“Yup, I did. And if you tell anyone, I won’t be nice to you anymore.” She snorts and pushes herself up.
“Is this you being nice to me?” She comes to stand right in front of me. I always notice our height difference, but I’m especially noting it now. Thinking about how easy it would be for me to lift her up so she could wrap her legs around my waist.
“I don’t know; you tell me,” I say, taking one step closer. Her eyes flick down to my arms, where some of my tattoos are visible. I’ve caught her looking at them more often than not. When I first got my uniform, I was pleased to see that it had short sleeves so most of my art would be on display. I wouldn’t have pegged Freya for a tattoo girl. Fuck, she would look amazing with tattoos on that creamy skin.
A look I don’t really understand crosses her face and she swallows. Before she can utter a word, the door bangs open and a bunch of our teammates pour in, disrupting our “moment.” If it was even that. She might have been about to tell me to go fuck myself. I’ll never know. I cough and pick up my bag. We’re going to have a warm-up practice then head out to the field.
“You ready?” Clint asks. He’s a cool guy, and I could see us becoming friends outside of cheer at some point. I think he’s a former football player that switched to cheer for whatever reason. He’s certainly built like a football player.
“As I’ll ever be, I guess,” I say as we all get the mats out and start stretching.
* * *
A few hours later I’m out on the football field in my uniform, and the team is waiting for their cue to pour onto the turf. I’ve always liked football, so one of the bonuses of doing cheer is getting to see all the games, including the away ones.
At last the team storms out to the sounds of the band playing the MSU Fight Song, and it’s time to do this.
Freya is right in front of me and she looks back once.
“You ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be. I just hope Jem isn’t in the stands with a giant sign with my face on it. That’s something he would do.” Freya snorts.
“Then he’s a true friend.”
That he is.
7
Freya
In addition to keeping an eye on the game, I keep an eye on Rhett to see how he’s handling things. I almost expected him to quit, mid-game, but he’s proved himself during practice. He hoots and hollers and yells and does the whole thing. We stunt together with no incident, and he nails his tumbling pass during the halftime performance. He even rocks the dance portion of our routine, which surprises me too.
A bunch of our other stunts (none of mine) don’t go as well, and Coach isn’t very pleased when we reconvene after the game and get chewed out. I’m exhausted and all I want is to go back to my apartment and sit in my bathtub with a nice-smelling bath bomb and maybe some soothing music. Cheering at games takes a lot out of you, and I don’t have energy for much of anything tonight. I know some of the girls are gonna go out, but nope on that.
I’m stumbling out of the locker room after taking off my sweaty uniform and throwing on a T-shirt and yoga pants when I nearly crash into Rhett.
“Seriously?” I pull my sweaty ponytail off my neck. I just want to go back to my apartment. I still don’t think of it as home. I won’t think of it that way, maybe ever. I haven’t decided what I’m doing when I graduate. So much depends on what happens in the next few months. If I have the guts to do what I need to do.
“Sorry! Sorry.” His cheeks are still flushed from the game. I’m trying to tell myself that it’s not attractive when it definitely is. I have to look away.
“It’s fine,” I say and start to walk away. “You . . . you did really good today.”
He blushes. He actually blushes, and it’s so damn cute.
“Thank you. I’ll never be as good as you. You’re beautiful to watch, Freya.” Now I’m the one blushing.
“You’re not so bad yourself, Rhett Miller.” We have one of those moments when energy pulses between us and I don’t know if he’s going to kiss me or not and I have to stop looking at him.
“I should get home,” I say, edging toward the door.
“Yeah, right. Of course.” He gives me another bow and I want to say something, but I just turn around and bolt for my car.
* * *
An hour later I’m soaking in my tub in lavender-scented semi-purple water, and I’m still puzzling about Rhett. Every time I try to think about something else, he just kind of creeps back into my head. So I might as well get all my thinking about him over with so I can focus on something else.
So he’s nice to look at. Really nice to look at. Okay, so I almost wish I had a poster of him on my wall so I could stare at it all the time and several times a day have little fantasies about him chopping wood, or doing other manual labor. But that’s just attraction. That’s just lust. That’s just my lady junk telling me that I haven’t gotten laid in a long time and I should probably do something about it. I’d feel the same way about a hot actor.
Probably.
Other than that, Rhett can be annoying. He’s a good cheerleader, good tumbler, and a solid stunt partner. I’ve never felt more comfortable with a partner as I do with him. Maybe comfortable isn’t the right word. I feel safe with him lifting me. But I also have a lot of other feelings that have nothing to do with doing a liberty double-down. Every damn time he touches me, my skin tingles just a little bit, letting me know that Rhett is touching me. I’ve even told myself that it’s not Rhett. He’s some other nameless, faceless guy. Yeah, that doesn’t work. I still know that it’s him. Somehow. His hands are familiar to me, even after just a few days. I know how it moves when he tosses me. I know where his arms will fit to catch me perfectly. I know so much about his body, yet not a whole lot about what he’s got going on in that brain of his.
