of the picture.

“I can do both,” I said. “Seriously, my dad will never know I was gone tonight.”

“Scarlett…”

“And even if I do get grounded again, I can sneak out. RJ cut a hole in the floor of one of the guest bedrooms. I can pretty much come and go whenever I want to now.”

Axel laughed, but stopped when he realized I wasn’t laughing too. “Wait, you’re serious?”