The Love Playbook

by Suze Winegardner

  He grinned and grabbed her hands in his. “So, how are you really? You looked pretty shook up when you left Hardy’s.”

  She blew air out, and the tickle of toothpaste-scented breath skated over his cheeks. “I was. Weren’t you?”

  “I guess. I mean, I think I was more excited that we survived, to be honest. No one got hurt—that was some kind of miracle.”

  “I hadn’t heard that. They found everyone from the houses in the streets behind the store?” she asked.

  “As far as I know. The TV said that everyone had a lucky escape. It was lucky. We were lucky.”

  “I was lucky that you were there,” Avery said, her eyes softening.

  “I was lucky you got me the job there, so that I could be there,” he countered. “You are literally the best person I’ve ever known.” His heart rate kicked up as he realized he was going to tell her how he felt about her. “I was nobody when I arrived in Hillside, and you helped me when you didn’t have to, you got me a job, you introduced me to friends, and God, I can’t get over how kind you were to me. I’ve never met anyone as…” He searched for the right word. “…giving as you are. You’re completely selfless, and I love that about you.” There. He’d kind of said it again.

  Her eyes closed, and she swallowed. She said nothing, though. But he heard her long, shaky intake of breath.

  He sat up and scooched her down to his thighs, nuzzling her long hair away from her ear. She swallowed hard. He had her.

  She got off his legs and stood, holding her hand out to him. He took it and climbed to his feet. For a long second, they stared at each other. What had he done in his life to deserve her? He couldn’t think of a thing. Nothing that would explain how this angel had picked him up from the dark place he’d been in and changed his life in so short a time. She was a miracle. His miracle.

  He picked her up, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. She kissed him. Oh man, did she kiss him. Her mouth set him on fire.

  He pulled her closer still, needing to feel her against him. The darkness in the room amplified every feeling, every touch. He needed to put her down so he could touch her. He turned around and sat on the bed so she was sitting on his lap with her legs still around him. Only then could he smooth her hair back and kiss her neck.

  She used her legs to squeeze him closer to her, and his head just about exploded. Along with pretty much everything else.

  He stopped kissing her and hugged her. He didn’t want to do anything that either one of them would regret. Not at least until they were comfortable to talk about it. Shit, but there were parts of his body that were strongly objecting to his decision.

  He pushed her hair back and held her face in his hands. “You’re amazing,” he whispered. “You’re the best person I’ve ever met.”

  She tensed in his arms, and he leaned back.

  “You okay?”

  “I have something to show you,” she said with what looked like a forced smile. What was going on?

  She climbed off his lap and went to her PC. “Do you want to see Brady’s Balls? They have amazing new footage of your second touchdown.”

  He grinned back, excited again. “I saw something on Brady’s Balls earlier—but I’m not sure it’s the same. Let me see it,” he said, getting up.

  He stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. He swore she tensed again, so he casually removed them and perched on the side part to the desk instead. His excitement took a dip. What was going on? Was she really still traumatized by the tornado? He couldn’t blame her if she was, but he wished she’d tell him so that he could help or something.

  “Look,” she said, her gaze firmly on the screen. She clicked on the play button. Brady’s Balls had only posted, “Offered without comment #SupermanPlaysFortheHammers” on the video instead of his usual play-by-play post. It was taken from the right side of the field, allowing a clear shot of Lucas leaping a good five feet in the air to get the ball and hitting the ground running. For a second, it did look like he was flying. His excitement ratcheted up. He’d gotten his game back. Thanks to Avery.

  She’d single-handedly restored his confidence, his skills, his happiness at playing. It was as if he were flying again. His spirit soared as he spun her around and took her hands. “What can I do to repay you for giving my life back to me?”

  Her eyes flashed. Was that panic? Or fear? Or did she really want to kiss him? It was hard to tell in the dim light of her room. “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  “You can kiss me,” she said, leaning toward him.

  As soon as his lips touched hers, he felt home. At peace with his life. She kissed him until his breath became shaky. He pressed his forehead against hers as he tried to regain control of his need for her.

  She laughed, breathlessly. “I think you get more turned on by watching yourself score a touchdown than you do by me.”

  He laughed, too. “I mean, if you’re asking me to choose…” He let his voice deliberately trail off as if he were figuring out how to tell her that she came second to football.

  She fake-punched him on his arm.

  “Thing is, I wouldn’t have that”—he pointed at the screen—“if you hadn’t wanted to help me. If you had decided that I wasn’t worth helping. It’s all you, baby.” He paused. “But let’s look again, just to check.”

  She laughed out loud and then slapped a hand over her mouth. He looked at the corner of her PC. It was one a.m. He had no idea it had been that late when he decided he needed to see her. “Sorry, I didn’t realize it was so late,” he whispered and picked her up off her chair.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and let him put her down on her bed. She blinked real slow at him, sending needles of heat through him. He had to stay in control. He didn’t want to scare her or go too far on their first non-date. Hell—that was right. They hadn’t even been on a date yet.

  “I guess the tornado blew away our first date, huh?” He stood and dragged his hands through his hair.

