Football players are assholes. I know; I'm related to their king. My older, and annoyingly overprotective, brother Jake is the star quarterback at Santa Cruz High School. I love him but hate living in his shadow. Everyone worshiping the air he breat...
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Wow. Yes. That's what he thinks of me? I'm just a-I'm a... I'm nothing to him.
It was all a tease, an illusion. Fake. A game, deeper than the physical one his team played with girls. He meant to worm himself into my heart and tease my feelings, so he could wreck them into collateral against my brother to throw off his fucking football game. Was there a lower degradation than a piece of football equipment? Because I felt like one.
My eyes fluttered closed. Fuck, I wished I wasn't Jake's sister. This was deeper than the surface-level annoyances, the golden child blessing from our parents, and the assumptions people made about me standing in his shadow. My hand turned clammy and slacked in Logan's, and my arm fell limp at my side. I didn't have the energy to hold it up anymore.
Logan Hightower gave me exactly what I asked for, and showed me his true self. It wasn't his fault I was too blind, stupid, or both not to see it sooner. Of course, he didn't like me. Why would he, if he couldn't look past superficial surfaces? His mother warned me of him being like that, and, like a fool, I indulged in the idea Logan was deeper than that. And I couldn't change the fact he didn't like me any more than I could make him not be an asshole.
I did not want to be here. His words were a knife into my poor, hopeful heart. All I wanted to do was go home, curl up in bed, and cry through a bucket of ice cream, but this was self-inflicted pain. I knew he was like this, ignored every red flag fired in my face, and allowed him to settle under my skin.
Thank fuck he never learned the real truth. About that stupid, weak girl.
My nostrils flared with short, sharp breaths, my tongue dried like I licked sawdust, and a ticklish rash of goosebumps spread up my forearms. Flickers of heat sparked, kindled, then spread like wildfire through my body in an inflamed path to my brain.
I hate him.
Most often than not, I tried to give people the benefit of the doubt, particularly strangers. But this... manipulation game was too much. And not too much, too soon. Too much... ever.
A tremble vibrated my fingers, and I withdrew an inch before his hand clamped around them. "You were at first, Ellie."
Under the invisible compressions pressing down on me, I barely heard his words. A squeezing sensation gripping my throat and the hot tears distorting his sorrowed eyes made speaking impossible. I shook my head, so quickly that the furrow in his eyebrows blurred.
His low voice held a bitter edge, "You were Jake's little sister. Jacob Harrison, all-state quarterback, arch-nemesis of my school. Spoiler of our state championship last year, the guy who's probably hazing my younger brother, and the trasher of my Mom's house and my truck... twice."
Football war with Jake was his priority, got it loud and clear. Salt in the wound, Logan. I yanked my hand to my hip, still shaking my head. I couldn't hear what I already knew. Grinding my emotions into ash wasn't unnecessary, it was cruel.
