Page 126 of The Cheerleader

He nuzzles my ear, and his hands slip under my sweater and slide up my ribs to my breasts, making me dizzy. I moan and nudge him away at the same time.

“I need to know something.”

He stops and gives me his attention, aiming the intensity of his eyes at mine so that I feel like the most important person in the world, the only one who matters.

“Tell me what’s bothering you, Bryan. Deep down, what’s it about?”

He closes his eyes for a second, as if he’s recalibrating. “I thought you didn’t want melodrama.”

He’s teasing, evading, and I smile as I caress his face, appreciating the roughness of his stubble against my palms. “Is it about football or your father?”

He snorts. “Same problem.”

“Why is your father so angry about you playing football? Why doesn’t he appreciate you for who you are?”

He moves to his back and stares at the ceiling, and I prop myself up on my elbow watching him, not wanting to miss anything, not a word or an expression or even a small involuntary tic. My heart fills with all the longing and blind adoration I’ve been holding for him for six years, grateful that he is who he is, a man—not a boy, because I can’t think of him as a boy anymore—who stops in the heat of the moment to listen to me, to answer my questions, even when it’s easy to see that it’s a hard thing for him to do.

After a long silence, he meets my stare. He clears his throat, but his voice comes out rusty, like he’s dredging the words from a deep, dark well, a place he hasn’t been to in a long time.

“I once had an older brother.” He pauses and takes a quick, halting breath, turning away.

After a second of confusion, I understand. He lost a brother. A pain stabs at my heart, and I hold in a whimper of compassion. His father lost a son, his first-born son. My heart thunders with all the possible implications, and I try clamping down on the emotion because I want to hear the whole story. And I know he’ll tell me if I’m patient.

“His name was Caleb. He was four years older than me, and I idolized him. He was bigger, stronger, and faster than I am. He played football, and he was better than me. A superstar. Now he’s a ghost who haunts me.” He turns back to me. “My family doesn’t talk about him. His name is taboo. It’s like he never existed except in my nightmares.”

I don’t know what to say, so I kiss him, soft tender kisses on his mouth and chin and along his jawline, feeling the tension there ease.

His Adam’s apple bobs as he clears his throat. “He died in a tractor accident. I was there. Dad wasn’t. He came too late. I was young but not ignorant about what to do. I tied my belt around his thigh as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, but it didn’t matter. The blade cut his femoral artery, and he bled out. Would have bled out no matter what I did, according to the doctors, because of the way it was cut.

“Dad didn’t care. He turned against me then. I was twelve. It happened not long before I met you. Caleb is gone, and I’ll never live up to him in my father’s eyes.”

“That’s so wrong.” I can’t understand how his father can’t accept the truth of what happened, of how Bryan tried to save Caleb. Can’t his father see how hard Bryan works, how decent and loyal and caring he is? “It’s so unfair, so irrational⁠—”

“My brother quit playing football, and I didn’t.”

“But—”

“Caleb quit football and devoted himself solely to farming, like our father. I never did.”

I blow out a breath. “You’ve given up on your father.”

He nods, reaching over and pulling me closer.

“Were you close to your brother?” I whisper.

I see the tremor of pain and regret run through him. “He told me never to quit football.” He pauses, breathing deeply and slowly, like there’s a constriction in his chest. “It was the last thing he said to me while I watched the life drain out of him.”

“Oh no.” Full understanding settles on me like a plague of locusts, dark and noisy, but I shake off the darkness. Whatever it is in me that can’t accept anything less than hope takes over, driving an urgent need to console him, to infuse him with all my hope and whatever sense of lightness, whatever comfort I can give him to alleviate his pain.

I rain kisses on his face, circling my arms around him and pressing my body to his as if I can protect him. “I’m sorry I made you talk about such a devastating memory.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s always there.” He touches my face, stroking the back of his hand across my cheek with reverence. “Maybe talking about it is better.”

My chest explodes with bubbles like a champagne bottle popped inside me, making me fuzzy and glad I can make anything better for him, even a little. Talking to me about his brother seems like a special intimacy, something he doesn’t share easily.

Instantly, I wonder if he’s talked to Liz about his brother or whether she knew him when he was alive. She never mentioned Caleb to me, but then it would be like her to keep Bryan’s confidences. Shame heats me because I shouldn’t care; it shouldn’t matter. I’m not competing with her. I don’t want to take her relationship with Bryan away from her. I only wish she could reconcile what her relationship with him really is—and isn’t.

Shit. Maybe I’m the one who needs to figure that out. Maybe I’m thinking my relationship with Bryan is more than it is. Maybe he’s interested in a physical relationship with me, something casual and no more.