Saving Us by Wendy Million

Chapter Thirteen

Sebastian glanced over the rear of the couch. He’d gotten us both a beer and was watching Annika’s old game tape from the DVR. “That took longer than I expected. Am I losing my touch?” His grin was playful.

An answering smile blossomed against my will. Worry burrowed deeper into my stomach. Tonight would be enough. Annika would let Johnny go.

“What are you even doing here?” I took a seat beside him on the couch.

“Truth?” Sebastian’s smile disappeared.

“Always.” My heart kicked up a notch.

“Johnny asked me to come check on Annika.” Seeing my confused expression, he continued, “I was going to come anyway, maybe not quite as quickly as I did.”

Johnny asked him to come check on Annika? Bile rose into my throat. “He was out of line.”

“He wouldn’t have hurt her.” He passed me my beer.

“How do you know that?” I mirrored him on the couch.

“How do you know he would have?” He fired in response. “Which of us has spent more time with him?” The challenge in his voice was clear.

The problem with his rationale was that once I was sure Johnny was a bad guy, Annika might already be hurt. Correction. She’d already been hurt.

“He had that reaction tonight over a changed phone password. Seemed a bit over the top to me. What happens next time? Or the next? Or the next? Reactions like his don’t deescalate.”

“Annika’s fine. Johnny’s sorry. He’s got a jealous streak a mile long. I told him they needed to slow things down if he was going to lose his mind over stupid things.” He eyed me. “Are you reading more into their fight because of your dad?”

I gave him a wry look. “Sure—always. But that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. If I sit back and Annika gets hurt again, I’m not sure I’ll be able to forgive myself. If the signs are there and I say nothing, I’m an accomplice. I let it happen.”

Sebastian took a drink. “You can’t put that on yourself.”

“But I do. That’s like telling someone not to be afraid of something or not to worry. Just because you say I can’t feel that way doesn’t mean I don’t.”

When I glanced at Sebastian, he’d settled into the couch, a pensive expression on his face. He toyed with his beer bottle and then drained it in silence.

“You want another?” He checked my almost full beer.

“No, I’m okay,” I said as he rose and disappeared into the kitchen. When he returned, he had a glass of water. “Are you okay?”

He nodded and then looked at me. “The whole ‘you can’t tell people how to feel’ thing hit me a little hard.”

“How so?” I prodded.

He stared at his hands clutching the cup. “How come you never texted me back?”

“You mean your four a.m. text?” I frowned.

“Yeah.”

“I figured it was a drunk text. I didn’t realize it needed a response.” Not entirely truthful. I didn’t understand why I hadn’t texted him, but responding was dangerous, slippery. As though I’d be admitting something too.

We said nothing for a few minutes, examining each other. I’d done something wrong because the flirtatious vibe between us was gone. Was his mood about the text or was it my mistrust of Johnny?

“Do you think Annika’s okay?” Sebastian asked, breaking the silence.

“She’s rattled.” Rehashing the same argument seemed fruitless. He didn’t believe Johnny would ever hurt Annika, and the opposite was becoming more plausible.

“Are you coming to our next home game?” He leaned into the couch and watched me.

“I guess that depends on what happens with Annika and Johnny. If they cool off, probably not. I’m not into football, you know that.” Was that the question he wanted to ask?

“What if I wanted you to come?” He peered into his half-full glass.

I smiled, trying to work out his meaning. “You want me to come watch your game, even if Annika doesn’t come?”

“Yeah.” He scooted closer on the couch. “I like knowing you’re in the stands, even if you have no idea what’s going on.”

I chuckled, but the seriousness of his face dried up the sound. “No promises. Annika is one of my best friends and going to the game if Johnny is out of the picture doesn’t feel right.”

Sebastian grabbed my hand, lacing our fingers together. “So, if they are done, this is done too?” He didn’t quite meet my gaze.

My heart dropped into my toes. A coherent response eluded me. There was no this, was there? We hung out sometimes. Texted each other. “I don’t understand what this is—our friendship?”

“I don’t wanna be your friend, Nattie.” He glanced at me under his lashes.

Heat surged through my body, and a tingling erupted deep in my stomach. The temptation to tug him closer, to give in to whatever had been swirling around us for weeks, now rose to the surface. I wouldn’t be able to handle the fallout from grabbing what I wanted in this moment. Every time I saw him with other girls, I’d wonder if he was sleeping with them. Every time he didn’t text me right away, I’d wonder who he was with. No, I couldn’t go there.

“I can’t give you what you want, Sebastian. I’m not built that way,” I said. “We can be friends—hang out, chat about whatever as long as it’s not football.”

“You don’t feel it?” He sank deeper into the couch and observed me out of the corner of his eye.

