Page 8 of The Score We Never Settled

However, I wanted him to say goodbye first without any tension between us. I wanted to wish him luck. I don’t want us fighting with nothing resolved because it makes his absence worse. It makes me believe that he hates me now over something I did to be with him.

“Still have, what?” he asks with a sigh, pulling his strap over his shoulder. Then he follows my gaze, lifts his arm, and is seemingly irritated again. “Yeah.”

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

But it means something.

It means he doesn’t despise me.

It means he couldn’t give me up so easily.

And I can’t either with him.

Uncle Ben would kill me if he knew I was in Tennessee to see Briggs, but it’s been weeks since he’s been gone, and I can’t take it anymore.

He blocked my phone number, and it’s been crickets ever since. I’m giving off crazy-girl energy, but I can’t help it.

I love Briggs, and it can’t end like this.

“C’mon, Briggs,” one of his teammates calls out impatiently. “Let’s go, man!”

I want Briggs to wave them off, but he doesn’t. The reality is, he doesn’t want to be here, and he doesn’t want to see me.

“I gotta go,” he says, shifting to make a move to leave, but then stops and mutters, “Where are you staying?”

“I dunno. I…”

My heart is breaking, and I shouldn’t have come here. I should have talked to Fallon, and she…still would’ve talked me into it.

“You drove here and didn’t book a hotel?” I shake my head, tucking my chin into my chest and feeling more and more stupid with each second that ticks by. “Fuck, Short Stop, why do you keep doin’ this shit to me?”

Tears flood the back of my eyes, threatening to spill and hit my cheeks, and I close them. Warm palms gently cup my face, then one of Brigg’s thumbs follows my heated skin, and his touch is everything.

It’s been three months since I’ve had it, and it’s literally everything to me right now.

“You need to go home.”

I clench my eyes tighter. “I know. I—I miss you.”

“Don’t.”

“I do, though.” I pry my eyelids open and look up at him, his face appearing pained and troubled, an opening that this isn’t easy for him either. “I miss you, Briggs. You never said goodbye.”

“I can’t.”

His answers are immediate because he doesn’t want to string this along.

String me along.

“I just wanted to be close to you. I didn’t mean to upset you by coming here but I was working with what I had. I don’t want Cruz like that and—” His lips crash unforgivingly into mine in response, maddening and rough, not soft and patient like I wish he had been to me when I wanted to explain everything that happened before he took off.

Briggs Kerrigan stole my heart, and I wish he had never taken it.

But that’s only the beginning of our story.

The rest is just as mind-numbing and emotionally exhausting. It’s thrilling, exciting, and heartbreaking.