  She grabbed his hand. “We were lucky,” she said again.

  Of course she was right. People could have died, and here he was whining like a toddler. She always saw the stuff that he couldn’t. She really was a good person. And she was his. He pulled her up so she was standing next to him. He tucked her hair behind her ear and let his hand slide through the cool silky strands.

  Her hair was what made him notice her. He remembered stretching his fingers as if he could imagine the feel of her hair through his hands. And now he could do it any time he wanted. He leaned down to kiss her, but as he did, his eyes skittered toward the PC screen again.

  “Busted!” she said and pushed him away laughingly. “If you want to go look at Superman again, you should. You deserve it!”

  He laughed and sat in the chair, almost groaning when Avery’s vanilla-scented hair brushed against his face as she leaned over him to restart the video. She pressed play, and he watched himself fly again. Shit. How had he done that?

  And then he saw the number of views at the bottom of the video: over a hundred thousand. In one day?

  His blood ran cold, and the top of his head went fuzzy. He forced himself to take deep breaths. What were the chances that anyone from his old school or his old football conference would see the video? He’d never heard of Brady’s Balls before he’d come across state. And then he saw that it had more than thirty thousand shares, too. That was bad.

  He hunched over the keyboard and watched the video view number rising. He had to stop this. Dammit. He scrunched his face up, angry at himself. Angry that he was so stoked when Avery said that she loved watching him play, that he totally passed on getting off the team because he thought he could play hero for the other guys. Well, no more. He couldn’t risk it. But…would he lose Avery if he left? All the flash cards, all the time she’d carved out of her damn planners to see him would have been for
nothing. Like he was just throwing her help back in her face.

  She glowed in the reflected light of the screen. She looked happy.

  Ice ran through him as he glanced at the post again. At least there was no mention of his name on this one. Hopefully, no one would put Lucas Black and Lucas Westfield together, or else the Hammers could get totally busted from the playoffs for having a suspended player on the team.

  And that would be the end for LeVonn and a bunch of other players, too.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Avery’s heart expanded watching Lucas’s face as he saw himself defy gravity and win for the team. It almost made her forget that the thing he loved her for was a lie. Every time he mentioned it, the lie, or at least lie by omission, hung in the air, leaving her uneasy. She should have told him about her father, but it almost felt like it was too late now.

  He clicked through to the comments. “Don’t you know better than that? You never look at the comments on social media,” she said, jokingly trying to cover them with her hand. The comments had actually all been supportive, except those who thought it was some kind of video editing voodoo.

  The views were increasing as they were sitting there. “Wow,” she said. “It’s one o’clock in the morning and people are still watching it. It must have gone international. I’d be surprised if the local TV news won’t cover it.” Mr. Duchamp would be thrilled seeing his logo on the back of the team jerseys.

  But Lucas didn’t reply. He actually looked worried in the dim light coming from the screen. “What’s wrong?”

  She put her hand gently on the back of his neck and stroked his short hair there. It felt strange but natural. Like it was hers to touch. She’d never felt that with Blaine. She rolled her eyes behind Lucas’s head. Hell, nothing that she was experiencing with Lucas was the same as she’d experienced with Blaine. Literally nothing. And that felt really, really good.

  Until she remembered again that she was lying to him about why she’d been helping him all these weeks.

  “I can’t do this, Avery. I can’t stay on the team. This”—he pointed at the screen—“it’s too much. I didn’t want this. I have to leave. I’ll tell your dad in the morning. I’m so sorry.”

  Her stomach clenched. “No. Don’t. This is good. It’s good for you, it’s good for the team, and it’s good—” She wanted to say “for my family,” but she stopped herself. “It’s good for the town.”

  “No, it’s not! You don’t understand.” He took a breath. “And that’s okay. But I can’t play anymore.”

  Avery suddenly felt as if she were teetering off the edge of a cliff. She could feel herself falling, but there was nothing to hang onto. “You need to stay in the team. Please stay,” she begged. “For my dad. For me.”

  He shook his head, as if he was trying to clear the fog from his brain. “For your dad? What are you talking about?”

  She swallowed fast. This was do or die. She had to tell him. This was her Hail Mary. “The day I met you, I overheard Mr. Duchamp tell Mr. Hardy that unless the Hammers reached the playoffs this year, they were going to fire my father. I was so scared. Football helped drag the family back when my mom died. So when Dad brought you home—something he’s never done before—and referred to you as a player with skills, I realized that if you could get out of your head, you’d help my dad keep his job.”

  He pushed himself back from her so the desk chair was in the middle of the room. “So none of this was for me? You helped me just to stop your dad from losing his job?” he asked. There was no emotion in his voice, like, at all. He wasn’t angry, but Avery wondered if this was worse.

  “Yes, but that’s—” she began.

  He held his hand up. “Nope. That’s all I needed to know. All this time I’d thought that you were this kind, giving person. But you’re not. You helped me to help yourself.” He got up and opened the bedroom door. “You have no idea what I risked playing on this team. But I did it because I thought you believed in me. That you actually cared about me.” His mouth opened as if he was going to say something else, but instead he just shook his head and left.

