Page 40 of Base Block

“She didn’t own the whole horse, only part of it. Not, like, she just got the legs or the butt or something,” I clarified. “She had to share the time riding it, which was cheaper for her parents.”

“A share of a horse is better than no horse.”

“Yes, and a share of a horse is better than being hungry or—lots of stuff can happen to kids, and she had no idea how dumb she sounded when she complained about having to take piano lessons and that her car hadn’t been the model she had told them to get. Sage and I used to listen and then later, we would kind of laugh. Sage grew up with a dad who beat her and her siblings,” I explained. “That was why I could never get really mad at her, not even with all the crap she pulled, like refusing to get dressed and making me take extra turns with Damian. She’d had it really hard and it still bothered her.”

“You have to move on at some point,” he argued. “What if I was still doing the same old bullshit?”

“What were you doing?” I asked. “You texted that you would tell me the parts that weren’t too embarrassing.”

“You’ve heard me sing, so the bar is low for shame,” he said, nodding.

I disagreed. I happened to like his voice a lot.

He thought about it. “I’m deciding what I can say so that you don’t hate me—”

“I would never hate you,” I said quickly. “I don’t think there’s anything that you could tell me that would make me feel that way. You’re the guy who got me the orange juice.”

“I—what? You did the grocery shopping this week. You go every week,” he told me.

I had been talking about something that had happened before, on that first day when we had met and he had bought me the drink at his gym. He had driven me around and he’d also gotten me that OJ, and I still had the bottle. “Never mind about the juice, but my point stands,” I said. “I couldn’t hate you.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Most of what I did was stupid. I stole, not just when I was hungry or to give it away like it was a noble thing. I stole for fun and to hurt people because I was so pissed. Nothing too big, just stuff I wanted for myself or stuff I wanted to destroy out of anger.”

I nodded. It sounded normal to me.

“When I got bigger, so did my fuck-ups,” Callum continued. “I went from shoplifting stupid crap to stealing parts off cars. Then I stole entire cars. But I learned that my size was more valuable in other areas, like fighting and scaring the shit out of people.”

“Did you get hurt?”

“Yeah, some.” He shrugged like it hadn’t meant anything. “I never carried a weapon and I never killed anybody. I probably came close and I’m very glad that things never went that far.” He paused. “Are you scared of me?”

“Am I scared of you?” I asked incredulously. “No, of course not.”

“Even after I just told you that I was close to killing someone with my bare hands?”

“You wouldn’t do that anymore.”

“You sound very confident,” he told me and I nodded because I was. I was thinking about the orange juice and how he’d wrapped up my foot so carefully, too. There were really a million things that he’d done to show how gentle and considerate he was, except when he put defensive linemen on their asses. But that was different because that was football and the whole point was to put them there.

We did the slow post-game walk in from the parking lot, and I thought he was limping. “No, I’m ok. I’m just glad my room is on the first floor,” he told me. And he did take his time on the three stairs that led up to our front door. I went to change out of my orange accented outfit and I heard him brushing his teeth in the bathroom that he fit very well in, before I took my turn, too.

“Rainey?”

I went to his bedroom door. “Yes?”

“Can you rub my back?”

I was very happy to do that. “Scoot over,” I said, nudging his hip with my knee. “This bed is so much nicer than the one at the motel.”

“Someday, I’m going to have one where I don’t have to sleep diagonal, like in the hotels where the team stays. You should see those places.” He paused. “Yeah, you really should see them. Why don’t you come to the next away game?”

“To stay with you?”

“You can’t be in my room but you could be at the same hotel. It’s in Iowa, pretty close,” he told me. “Mmmm. That feels good.”

I leaned forward, putting more weight on my hands so I could rub deeper. “That would be expensive. The plane ticket, the hotel room. Food. Ride shares to the stadium.”

“I have money and now, so do you,” he reminded me. “I want to save but why can’t we also enjoy it?’