You’re like super popular now. Maybe you can hook me up with one of those hottie football players. Just kidding. Not kidding. Sorry. Not Sorry.
Mimi gasped when our defense caught an interception from the Louisiana quarterback. Our offense came out to the field, snapped the ball, and Max threw it straight to Tate who ran it in for another touchdown. My chest constricted. I didn’t care who won. I hated football right now.
A few minutes later, Isabella was sitting in my seat. I told Mimi someone hadn’t shown up for their shift at the library, and my boss Pam had texted and asked if I’d come in. It sounded ridiculous, especially since I’d just gotten engaged on national television, but there was no getting around the fact that I had to disengage before I fell apart. Mimi kept asking if I was okay and if she’d done the right thing by not telling me, but I hugged her and assured her my exit had nothing to do with Max and everything to do with picking up extra money, especially if I wanted to plan for a wedding.
I cringed as I told her. Lies made more lies.
Plus, there’d be questions:
When’s the big day?
Who are your bridesmaids?
What kind of dress will you get?
An invisible dress because there’d be no wedding!
I walked past the crowd, who eyed me with intense curiosity, and kept my head down. Just as I slipped into the breezeway, I glanced back one more time to see Max on the field again calling a play. Even though hundreds of people stood between us, I felt his intensity.
“That was a pretty little show,” came a silky voice in front of me.
I spun around. Bianca.
She did a slow clap and then fluffed her brown hair over her shoulder with blood-red fingernails. Up close, her gray halter top was the perfect complement to her dark complexion, and her matching skirt dripped with blue lace, the same blue as the players’ uniforms. My eyes went back to that necklace, and my fingers itched to yank it off her neck.
She sucked her bottom lip through her teeth. “You must have been practicing that look of shock all week. I suspected something from the very beginning, you know . . . especially when I heard him say in class that you guys met at the toga party last year. Max wasn’t even at that party. I know because I was.”
I stiffened and pivoted around to leave, but her nails dug into my arm.
“Oh no, you’re not running off,’ she said, her eyes narrowed. “I bet he’s paying you. You seem like the type who’d need money. Not that I’d blame you. He’s a maniac in the sack, and who can blame you for wanting someone to notice you.”
“You’re babbling,” I said quietly. “Can’t you just congratulate me, Bianca?”
She scoffed. “I’m not stupid. I know Max. All he cares about is football, honey. And if he’s asking you to marry him at a game—it isn’t because he wants to live happily ever after. It’s because he wants the attention. He has to have it all, so much that there isn’t room for anything else.”
My hand tightened on my purse. “You don’t know the Max I know.” Why was I defending him?
“I know what he likes, and it isn’t sweet little girls like you. He likes his sex hard and his girls harder. You”—her brittle eyes raked over me and found me lacking—“are way too nice for him, and if you’re smart, you’ll leave before it hurts too much.”
“Isn’t Felix enough for you?”
“Max is the best, and he only wants the best. Which is me. Here’s some info: he’ll never be over me. I’ll be the one he comes running back to once he gets through with whatever he’s got going on with you. You’re nothing.”
Nothing? I’d pulled myself from hell to be where I was today. I’d lived through a mother leaving me for a man she was having an affair with. I’d lived through my father lashing my back with a belt. She didn’t know anything about me.
“You don’t know who you’re screwing with,” I said softly. “I’m not always a nice person. You just have to push me far enough.”
Her carefully manicured eyebrow arched. “Then prove me wrong.”
Max
I’D FUCKED UP. BIG TIME. My gut screamed the words at me.
“ . . . beating the number one team in the country. How does it feel?” The reporter jabbed a microphone in my face, and I refocused. He went on to talk about the rest of the season and the teams we faced.
Sweat still dripped down my face from the last play, and I wiped it with the back of my hand. We’d won the game thirty-five to seventeen. Louisiana had never come back after the half, and we’d crushed them in the last quarter. It was our biggest win so far—but all I could think about was Sunny.
I chatted about the game, my eyes trying to stay on the reporters huddled around me, but my eyes kept darting to the stadium. Where was she?
Another journalist eased in front of me, halting my way to the locker rooms. “What can you tell us about your new fiancée? Do you have a date set for the big day? How long have you known each other? Do you think we can get a quick interview with her?”