I leapt over the box and spilled contents and ripped it out of her hand. “Don’t look at that.”

She jerked back.

My panicked heartbeat calmed now that I had the notebook safely in my hands. My breaths came out choppy. My fingers trembled around the tattered pages.

Concern radiated from her voice. “Bay, I’m sorry.” She stared back at me, baffled, and I tried to calm down.

I set the notebook down, shoving it under a stack of text books. Sucking in a shaky breath, I turned and faced her with a smile plastered on my face. “No, I’m sorry. It’s no big deal.”

She clutched her stomach and I felt like an even bigger asshole.

A knock broke through the awkwardness in the room.

“Excuse me, Miss. I have the room numbers and one of our players has arrived already. He’ll be right here.” The older man with the grizzled face, but kind eyes stood in the doorway.

I dusted off my hands. “Yes, of course. This is Felicia, the Resident Director.”

She smiled in her perfect professional way. “Nice to meet you.” She shook his hand.

“I’m Hank. I’m the assistant tight ends’ coach. And I didn’t get your name.”

“Bay.” The deep, rumble of a voice shot through me like I’d been struck with an arrow.

In the doorway, a man stepped forward, looking both so different from the one I’d known my senior year of high school and so much the same that it hurt. A sharp stabbing pain in my chest.

“Dare.”

2

Dare

She looked just like I’d remembered her. So much like the first time I saw her it almost brought tears to my eyes.

It had been too long. So long that, if it hadn’t been for my sketchbooks I’d have sworn I’d made her up, that she was a figment of my imagination constructed to get me through the darkest days of my life.

But here she was, in the flesh. Breathing and staring at me with the same hatred and anger she’d shown the last time I’d laid eyes on her. But before that fateful day, when I’d splintered her heart and mine, she’d been the girl I couldn’t tear my eyes away from.

* * *

Four Years Earlier.

My forearm ached. The reverberation of the blow I’d blocked had probably bruised the bone. He’d caught me off guard. I’d gotten sloppy, lazy. My own home wasn’t a refuge, not when he was there.

Inside the garage, the swaying lightbulb overhead and choked panting were the only sounds.

The glossy shine of my football helmet reflected in my eyes, making the place flicker like a fucked-up night club. I bent, my fingers tightening around the bars of the face mask. I stared at my car with the engine still warm, panting, chest so tight I felt like I’d sprinted back to back a hundred-yard dashes.

The lock box I’d stashed my cash in sat on the grease-stained concrete floor busted open, the metal twisted and shattered. Instead of hiding it in my room like I always did, I’d gotten sloppy and left it out in the open. My vision blurred and got hazy. That fucking piece of shit.