BROKEN AND SCREWED(Broken_Part One)(8)

CHAPTER THREE

The rest of the summer passed uneventfully until the first week in August. I saw Jesse a few times at parties, but we didn’t speak until Angie asked me to attend one of Justin’s softball games with her. When I realized Jesse was on his team, it had been a shock, but it shouldn’t have been. Even though he was awarded a full scholarship to Grant West University for basketball, I knew he was talented in other sports. And baseball had been one of the others. He and Ethan would spend hours in the backyard pitching the ball to each other. Most of the times it was wiffle ball, but both of them played softball and baseball during the summers.
As I watched him, I swore I felt Ethan beside me. Everything was starting to tingle inside of me and I could smell his cologne. I swallowed thickly when I felt tears start to swell up. As I continued to sit through the first game, my brother’s presence was so strong. I couldn’t hold the tears anymore. After the last inning when Jesse’s team scored their last home run, I couldn’t watch him run the bases for home plate and I left the bleachers.
“Alex!” Angie called after me, but I kept going.
I brushed some of the tears away and hid in her car until the crowd had started to leave. It was twenty minutes later when I saw members of their team going towards their cars. As I hunkered down and waited for Angie, I looked up and gasped. Jesse stood in front of the car. His dark eyes held mine captive. Then he blinked and the small spell was broken. I held my breath and waited. A part of me knew he would leave and not care about me, but the other part of me thought he’d come to the window.
He did nothing. He stood there and stared at me.
I realized he was waiting for me to decide, so I opened the door and crawled out. My legs were unsteady as I leaned back against the car and he came around to my side.
He smelled of sweat and dirt. The front of his softball uniform was covered in the field’s sand from when he had slid to the bases. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead; his hair was drenched from it. Then he ran a hand through it and I saw it was water instead.
“What are you doing here?” he asked in a low voice. He had no emotion, as always.
I took a deep breath to calm my nerves. “Angie wanted to watch Justin. I came for support.”
His jaw clenched, he rubbed a hand over his chin.
Everything in me was chaos, but I rasped out, “I didn’t know you were on the team.”
“Why would that matter?”
My eyes jerked to his and I saw the question was real. I couldn’t stop a snort in disbelief. “Are you kidding? You hate me.”
“Oh.” Then he looked away.
My nerves were stretched to the max as I waited for him to talk. I needed something, anything. I wanted to hear that he didn’t hate me, but after another minute of silence I knew it wasn’t coming. My gut had been right.
When he turned back, his eyes were piercing. A dark emotion was there, but he held it back. “Come over tonight.”
“What?”
“Come over tonight.”
“Why? It’s not Ethan’s—”
But I was stopped as he stepped close. His body heat radiated off of him in waves and I held my breath. His fingers touched the side of my hip and he lowered his lips so they were an inch from mine. He said again, “Come over tonight.”
I closed my eyes when his hand touched the side of my face and I nodded. I would’ve given him anything in that moment. His lips touched my forehead in a soft kiss and then he ran his thumb over my cheek before he left.
“See ya, Hunt!” Justin hollered and I was jerked back to reality.
It was sweltering outside. I gasped for breath. As I fanned myself, I knew my entire face was red, but I couldn’t ignore Angie’s silence. I knew she had witnessed that and I knew she was biding her time until we were alone. And because I didn’t want to undergo an interrogation, I did something I hadn’t done in a year and a half.