Intercepted

Or before I realize I’m leaving with Gavin.

That escalated quickly.

Seven

“Everything you needed was by the door, right?” Gavin asks.

I’ve been sitting in the nice air-conditioned cab of his pickup truck—yes! An actual pickup truck!—while he loaded all of my bags from the house in the bed. When he’d first said “truck” I’d figured an SUV.

I didn’t want to be stuck in the house with Chris while I waited for my dad to drive all the way out here, but sitting on the leather seats while Gavin climbs in next to me? Well, maybe I would’ve been better off waiting.

“Yeah, thank you for doing that.” I can’t look at him. It’s embarrassing enough to realize you’ve invested a third of your life to a total fucking dirtbag, but doing it in front of the man who has managed to sneak his way into your fantasies for the last four years takes it to a whole other level.

I’m not sure what takes up more room in the car, his presence or my shame.

“Not a problem. I’m glad I was here.” That makes one of us, I guess.

“Yeah, lucky you.”

“Marlee.” The way he says my name is almost my undoing. I was prepared for Chris’s reaction. I was ready to listen to my dad rant. What I did not brace for was the gentle way Gavin whispers my name. I promised myself no more tears, and he’s about to make me break my promise only minutes after making it.

“What?” I hate that I can’t even say one word without my voice breaking.

“Can you look at me?”

“Can we please go?” I’m not doing this on my—nope, not mine—Chris’s driveway.

“We can, but first I need you—”

“Fine!” I cut him off, narrowing my red, puffy eyes his way. “Is this what you want to see? Listen, I really appreciate you doing this, but I don’t want to talk right now. I. Want. To. Go.” I take a deep breath, reminding myself that Gavin isn’t the person I’m mad at. “Can you please just drive?”

“Yeah, I can drive.” He leans over the center console, his face mere inches from mine, and tucks a stray curl behind my ear. His hand lingers next to my face, but he doesn’t touch me again. He doesn’t retreat back to his space either. “But I’m gonna need you to put the address in my navigation so I know where I’m going.”

My address. Of course he needs my address.

My cheeks start to heat, but I can’t tell if it’s from embarrassment or lust. The tiniest hint of contact—I mean, does touching my hair even count as contact?—has my body humming. Like I’ve been in sleep mode for the last four years and with a graze across my ear, a whiff of his cologne, the heat of his breath against my cheek, he has woken me up.

“Oh. My address. Yeah . . . of course.” I lean in and start tapping on the screen, but Gavin never moves. He just sits there, invading my space while I’m praying my hands stop shaking so I can stop pushing the wrong letters.

Only once I hit enter and a voice comes through the speakers informing us a route is being created does he sit back in his seat. The little bit of space sets my nerves at ease, and I’m able to buckle my seatbelt on the first try.

Gavin shifts the truck into reverse, and I pull my attention from him to the monstrosity I’ve called home for the last three years of my life. Chris is standing in the doorway, back straight, shoulders back, with his phone to his ear, eyes to the truck as we start to pull away. For a hot second, I wonder if Ava or one of my other replacements is on the other end of the phone. I force those thoughts out of my head.

As the distance grows between me and the house, the reason I’ve always hated this place hits me. Nothing in there was for me. Every single thing Chris brought into that house was to impress other people. Whether it was his dad, teammates, or women I’d pretended not to know existed, Chris didn’t try to make it a home for us. He didn’t care if I felt comfortable. If he did, I wouldn’t have been able to fit everything important to me in the back of a pickup. If I would’ve opened my eyes at all, I would’ve seen what Chris was practically screaming in my face. He was never going to marry me, and if he ever did, that would’ve been as fake as everything else he gave me. Our entire relationship was an act. I was a showpiece he wanted to be able to dispose of whenever he felt like it.

And that realization freaking sucks.

My chest tightens, my breathing comes quicker, more painful, and I’m trying to find anything to distract me from the volcano bubbling inside of me. So when I think I hear Gavin mutter something under his breath, I latch on to it like a life raft.

“What did you say?” It comes across panicked, almost accusatory.

“Nothing.” He stays focused on the road, turning up the music with the controls on the steering wheel.

“No. You said something. What did you say?” I turn the music back down.

“It was nothing.”

“If it was nothing, then why won’t you tell me?” I’m a dog with a bone, and I’m not letting this go. Nothing he could’ve said could be worse than the thoughts bouncing around my head.

“I said Chris is a fucking idiot.”

“Oh. Okay.” I got the idea he wasn’t Chris’s biggest fan, but I still wasn’t expecting that. I reach my hand to the radio to turn the music back up, but Gavin turns the radio off before I get the chance.

“You wanted to hear what I was going to say, Marlee, so let me say it.”

Well, crap. Can I call take backs?

“Chris is a dick. Everyone on the team knows—hell, everyone on other teams know. You didn’t want to waste your life away with a guy like him. When TK said he’d marry you? You laughed, but you were the only one because every other person at the table knew he was serious. None of the guys can figure out how a fuck-off like Alexander got you, and we ask him about it often. So yeah, sucks you found out the way you did. But it doesn’t suck, you finding out.”

While a poet he is not, the sentiment’s there. And it’s there at the time I need it the most. If I hadn’t made a blood oath to myself to never date another athlete in the event that Chris and I ever broke up for real, for real, there’s a good chance I’d be climbing across the front seat and onto his lap. Highway be damned. #ClickItOrStickIt

“I think that was sweet.” The shakiness has left my voice and for the first time in a long time, I feel like a giant, 215-pound man-baby weight has been lifted off my shoulders. “Thank you.”

Gavin glances my way, taking his eyes off the road for what’s on the verge of being a second too long, and squeezes my hand before turning the radio back on. The music fills the car seconds before Future tells me all about never apologizing for cheating.

I can’t hold it in.

My eyes, still sore from crying, crinkle. My lips, bruised from how hard I was biting them, curl up. And a laugh slips out at the irony of “Low Life” being the first song I hear after leaving Chris.

Even the universe knows what’s up.

Or it’s mocking me . . .

Eight

Pulling into my childhood home, a sense of peace settles over me. The flowers my mom obsesses over every spring until fall brings their demise are the perfect accessory to my dad’s flawless, manicured lawn. The bright buds line the walkway and hang from every corner of the quaint front porch. The turquoise rocking chairs we painted when I was a freshman in high school are still sitting in the same place, though they have faded and chipped over the years.