I’m not sure I want to know, really. I don’t want to know what’s in Rhett’s head, because it scares me. My attraction to his body I can totally deal with. I’ve been attracted to guys plenty of times. The initial burn will wear off once we spend more time together. I think. But if I find out what he’s thinking and I’m drawn to his mind, too? It’s all over. I’ll be a total goner.
Yeah, that is not happening.
* * *
Two hours after that, I’m out of the tub and wrapped in my softest pajamas that I can’t wear if anyone is going to see them because there’s a hole in the butt that I keep forgetting to fix.
And I’m still thinking about Rhett. There’s only one thing I know that will stop me from spinning my mental wheels about this guy, and it’s in a green folder. The green folder that haunts me.
I get it out and sit on the couch, leafing through the crappy photocopies that I’ve memorized. I know I could mentally recreate them if something were to happen. I should probably make digital copies, just in case. But what if someone found them? I can’t let this information get into anyone else’s hands. I won’t take that risk.
I look down at the name I was given at birth. By the mother I never knew existed. By the mother whose name I have whispered to myself a thousand times since finding out the parents who raised me have no DNA in common with me. No wonder they didn’t want me.
They don’t know that I know, which is why the photocopies are so poor. I did them in a hurry while my parents were at work one day. I’ve hidden them ever since, and they were my catalyst for coming here. Not just that they cut me off. Not just that I got a scholarship to MSU.
I need to know. I have to know. I’m sure some adopted kids don’t feel that way. They are content with their adoptive parents. I never was. When I found out that they had adopted me, it was like my entire life fell into place and everything made sense. I know there are millions of wonderful parents out there who have adopted, but mine weren’t like that.
Now I wonder if they regret it. I’m sure they do. I wasn’t the child they wanted, but they obviously never tried to find another, better kid to focus their energy on. Instead they just . . .
pretended I didn’t exist. Pretended I was a piece of furniture in their tidy lives that they couldn’t get rid of but had to put up with being constantly in the way.
I never fit into their lives, and it was easier than I thought to remove myself. Especially when they said they didn’t want to support me anymore. I went in search of my birth mother and another life.
Sure, it sounds naive. The dreams of a little girl who someday hopes to live in a castle and ride a unicorn. But is it? What if . . .
Closing my eyes, I slam the folder shut. This is a good distraction from Rhett, but it takes my thoughts into all kinds of dark places that it’s hard to come back from. It’s time for some comfort food and comfort television.
I grab my phone and scroll through my social media and then cringe at the pictures of the game today where I’m tagged. With Rhett. Because he’s the one holding me up. I have my cheer face on and his is one of deep concentration. Still attractive.
“Fuck you,” I whisper before tossing my phone to the other side of the couch and turning on my TV. I’m not getting rid of Rhett anytime soon, but if I could stop obsessing about him, that would be great.
* * *
Sunday during cheer season is my main homework day, apart from the hours here and there I get during the week. I load up my bag and head to the library with my laptop. Tobi is going to meet me there. She should have her own section of the library, because she pretty much lives there when she’s not sleeping, in class, or at cheer. I’m jealous of her ability to sleep only a few hours a night and still get everything done that she needs to get done.
I had briefly flirted with the idea of going into some type of medical field, but not after seeing what Tobi has to do for homework. It makes my brain ache just hearing about her study schedule. She’s going to be a spectacular nurse, though. Sometimes it scares me how smart she is. Makes me feel inadequate in comparison.
She’s already been camped out for hours when I arrive at ten, yawning even though I slept for a long time last night. Coach has given us the day off, so I intend to use it wisely.
Tobi barely acknowledges me when I sit down. She’s too immersed already and nothing will break her focus. Her glasses make her look even more intimidating than she does already. If the university wanted a picture of the ideal college student, they should take one of Tobi when she’s working.
I set up my stuff as quietly as I can and plug my earbuds in so I can drown everything out. Tobi has earplugs in because the sound of my typing annoys her. I asked her if we shouldn’t study together anymore, but she just said she’d wear earplugs and went back to her anatomy textbook.
My textbook reading comes first, because I have a tendency to want to fall asleep if I do it later in the day. I’m lost to the turn of pages and the blur of words and the movement of my pen on my notebooks. It’s nice to throw myself into something that requires all my attention. Before I know it, hours have passed, and I’ve knocked out almost a third of my work. And I’m starving. I stand up and stretch my arms and roll my neck. I swear, Tobi is going to have a permanent hunch from all the studying she does. She hates it when I tell her that.
When I sit back down and riffle through my bag for a snack, Tobi pops her earplugs out of her ears.
“Are you hungry? Please say you are. I feel like I haven’t eaten in a thousand years and my body is starting to digest my spine. I know that’s not medically possible, but that’s what it feels like.” I snort and agree with her. We pack up our things and head over to the student union for food.
We drop our bags near the entrance and both sigh in relief.
“I know I could get a lot of these as e-books, but I just need the physical books,” Tobi says, rolling her shoulders. “And no one can convince me otherwise.”
“You’re such a Luddite,” I say. Some of my books are in e-book form. For some it was cheaper to buy a physical copy and sell it later.
“Shut up,” she says, heading straight for the pasta station. I follow right behind her. I need carbs, like, yesterday. We both get spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread and then compromise with salads, but load up our pasta with Parmesan.
