Going Long
Authors: Ginger Scott
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Juvenile Fiction, #Love & Romance
GOING LONG
Waiting on the
Sidelines 2
By Ginger Scott
Text copyright © 2013 Ginger
Scott (Ginger Eiden)
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is
by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places
and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is
entirely coincidental.
Ginger Scott
For my readers…
Thank you.
You mean the world to me.
Reed
The first time I thought about
marrying Nolan Lennox, she had just saved my father’s life. The thought was
fleeting, and it scared the hell out of me. I was only 17.
Nolan and my dad were the only
two people to have ever seen me cry. I mean snot-dripping-from-your-nose,
gasping-for-breath, body-shaking cry. And I was a child when I cried in front
of my dad—not so much a child when I let it all out in Nolan’s arms while
my dad lay under some surgeon’s knife, his heart cut open and failing.
It was something about the way
Nolan knew what to do, the way she took care of my dad when he had a heart
attack—the way she took care of me. The moments were brief, bit-flashes
of time, but they also filled my mind with visions of forever. I recognized it
right away, but chose to ignore it for a while. It happened again when I
thought some asshole had raped her, and all I wanted to do was go to jail for
having beat the shit out of him. And it happened the first time I kissed her, I
mean
really
kissed her.
I stopped ignoring it, though,
when I drove through the desert from Tucson to her dorm room at ASU, 110 miles
away. The sun was setting, and I had just read her name in the newspaper story
about the accident that broke us apart our senior year in high school—her
words so sad, full of regret and guilt. I let her go because I didn’t think I
was good for her, didn’t want her to give up
her
dreams for mine. I
didn’t want to carry that weight on my shoulders, I guess. But she blamed
herself anyway. And I just had to fix it, had to hold her. And when it hit me
that I never wanted to stop holding her, I hit the gas hard and made it to her
building just as dusk was setting in.
The guy working the front desk
of her building recognized me and let me in, but not before ribbing me about
playing for the wrong school and letting me know that ASU’s line was going to
flatten my ass more than a few times. I let him heckle me for a bit, before he
reached for my hand and shook it—almost like he was star struck, and I
was his bro. I was going to have to get used to this kind of attention.
He gave me Nolan’s room number,
and I charged up the steps three stairs at a time. When I got to her door, I
pounded on it manically. The hallways were quiet, her neighbors gone, and most
of the doors were closed and dark underneath. A short, mousy girl opened a door
down the hall, and I walked over slowly, smiling so she wouldn’t freak out. She
told me everyone had gone to some dance on campus. I just thanked her and told her
I’d wait so she didn’t wonder why I was hanging out in the hall.
I must have dozed off after a
few hours, my head buried in the music pumping in my ears, my hat shielding my
eyes from the florescent lights of her hallway. I jumped when she kicked my
feet apart, but when I saw her face, I remembered why I’d come all this way.
Being in her room felt so right,
everything so familiar, even though it wasn’t a place I’d ever been. It was
full of
her
. When I saw the pictures of her and me on her wall, my pulse
sped up a bit. And when I saw that damn hat I’d given her—my lame attempt
to let her know I still loved her—I knew I still had a shot.
I’ve never been more careful
choosing my words than I was for that brief conversation I had with Nolan that
night. And I probably should have led with begging for forgiveness from the
start, but instead I wanted to make sure she knew that everything was because
of me, not her. I wanted the blame, all of it.
And with that one small word
from her breath,
yes,
I knew I was done. The sensation of her lips on
mine was an addiction. The miles on my Jeep read 93,728, and all but 3,000 of
those miles were treaded by my many drives from Tucson up to Phoenix, just to
see the girl who rules my world. I knew she was worried when I first came to
surprise her at her dorm room two years ago and begged her to give me one more
chance. But I made a promise to her then, and I had every intention of keeping
it.
