Saving Us by Wendy Million

Chapter Forty-Three

Dad had come back from the police station in a foul mood. He’d given me pepper spray and a Taser, taking me through how to use both half a dozen times before he was satisfied. Technically, I needed a license to use the stun gun, but Dad said that if I was using it, the last thing he’d be concerned about would be the license.

Johnny had been hauled in for questioning as promised on the Wednesday before leaving for the championship game. They hadn’t arrested him.

Annika had asked me to watch the National Championship with her on TV. Part of me couldn’t believe she even wanted to dwell on anything football related, let alone view the game. But I figured since I was going to be watching it anyway, I might as well make the trek to her house to gauge how she was healing and dealing with everything that had happened.

I knocked on the door of her parents’ modest bungaloft. Fidgeting with my phone, I texted Sebastian one more good luck. My heart lodged in my throat every time I thought about what tonight’s game could mean for him.

When the door opened, her brother was dressed in the opposition’s football jersey. “Hey, Natalie,” Arjun said, stepping back to let me in. “Annika’s in her room. She’s not watching the game with the rest of us.”

“Oh.” I was glad Sebastian’s jersey was concealed by my jacket. A frisson of fear raced through me. I had to see his game. This might be the biggest of Sebastian’s career. Trying to catch it on YouTube postgame would suck, especially if he called me later to chat.

“Can I take your coat?” Arjun held out his hand.

“Uh, no. That’s okay. I’m still cold.” I slipped off my boots and shot him an apologetic smile.

“You remember where you’re going?”

“Just up the stairs, right?” I pointed to the staircase on the left.

He nodded and padded back down the hall to the living room. The TV blared the pregame from the entrance. My heart sank. I climbed the stairs, part of me hoping Arjun was wrong but another part of me hoping he was right. Why would Annika want to view the championship? Wouldn’t it be reliving a piece of her trauma?

I knocked on her door.

“Come in,” she called, her voice stronger than the last time I heard it.

Opening the door, I took in her appearance. Her bruises had faded but weren’t gone. The gash on her cheek I’d been worried would scar looked much better than I expected.

When I met her gaze, her eyes were clear. “My face isn’t too bad now. The rest of my body is a multicolored mess.” She patted her bed. “Wanna get in?”

“Do I?” I smiled. “Has someone washed your sheets for you?”

She laughed. Our running joke had been her distaste for doing laundry. Half the time, I ended up washing hers for her.

“They’re clean-ish.” She grinned. “Come on. Why do you have your coat on?”

Sheepishly, I unzipped it. Annika squealed.

“Sorry,” I said. “I thought we were watching the game.”

Annika laughed and dragged her laptop out from underneath her covers. “I can’t believe he got you to wear his jersey. I might faint from the cuteness.” She started up her computer while I slid into bed beside her. “We are watching the game.” She typed away on the keyboard. With a few clicks, the game was streaming live.

My breath lodged in my throat as I caught sight of Sebastian. I glanced at Annika. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yeah,” Annika said. “I just didn’t want my family judging me or checking for a reaction every time his face came on the screen.” Color rose in her cheeks. “I’m getting better, but I’m not better yet.”

I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. Tears pricked at the back of my eyes, and I leaned over to kiss her temple.

“No judging from me. You wanna cheer them on, fine. You want to sit here and scream asshole at the screen, I’m cool with that too. You want to bawl your eyes out? I’ll hold you while you cry.”

Annika nodded, and tears filled her eyes. “Sometimes I think it would be easier if I remembered, if it felt like it really happened. That whole night is a surreal blur. I can see the bruises, but I don’t remember getting them. None of them.”

“What does your counselor say?”

She laughed. “You mean my psychologist?”

Rubbing her back, I shrugged. “I didn’t want to pry too hard.”

“Yeah, well, apparently I’m clinically depressed. Didn’t ask anyone if I could watch the game. I’m just doing it. What happened is a blank space—a void. It feels like it happened to someone else. I understand what I should feel. But I don’t feel anything.”

“Okay.” I spotted Sebastian on the screen out of the corner of my eye.

Annika gave me a small smile and leaned her shoulder into mine. “It’s weird seeing you like this.”

“Like what?” My attention was split between her and the laptop resting between us.

“So loved up.”

I grinned. “That obvious, huh?”

“It’s nice to see you so happy.” Her features softened. “Kristy told me Sebastian went after Johnny.”

I sucked in a breath. “God, Kristy is such a gossip.”

Annika laughed, and there were hints of her old laugh in the undertones. I glanced at her.

“She is.” Playing with the comforter, Annika avoided the screen. “Sebastian texted me too.”

I straightened and swiveled to make eye contact. “He did?”

“Yeah. When you two were broken up. He said he was sorry about what happened to me.” Annika didn’t meet my gaze. “Johnny threatened you?”

My breath left me in a whoosh. “Kristy again?”

Shaking her head, Annika’s dark eyes met mine. “No. That’s the only reason Sebastian would go after Johnny.” She searched my face. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“No, he didn’t. He cornered me and Claudia, threatened us. Troy intervened before the situation got out of hand.”

She closed her eyes. “I wish I’d listened to you. I kept thinking if I could wade through the shit with him, we’d be good.” Her expression brimmed with anguish. “But the shit never ended, it just got deeper. It would have kept getting deeper.”

“I met his ex.”

Annika raised her eyebrows. “Johnny said Dawnesha was psychotic.”

“Did he?” I let the comment sit between us.

