Page 80 of Dream On, Liar

I tuned him out as he recalled that night out loud. He couldn’t be right. No, I remember…

Horror flashed across my expression as my brain pulls out the memory. I’d mixed my conversation with Samyra with his.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

When my eyes met Rihaan’s again, there was a strange look in his eyes.

“Why did you lie that night?”

He rubbed his palm over his mouth, almost like forcing away the words that were settled on his tongue. “I’d asked Matt for a favour: a night to forget. His advice had been to pretend I wasn’t…me. And I was desperate enough that night to know the feeling.” He shook his head then. “Yeah, you can keep your apology and your truce. I’m out of here.”

Fuck.

I truly messed up.

How in the world was I supposed to fix this?

16

Rihaan

WHEN I WOKE UP the next morning, I had stopped pretending my shoulder was fine.

Not that anyone needed to know that.

We were winning.

That was what mattered.

After the conversation with Maeve, something in me had snapped—not loudly, not cleanly, but in a way that left a residue under my skin. Instead of sticking to my plan to take it easy, I’d ended up going into the match like I could outrun it. Like if I hit harder, bowled faster, pushed my body just a little further past what it was willing to give, I could silence whatever had been left behind in that room.

So I did.

I over corrected everything.

Every ball I bowled felt like a negotiation with pain. Every run I took felt like I was trying to prove something no one had asked me to prove. Even the way I stood in the field—too sharp, too alert, too restless—felt like I was trying to outrun the echo of her voice asking me if I was serious.

By the end of it, we’d won.

A day early.

The stadium had erupted like it always does when the result tips too cleanly in your favour. Even with it being an away game, there had always been love between the fans here. Between my teammates shouting, helmets being thrown in victory, hands clapping my back hard enough to jolt my shoulder into something close to fire.

I smiled through it; I always did.

That part was easy.

What wasn’t easy was the way my arm hung slightly wrong at my side, like it had finally decided it didn’t want to belong to me anymore.

Every step back to the dressing room sent a dull, insistent reminder through the joint. Not sharp enough to stop me. Just persistent enough to make me aware of it.

Coach saw it immediately, his lips tightening.

One look. That’s all it took.