He lowered his hand, his grin fading to a small, concerned look.

I shook it off. I couldn’t lose them, either one of them. I gave him a reassuring grin and vowed that the truth wouldn’t come out. It couldn’t. I would be destroyed the day it did.

He lifted his hand again, but the dark concern was still in his eyes. As I watched, he masked it himself and threw the first toss. It landed in the cup right in front of me and without a moment’s hesitation, I downed the beer. He could win. I wouldn’t care. I was ready to drink all of it that night.

“Well, then.” Heather grinned at me. “Looks like Sam’s ready to party this year.”

I gave her a half-grin, but hung my head at the same time. Mason should’ve been there. When I looked back up, Logan was studying me. Our gazes collided and he saw the pain in my eyes. Somehow I knew that he understood. He nodded, growing serious for a brief moment. In that one second, we were on the same page. We both missed Mason.

That made everything worse. A burden like I had never felt before was placed on my shoulders. No one could get hurt. It was on me. Tate told me the secret, whether Logan’s feelings were true or not, I would shoulder it on my own.

I didn’t wait for them to throw again. I grabbed another cup and downed it.

Mark’s mouth fell open, but he lifted his arms up in victory. “Keep going, Sam. Mom won’t do my laundry so guess what you’ll get to do?” He dropped his arms and rubbed his hands together.

I didn’t care. My chest and throat were burning. I was willing to do anything to make that sensation go away.

CHAPTER FIVE

MASON

It had been a week since Nate’s party, and he called once to have lunch together. Things were different. That was obvious, but I didn’t know if it was me or him. I figured it was him since I hadn’t changed. I kept to myself and did my own thing. Like right now, most of the team had gone, but I stayed behind. Coach switched my position. I’d been big enough to play lineman in high school, but I wasn’t big enough in college. With my speed and still being muscular, just not lineman muscular, he had me as wide receiver now. I had known since the summer he was planning this, and I tried to train a lot during then, but it was different being here. The feeling to play catch-up was weighing me down.

I was running drills when Matteo hollered at me from the sidelines. “Yo, Kade. We be out, man. You sticking around?”

I stopped and wiped the sweat from my forehead so I could see. “Yeah. I’ll see you back at the house.”

“We’re grilling tonight. Grab any food you want grilled up.”

“Yeah.” When they left, there weren’t many others on the field. A few of the assistant coaches were standing in a huddle, talking, but I glanced over and saw my coach watching me.

He changed my position on this team so I needed all the extra training hours I could get. I exploded to cone two, ran around to cone three, passed the second for the fourth cone, and circled back to the second cone. I finished strong going back to the first cone. Drop your shoulder. Drop your shoulder. Chop your feet, up and down, up and down. Lower the hip. Pivot with your arms.

When I was done, I repeated it four more times and turned in bounds for twenty yards. I repeated that three times, leaping as high as I could as I covered the distance. After resting for two minutes, I began again with my drills. I kept doing them until some of the lights were shut off.

One of the assistant coaches hollered from across the field, “Go home, Kade. We’re closing up.”

“Okay.” I lifted an arm, but it was too heavy, so I nodded instead. Panting, knowing every inch of me reeked, I headed off to the shower. The locker room was empty except for another player. He was in the weight room and glanced up, but neither of us said anything. We nodded to the other as I went to clean-up. When I left, he was still doing curls.

Walking into the stadium during the day was daunting. This was my dream. I’d been planning to play professional ball since I could remember. Playing for a Division One school was the next step. I was on the doorstep to the professionals. I could taste it. As I left the stadium, a lot of the hallways were dark since the late hour. I got out the doors and headed for the parking lot.

When I stepped off the curb to my vehicle, I noticed there were only a few cars in the lot.

“Mason?”

I stopped when I saw a girl leaning against the far wall of the stadium, and a wave of recognition came over me. Seeing me, she straightened from the wall. She had two friends with her, but they moved farther down. She glanced back to them, and they nodded their encouragement. When she drew closer, I took in the brown hair and dark eyes. The petite frame was the same, but she wasn’t the shy high school girl anymore. Dressed in a tight pink shirt and tight jeans like all the other girls at this school, I was surprised to see the confidence in her now.

I grinned. “Marissa.”

Her hands lifted to her side. She pressed the back of her hands against them for a second before a smile appeared. She let her arms drop down. Her head was tilted to the side, and as she drew closer, her cheeks grew pink. “Mason.” She said my name in a rush.

The confidence was there; I saw it appear for a moment. This was the shy girl from high school that I remembered. “Is this a coincidence or…” I studied her friends. They were turned towards each other with their heads bent forward. One was watching me over the other one’s shoulders. When she saw me watching them, she jerked back and whispered something to the other. The girl standing with her back to me stiffened. This wasn’t a coincidence, but I asked anyway, “Or were you waiting for me?”

“Um.” She lifted a hand to scratch her ear. It fell and linked with her other hand, and she lifted up on her tiptoes in a nervous movement. As she rocked back down to her heels, a high-pitched laugh came from her. “This is really embarrassing.”

She’d been waiting for me. I had known she was a student at Cain University. She emailed me after she was accepted. I hadn’t responded. In fact, I hadn’t responded to any of her emails in over a year. She never stopped sending them and because of that, I could understand her embarrassment. Logan told me that I was leading her on after bringing her to the cabin with us. I cut all communication after that, but I'm guessing it hadn’t been enough.

I wasn’t going to dance around the conversation this time. “Marissa,” I started.