I wanted her to know that she could
count on me being there to greet her as soon as her classes were done on
Thursday afternoons. I didn’t give a shit that it meant I had to turn around
and drive the same miles back to campus for light practices on Fridays and
games on Saturdays—sometimes making several trips each week just to see
her. And when games were done, I spent my nights with her, holding her close,
and letting her call all the shots.
My freshman year, I took a lot
of shit from the guys on the football team, who all expected me to head to the
bars with them every night and rule the parties on fraternity row. But I
wouldn’t go unless Nolan was with me. Sometimes she would, and I spent most of
those nights making sure strangers didn’t try to ply her with liquor or hit on
her.
She finally convinced me to go
alone once, about halfway through our freshman season. She was stuck at ASU,
working late on a midterm psychology paper, and couldn’t make it for our game
against Stanford. We were serious underdogs, but managed to pull out a win, and
there was no getting around celebrating. The entire UofA campus was teeming
with energy, and it was the first time in months I let myself get a little
loaded. I drunk-dialed her that night—several times, so I was told. I was
so sure I said something stupid, but she assured me I was nothing but sweet and
romantic. I’m pretty sure I embarrassed myself, but she didn’t tease.
I was careful not to drink too
much now. That was another vow I made when I left home for college and signed
to play for the Wildcats. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a college guy, and I
can chug with the best of them. But I try not to let it get stupid, and usually
Noles is there to keep me in line or tell me when it’s time to go home.
I wasn’t going to be my brother;
I wouldn’t be the
asshole
. Being the asshole was the easy way out. And I
was fine with things not being easy. Jason was quickly becoming a business big
shot with our father’s company. He was good at business, sales and working a
room full of important people into doing exactly what he wanted. People always
wanted Jason to like them, even as adults. It stunned me that they couldn’t see
through his bullshit, but I guess, deep down, most of us want to be liked by
the
in
crowd, even if the guy at the head of the table was a massive
dick.
Now that Nolan and I were
juniors, it was harder to sync our schedules. Nolan’s schedule was pretty full.
She was taking 21 hours to make sure she could graduate in four years with her
specialty. And I was seriously considering entering the draft after this
season. Our Rose Bowl win, and number four finish last year, put me in a pretty
good position to be a top pick, and we were already ranked pretty high heading
into this season. I didn’t want to lose my chance to do this for a living. I loved
the game, almost as much as I loved Nolan. But that’s what made it all so
damned hard. I knew I could end up on the other end of the country, and the
thought of spending a year away from her tore up my insides.
We talked about it a few times,
but Nolan always shut down. She was a planner, and when I brought up the
possibility of her transferring, or doing her student teaching somewhere else,
she just nodded and said she’d think about it. But it was the kind of nod that
I knew meant she really wouldn’t, and was instead hoping the possibility would
just go away.
I didn’t have to make my
decision yet. But come December, I needed to have a pretty good idea of where I
was headed. I had four months to work on her, but the whole thing was just
making my stomach sick. And the fucking ring in my pocket was just making my
stress shoot through the roof.
I wasn’t going to ask her today.
I probably wouldn’t ask her this year. But I knew I’d ask her, and I just
wanted to be ready. I had most of the day off and stopped by the house to talk
to dad on my way up to see Nolan. He loved her like a daughter already, and
when I brought up the idea of one day making her a permanent part of the
family, he hugged me so hard that my feet left the ground. I didn’t expect him
to give me Grandma’s ring; I just wanted his help picking something out. So
when he disappeared upstairs, and came back down with the antique box, I knew I
was making the right decision.
I shoved the stress back down in
my body and reminded myself to stay in control the second I saw my girl round
the corner of her building—just like she did every Thursday afternoon.
She was looking for me, her heavy bag slumping down her shoulder and her hair
knotted up on top of her head. Damn she was beautiful. And I was so lucky.
“Hey, gorgeous,” I smiled at
her, kicking off the wall I was sitting on and reaching for her bag to throw it
over my shoulder so I could take her hand. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed
me, reaching inside my arm to hug me tightly.