She sighed. “I suppose that wasn’t true either.” Swallowing, she adjusted her pillow. “What’d she say?”

“I shouldn’t say. I’m not sure if you’ll have to testify. My dad would lose it if I screwed things up by talking to you about this.”

She huffed out a breath. “Tell me. I’ll deny I knew if I have to.”

That was enough for me. “Did you ever see Johnny taking supplements or pills?”

“Like vitamins?”

“No.”

Annika flushed. “Yes.” She rolled her shoulders as though she was loosening up for something. “He didn’t take them all the time. Mostly if he hurt himself.”

“Did you ever notice any changes in him when he was taking them?”

Annika’s gaze shifted to me, but she didn’t speak right away. Wheels turned behind her dark eyes. “The pills made him violent?”

I maintained eye contact.

“He was moody whether he was on them or not. I never knew what would set him off. That’s part of the problem with trying to piece things together. I could have said anything. Anything.”

Johnny’s face appeared on the screen. I avoided looking at Annika, but out of the corner of my eye I saw her turn away from the screen.

“We don’t have to watch this.” I only partially meant it. Seeing Sebastian play was important.

“No, I’ll be fine when the game starts. Once it starts, I can focus on how they’re playing, not who they are.”

“If you change your mind—”

“I won’t.”

I checked the countdown to kickoff on the laptop. “Your family is watching this game downstairs?”

She shook her head. “My dad and brother think Johnny should rot in hell. They’re probably down there cheering for the opposition.”

Thank God I had enough sense to keep my coat on. Otherwise, they’d have thought I was an insensitive asshole. Annika hadn’t been expecting me to wear a jersey. Why would she?

“It would have been fun to go there with you,” she said.

“To the game?”

“Yeah. Remember how you bought those markers and bristol board? We were going to make ridiculous signs to wave. The girlfriends of the two star players. We were sure we’d get on camera.”

She rattled off the details as though it wasn’t heartbreaking to realize how we’d changed. That had been our plan. We’d giggled our way through the dollar store together, joking about the inappropriate things we could write. I’d told Sebastian I had big plans. Just one more thing Johnny ruined.

When the commercial break was over, the teams were on the field, and the ref blew the whistle. Annika leaned forward.

“Here we go.” A touch of excitement entered her voice.

We exchanged thoughts on plays but avoided comments about specific players. At one point after a particularly brutal play, Annika said Sebastian was playing like a man possessed. He knew he had to make an impression. He might need this game as evidence of his talent if things with his coach went sour.

The game was dying down. It was close—so close. Annika was biting her nails, a habit she’d worked hard to crack in freshman year. If something had to give, her nails were the least of her worries.

“They need a touchdown,” she mumbled.

“I hate this part of the game. So little time left, but still so much time to make a play. It’s too easy to win or lose a game in the dying minutes of this sport.”

Annika laughed. “That’s what makes it exciting.”

“Yeah, but why play the rest of it? Let’s just play a five-minute game instead. It would save a lot of time. It’s arbitrary, anyway.”

Annika laughed. “Have you had this conversation with Sebastian?”

My laughter burst out of me. “Oh, yeah. He thinks my theories are crazy. Sports and their rules aren’t the problems. I’m the problem.”

“Exercise and Sports Science was the worst major for you.”

“I was so dumb in freshman year.”

“Oh, shit.” Annika’s eyes were glued back to the screen.

“What?” I searched for what she’d seen.

“They’re going to have to go long. I mean, pretty freaking long. They’re falling apart a bit.”

Watching the game had been a constant push-pull for me. Sebastian needed to look good and the one person who could help him do that was also the one person I wanted to play poorly. Every time Johnny had the ball, which was a lot as the quarterback, I cringed. When he’d been sacked, I considered jumping on the bed. I’d held it together. Barely.

“What’s the rule again?”

“The ball has to have left his hand before the clock runs down. Then the play goes until it’s done.”

I checked the score. This either worked or they’d lose. Taking a deep breath, I released it. No part of me wanted Johnny to have this moment. Victory in any sense shouldn’t be his. But Sebastian had played his heart out today. For him to lose felt wrong too.

I wished I could grab the camera and focus it on Sebastian. Gluing my eyes to him, I blocked out everything else on the field. They zoomed in on Johnny as he released the ball. I hopped off Annika’s bed and started pacing.

“Where’s it going?” I couldn’t watch.

“Sebastian, I think. It’s still in the air.”

“God, that’s a long throw.”

“I told you.” She sat up straighter, the laptop bouncing on the bed. “He caught it. Sebastian caught it. Oh, shit. Nat, you need to watch this.”

I leaned across the bed, my eyes glued on Sebastian as he danced his way around the last player and into the end zone. Relief flooded me. He’d done it. Sebastian was swarmed on the field, and I pushed off the bed to jump around the room. Taking a deep breath, I stopped jumping and snapped Annika’s laptop closed.

“Hey! They’ll interview Sebastian.” She started to open it again.

I put my hand on hers to still it. “They’ll interview lots of people. We don’t need that. I’ll catch Sebastian’s on YouTube later. He’ll understand.”

Annika gave a curt nod and put her laptop on the floor beside the bed. “Are you driving back tonight?”

“I have class in the morning.”

“I haven’t left the house in weeks. Can we go get a coffee somewhere before you leave?”

“You bet.” My heart was light. I couldn’t wait to talk to Sebastian. Nothing could ruin my good mood.