  Avery looked blankly at the video of his touchdown still frozen on the laptop. What had just happened? She looked at the bed, where she’d been fantasizing about being with Lucas. She jumped up and ran downstairs, just as he was closing the front door.

  She yanked open the door and chased him to the end of the driveway.

  “Please wait,” she whispered, holding onto his arm. “Please.”

  He gently shook off her hand but turned. She could tell from the instant before he composed himself and adjusted his expression that she’d really hurt him.

  “Please. Let me explain.” She wanted to explain how, sure, it started with her fear of her father losing his job, but after the first practice, it had been about him. Mostly, anyway.

  “You’ve explained plenty. But I’m curious. How did you know I needed to get out of my head?”

  Her heart started to chill at the lack of expression in his voice and the corresponding emptiness growing inside her. “Because I’ve been so far inside my head that I couldn’t see anything else. I know what it’s like.”

  She thought of the rows of binders on her shelf—the ones that held her future plans in their cardboard hands. She wanted to tell him that he’d changed her. He’d given her a comfort that eased the sharp edges of her brain. She’d felt safe with him since the first time they’d met. Her heart didn’t palpitate when she deviated from what was written in her planner the way it used to.

  He shook his head and sighed. “Avery, I can’t play on the team anymore. I can’t. And I don’t want to be around you for a while. Just let me be.”

  For a second, she thought he was giving her the chance to say something, but that wasn’t it. His expression said goodbye. It said he wanted to remember how she looked before leaving. It said she wasn’t going to see him again.

  He turned and took off down the street. Away from her.

  …

  Lucas managed to shut off the regrets and anger ripping through his head while he ran, but as soon as he got home, he allowed himself to think about the mess he’d gotten himself into. And it was him. As much as he wanted to blame Avery—and she did share a bit of it—he knew that for all her efforts to get him out of his head and regain his place as MVP, all they’d been doing was drawing more attention to him. And that same attention would wreck the team and her dad.

  He was dying inside. It was like he’d pulled out the bottom piece of a Jenga puzzle, and the tower was collapsing in slo-mo on him.

  He’d accused her of being fake, of lying to him, only to deflect the complete guilt he felt for deceiving her. Hell, for deceiving everyone in town. His plan had been stupid.

  He was stupid. It was like he hadn’t learned from his mistake.

  Fuck. It hadn’t been a mistake, though. When was he going to start being honest with himself? He had a feeling that taking gifts from the college was wrong, and yet he’d done it anyway. But instead of learning, he’d come across state and done exactly the same thing at Hillside. More lying and cheating by playing even though he was banned. Why? Because he thought he was better than people living within the rules?

  He threw himself onto his bed and buried his face in his pillow. He fucked up, and in all probability he’d brought down Avery’s family, not to mention LeVonn. If anyone saw that video and realized Lucas Black was in fact the disgraced and banned Lucas Westman, the team would be expelled from the conference, Coach Stone would probably lose his job anyway, and no one who needed to use the Hammers as a stepping stone to college would succeed.

  It was on him. And as much as he’d just snarked on Avery, he knew he’d only said those things to try to deflect the awful guilt.

  It hadn’t worked.

  There was only one way to fix this. They had one more game to get to the
playoffs. One more game for him to make sure the team would be okay. Win that game and he could quit, and no one would be the wiser. He didn’t need to go to college; hell, he didn’t even need to graduate. He would leave. Leave before he hurt anyone else. He would go get a job. A decent job. Start paying his fair share so his mom wouldn’t have to work so hard. That’s all.

  If by next game no one had figured out who he was, he’d play. Maybe he’d help them get through to the playoffs. But then he was getting the hell out of dodge and not coming back.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The next morning, Colin barged in her bedroom and found her still in bed, hugging her pillow. She hadn’t moved all night and didn’t feel like she’d slept at all.

  Colin was up in her face. “Don’t think I didn’t hear him leaving late last night,” he said, poking her through her comforter. “I figure you can make me breakfast so I don’t tell Dad.”

  “I don’t care if you tell him. It’s over anyway,” she said, honestly struggling to find the energy to even talk.

  Colin was silent for a moment, and her weary gaze met his. His brow was furrowed. “What did that bastard do?” he asked with surprising intensity.

  She sat up. “Nothing. It was me.” She looked at her brother and swallowed. “Sit down. There’s something I should tell you.”

  He sat on the end of her bed, and she recounted everything, from what she overheard in the store through last night.

  “Dad’s going to be fired?” Colin repeated.

  “No. Well, yes. I don’t know. If we don’t get to playoffs, I guess.” She rubbed her head. “Lucas thinks I’m horrible and manipulative,” she moaned.

  “You are,” Colin said.

  She just closed her eyes, hoping he’d go away. She felt him stand.

  “Look. There’s not much we can do about Dad except annihilate the Tigers on Friday. If we do—we’re there. Lucas got us over the threshold of points that we would need, as long as we win this game.”