I’d never get tired of
this
.
“Hey, I’m so happy to see you.
I’ve had the crappiest day,” she sounded exhausted.
“Let me guess, you just found
out you have to take a test for a class you’ve never been to,” I was teasing
her. She’d had this dream several times. I heard it was a common dream, though
I’d never had it. She smacked my chest with her palm when I started in on her.
I caught her arm and wrapped her up in mine, kissing her for real this time.
“I’m kidding. Tell me about it,”
I followed her into her building and to the elevator. A few of the freshmen
walking by us stopped and stared, one of the guys questioning who I was. We got
this a lot. Both because it was strange for me to be at a rival campus, and
because I was starting to get a bit of a celebrity following—at least, as
far as the college sports world was concerned.
Noles had taken a job as a hall
monitor this year when her best friend Sienna decided to move in with her
boyfriend, Micah. She had to be available to students most nights, which made
it even harder for us to find times to see each other, but it meant her room
and board were covered, so it was a trade-off we both were willing to work
around.
When we got to her door, she
unlocked it and immediately walked to her bed flopping straight forward on her
face, slowly sliding it sideways to look at me through her tired eyes.
I sat down next to her and
pulled her hair from the band that was holding it up and started to brush it
with my fingers. I knew she loved it when I did this.
“Mmmmmm, can you do that for the
next six hours?” she giggled a little.
“Well, I can do it for the next
four at least, then I have to hit the road,” I just smiled down at her. “Tell
me about this crappy day.”
She rolled over on her side and
propped her head up. “Ugh, group project,” she rolled her eyes.
I laughed a little, knowing how
Nolan felt about group projects—never mind that if it wasn’t for a group
project, we might not have ever gotten together. Nolan was the perfect student,
but she also expected perfection from others. And when a group couldn’t deliver
that, it stressed her the hell out.
“Bad group?” I asked, already
knowing.
“The worst,” she let out a heavy
breath, her lips quivering a little with it. “We have to perform practice IQ
tests on each other, and the two other jackasses in my group started building
towers with the blocks today, rather than lining up the colors for a pattern
like you’re supposed to do.”
I laughed a little at her, but
the look she shot me shut me up pretty quickly. “Sorry, it just doesn’t sound
sooooo bad,” I said, stroking her hair again to make up for my gaffe. “I bet
they pull it together for you.”
She sat up then and looked me in
the eyes with a serious expression. “You didn’t let me finish. Then, they
pulled out their
Angry Bird
stuffed animals and started catapulting them
into the towers. This went on for 30 minutes; I prepped an
entire
test
before they knocked over six blocks!”
Stifling the laughter was too
difficult, and finally it broke free from me. Nolan just shoved her pillow in
my face and leaned onto me roughly as she stood up. I couldn’t help it though,
the scene was just too much to handle.
“I’m sorry, Noles,” I pulled
myself together. “But you have to admit, it sounds pretty funny. I don’t know
what’s better, the fact that they have stuffed animals in college, or that they
came up with this idea.”
The smirk on her face when she
turned around let me know that she was starting to see the humor in it a
little, too. “Well, thank goodness I have one more group member. He couldn’t
make it to today’s meeting, but he’s actually pretty smart, plus he runs the
fifth floor, so I can work on the project with him at our building when we fail
to get anything done with
Tweedle Dee
and
Tweedle Dum
.”
I didn’t miss the
he
part
of her statement. And I didn’t really like the idea that this guy lived only
two stories up from her, or that she thought he was
pretty smart
. But I
kept that deep inside and put it in line with the other things I talk
about—and probably swear about a little—to myself when I’m driving
through the desert between our two schools. Instead, I just smiled at her,
pulled her to my lap and went to work on her mouth. I had four hours with her
today, and I was going to spend most of those minutes kissing her.