“If Annika and Johnny are done, we’ll hardly see each other anymore anyway,” I reminded him. “You’ll forget about me under the crush of other girls.”

His expression was serious when he sat forward again. “Nattie—”

Annika’s door down the hall opened, and I scooted away from Sebastian, aware of how close we were to each other. After what happened tonight, was it a betrayal to be sitting here flirting with Sebastian?

She wandered into the living room and stopped short when her gaze landed on Sebastian. “Oh, sorry. I’m having trouble sleeping. I was going to watch some TV.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

Sebastian gave me one last loaded look before standing and draining his water. “I’ll get out of your way.” Once he was around the couch, he stood in front of Annika. “Johnny wanted me to tell you—”

She held up a hand. “Save it. Please. If Johnny isn’t man enough to apologize in person, then I don’t want to hear it. You can quote me on that when you scurry back to talk to him.”

Sebastian reeled as though she’d hit him. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans, and his shoulders lifted. “I’ll tell him.” We made eye contact over the rear of the couch. He stepped past Annika and unlocked the door. Just before he disappeared, he said, “I’ll text you later, Nattie.”

Annika crossed to the door, flipped the lock, and then came around the couch to collapse beside me. “Sorry. I was rude to him.”

I shrugged. “He can take it. Johnny’s an ass for sending him.”

“Johnny knew I wouldn’t see him.” She reached over the couch to grab her phone off the little table by the door. Her home screen was littered with multiple missed calls and text messages.

“What are you going to do?”

She shook her head. “I realize what you want me to say, Nat. But the truth is, I don’t know. When it’s the two of us, he’s amazing. So amazing. We get along so well. There’s so much potential in us. We could go the distance. But then he does something like tonight, and I wonder what the hell I’m doing.”

I nodded, not saying anything else. “I guess we’ll see what tomorrow brings?” I handed her the TV remote.

She stared at her phone and then turned it off. She ran her finger over the crack in the screen.

“It wasn’t cracked before, was it?” I kept my voice quiet.

She shook her head. “He did it. With his hand.”

The amount of force needed to do that to her screen was terrifying. Discretely, I glanced at the bruise on her wrist, a faint yellow still visible.

“I’m worried about you, Annika.”

She smiled. “You saw how quickly he let me go. He wouldn’t hurt me on purpose. I know he wouldn’t. He doesn’t have it in him.”

“He has a temper.” I tried to keep my voice even and without accusation.

“Who doesn’t?” She turned off the DVR game and switched to an old episode of The Big Bang Theory. “He wouldn’t have hurt me.” She sank deeper into the couch with her damaged phone still clutched to her chest.

“Clay stopped by.”

Annika rolled her eyes. “I used to feel sorry for him, but lately he’s annoying.”

“He came to check on you.”

She laughed. “Sure he did. Come on, Nat!”

I smiled. “Okay, maybe he didn’t come just to check on you. That’s what he said, anyway. He also said he’d been at a party where girls were talking about Johnny.”

She tensed beside me. “Girls talk about Johnny all the time. He’s hot. He’s an amazing football player. One day he’ll be rich and famous.”

In that moment, I realized she’d heard something too. She knew what was coming. “He heard Johnny can get rough with girls.”

Annika shook her head. “I know you’re a ‘believe a girl when she cries wolf’ person, but I’m not. People are always looking for a way to get a piece of the pie.”

“How would accusing him of being rough give them that?” Her attitude about other women drove me nuts. Why did we leap to a man’s defense?

“Everyone loves gossip. A piece of gossip about the star quarterback? The golden nugget of gossip currency. Why not spread it?” Annika glanced at me. “Who were these girls? Any names?”

She was challenging me for evidence I didn’t have. She wouldn’t listen to me if I couldn’t provide proof. “I don’t have any,” I admitted.

“What did Sebastian say when he was here? Did he think Johnny would hurt me? You two looked pretty cozy.” Her temper flared.

I hesitated. Sebastian’s comment justified her beliefs about Johnny. He’d known Johnny a few months in a very specific setting. Did he know him that well? Even though I wanted her to see Johnny from another angle, I couldn’t lie.

“He didn’t think Johnny would have hurt you.”

“See?” Annika threw up her hands. “Johnny and Sebastian spend a lot of time together. If he doesn’t think Johnny has it in him and I don’t think he does either, you need to let it go.”

I slumped into the couch. Was I overreacting? Despite his closeness with Annika, I had only spent a few minutes here and there talking to him. He’d always been cool to me, sometimes outright cold. Maybe we rubbed each other the wrong way? Doubt seeped in. Without proof, neither of us could be sure who was right.