“It’s all about balance,” Tobi says as we take our trays through and swipe our meal cards.
“Exactly. And it’s not like we aren’t burning off the calories we consume.”
“Right,” she says, setting down her tray and then going back for a bag of barbecue chips for herself and salt and vinegar for me.
“Balance,” she says as she drops the chips.
“You’re my hero,” I say. I’ve been craving chips all day.
“I do what I can.”
We’re totally silent for as long as it takes us to inhale our food in the least gross way we can.
When we’re finished, we each sit back with our chips and talk about this and that. I know exactly what she’s going to bring up a second before she brings him up.
“I don’t want to talk about him,” I say as she opens her mouth.
“How did you know what I was going to say?” She raises one dark eyebrow over the rim of her glasses. She only wears them when she’s in serious study mode. They don’t really work for cheer.
“Because I know you.” Even though we’ve been friends a short time, you don’t always need years to get to completely know someone. Being so close at cheer and outside practice accelerates relationships sometimes.
She sighs and munches a chip loudly.
“Fine. Don’t talk to me about whatever you’ve got going on with Rhett. I can’t tell that it’s been driving you nuts.” I narrow my eyes slowly in a glare.
Tobi laughs.
“See, I know you too.” Damn her, she does.
“Okay, fine. What did you want to talk about?” I might as well hear what this is.
“I want to talk about how much you want him. One of these days I expect you to come down from a cradle, shove him onto the mat, and go to town.” I gape at her.
“Seriously? I would never do that. Especially not in the middle of practice in front of everyone.” I shudder. Some people may get off on banging in public, but I am not one of those people. No way.
“Well, maybe after practice . . .” She raises and lowers her eyebrows, almost looking like a cartoon.
“You’re being ridiculous. I’m not with Rhett. I don’t even like him.” Much. Tobi gives me an incredulous look.
“You should be careful, because I think your pants are about to catch fire any moment now. From the combination of lying and being hot for Rhett.” I throw a chip at her and she dodges me, cackling.
“You’re only mad because I’m right.” I refuse to look at her.
“I can see it. He’s got that ruggedly handsome thing going on. Like he could go out and slaughter something, but then come home and fuck you in front of the fire on a bearskin rug.” I glare at her and look around to make sure no one overheard her. Sometimes Tobi doesn’t have a filter either.
“Ew. I’d rather not have sex on a dead bear.”
“Eh, to each their own. Anyway, back to my point. I can see what you’d find attractive in him, and he does have one thing that most girls can’t resist.” I wait for her to answer.
“Mystery,” she says, wiggling her fingers.
“You are such a dork.”
“I may be a dork, but I’m a correct dork.” She smirks and pushes her glasses up on her nose.
“Ugh, whatever,” I say. There’s no winning with her. When Tobi thinks she’s right, there is no convincing her otherwise. Granted, she’s smart as hell, so she’s right a lot. But in this instance, she’s not. I don’t want Rhett (much) and I don’t think he’s mysterious (only a little bit).
I press my lips together and refuse to talk until she changes the subject.
“What about you? Why don’t you go for him if he’s so mysterious and hot?”
She laughs.
“Nah, he’s not for me. But he’s for someone,” she sings the last word and then picks up her
tray.
“Come on. I have a shit-ton of studying to do, and I’d like to go to bed before the sun comes up tomorrow.” Tobi is notorious for all-nighters. I have no idea how she functions day to day sometimes. And she doesn’t even drink that much caffeine. Science should really study her.
“Fine,” I say, getting my tray and following her. I push Rhett out of my thoughts again for the benefit of academia. But he’s never far away, lurking in the back of my mind like a big, attractive shadow.
Bastard.
* * *
Tobi and I stumble our way out of the library several hours later, mumbling goodbye to one another. My goal is to go home, eat whatever I can get my hands on, and go to bed early. My brain is really fucking tired, and I have to get up and run tomorrow because everything is awful.
“Hey,” a voice says and I jump, nearly dropping my backpack, and prepare for an attack. I find myself looking directly at a wide chest that is sheathed in flannel. My eyes travel upward and meet Rhett’s.
“What is wrong with you? Never sneak up on a woman!” I smack him in the chest with my hand, and I’m pretty sure I sprain my wrist.
“Fuck!” This day is not going so well.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry.” He backs up and holds his hands up in surrender.
“It’s okay. You just have a way of popping up when I least expect you, don’t you?” I ask, trying to get my heart beating at a normal rhythm. Dammit, Rhett.
Now my heart and body are distracted by staring at him under the orange glow of the streetlight. Somehow the terrible lighting works for him, making his face look like it was chiseled lovingly by an ancient sculptor. His broad shoulders would be intimidating under certain circumstances, but I’ve seen how they move and flex.
I’m gonna need my brain to shut the fuck up about Rhett’s bod.
“Yeah, well, I miss you.” My mouth drops open.
“You miss me?” I have no idea what the crap he’s talking about. We see each other almost every damn day. I see him too much, really. I see him at the gym. I see him at practice. I see him when I close my eyes. I see him all. The. Fucking. Time.