A year ago, I would have spent a party after a football game at Kyle’s either sick in his bathroom, passed out on his bed, or standing on his coffee table singing the lyrics to my favorite rap songs. I wouldn’t stop until four in the morning—annoying the shit out of everyone drunk and dizzy from not being able to hold their liquor like I can.

Last night, I walked home after being at Kyle’s for only an hour.

Wes let me. But I heard his truck pull up outside around two, and when I finally fell asleep, I know it was still there.

My dad wasn’t home when I came in, and this morning, his car still isn’t in the driveway. Wes is gone, though. No more watchful eyes over me when the sun comes up, I guess.

On my way to the kitchen, I rub the sleep from my eyes with my fists, and I’m staring into the pantry filled with empty boxes when I hear my dad’s car pull up the driveway. A second later the back door opens.

“You’re up early,” he says, his voice accompanied by the rustling of plastic bags.

“Please say you bought Pop-Tarts,” I say into the barren shelves in front of me.

“And milk. And eggs. And some of those…what are these called?”

I close the pantry door to look at my dad.

“Pomegranates,” I respond, taking one in my hand and tossing it in the air a few times.

“All I know is you better not drop it. Those things are a nightmare to clean up. You dropped one of those seed things on the floor a few weeks ago and I stepped in it,” he says, and I chuckle as I pull out a plate and slice into the fruit with the only large knife we own.

“I thought that was blood on the floor. My bad,” I say, pulling out a section and popping it into my mouth.

“I guess you don’t want Pop-Tarts now then?” he says, holding a box of strawberry ones toward me. I snag them and rip the top open in one movement, unwrapping the pastries and biting one in half.

“I can eat both. Two different kinds of carbs,” I say through a full mouth.

My dad rolls his eyes, then turns to the groceries he brought in and begins putting them away. He’s wearing his usual pocketed sweatpants and dry-weave T-shirt, and I notice that his elbow is wrapped up with some gauze.

“You donate blood?” I say, pointing to his arm as he turns around.

“Huh?” he says, stretching out one arm then the other, finally noticing the bandage. “Oh! No, it’s nothing. I burned my elbow being stupid.”

He stretches his arm out a few times, proving to me that it works, then goes back to tidying the kitchen. There’s something about it that I can’t let go, though.

“What’d you burn it on?” I ask.

His back to me, he doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he rinses out a few cups, putting them in the dishwasher, wiping down the counter and faucet, and folding the damp cloth on the counter next to the sink. He sighs heavily, leaning forward with his palms flat on the counter, and eventually his head falls forward, chin to his chest.

“I didn’t burn it.”

I knew that was the case. I tear a paper towel off and wipe the fruit juice from the corners of my mouth. My dad turns around and folds his arms over his chest, resting against the counter.

“It really isn’t that big of a deal,” he says, his mouth hesitant to say more words. I tilt my head and pull in my lips, and he takes another long breath before swallowing hard.

“You got into a fight,” I answer for him.

We stare at each other, and after a few seconds, he blinks. I breathe a sad laugh through my nose and push back from the counter as my eyes close, the legs of my stool screeching as they drag.

“Was it at Jim’s?” I quirk a brow, standing and finally meeting his gaze again.

His mouth pulls in tight, as if he’s made a solemn vow not to break under my interrogation. His silence speaks volumes.

“Awesome,” I say, pushing my plate toward the center of the counter, no longer hungry.

I turn to head back to my room, and I make it to the hall before my dad speaks.

“It’s nothing to worry about, Joss. Really,” my dad says.

I raise up two fingers, a peace sign, but keep walking to my room. I turn to shut my door, but my dad has followed me down the hall, and he’s gripping the frame of my doorway with trembling hands. The tremors are slight, but I see them. I’ve been trained to look for them, and as he speaks, I can’t look at anything except his shaking fingers.

“What are you up early for?” he asks.

“I’m going to get some work in at the field today. And I picked up a shift at the Jungle Gym after lunch,” I say, finally looking him in the eyes. They’re desperate.

“You didn’t tell me you wanted to do some fielding. I don’t have anything going on, though. If you give me a few minutes, I’ll go with you; hit you some hard ground balls,” he says.

“It’s fine. Kyle’s coming.” You’re lying to me, and I don’t want you there. The hidden meaning behind my words must shine through, because my dad backs away silently when I look away, and by the time I change and come out of my room again, he’s gone.

I grab my things from the rack my dad installed last month in the garage and zip up my bag, stopping to grab a water bottle from the tiny fridge in our garage. I look at it long and hard, feeling the cool air hit my knees. Those shelves used to be full of beer. My dad never preferred beer, but he’d drink one in the morning sometimes, to cut the hangover. The only things in there now, though, are sports drinks and water.

Slamming the door shut, I pull my phone from my pocket to check the time. I lied to my dad—Kyle isn’t coming. I hadn’t planned on calling him, and now that I see it’s barely after seven, I know that option is gone. I was going to go alone anyhow, but for some reason, my chest burns and my stomach twists because my dad offered to help and I turned him away.

“Fuck.” I kick the door of the fridge with my metal blade, denting the corner, and I chuckle at my own outburst. “I’m just like you, damn it. Just…fucking like you,” I say to myself.

I pull my father’s school keys from the hook and pocket them with my phone, resolved to walk to school and set up the tee to work out on my own, like I planned all along.

I live in my own world during the walk, kicking out every thought that tries to take up space in my head—my dad, my mom, Grace, Shawn, theories…Wes. That last one is impossible, though, and even if I could avoid thinking about Wes and what he said, I can’t avoid the boy. From a thousand yards away, I know it’s Wes sitting with his back against the backstop. He’s a speck, yet I know.

I don’t slow, walking to my destination as if he weren’t there at all, but I never take my eyes from him. His hands rest loosely over his knees, and even from this far away I swear I can see him breathe. I start to sync my own breaths with the steady drum of my heartbeat that I’m also sure matches his. His hat sits high enough on his head that the shadow doesn’t reach his eyes, which means he sees me. His leg shifts, one falling straight and the other pulling in closer to his body, and his head tilts to the side. The movements are small and thoughtful, but I catch them all. He’s wearing the gray shirt with long, blue sleeves that he wore under his uniform last season. I remember how it feels, and my fingers tighten their grip on the handle of my bag in response.

He’s breaking me just by being, and it isn’t fair.

Wes is standing by the time my feet hit the dirt of the infield. I purposely look away as I walk up, hoping that maybe he’ll get scared and leave, but that was a silly theory—Wes doesn’t get scared.

“So…you’re here,” I say, dumping my bag near the dugout before moving to the bench to adjust my leg and wrap my thumbs and fingers in tape.

“Thought you might need someone to take care of blister protection,” he says, lip raised on one side as he walks across home plate and steps into my space.

My teeth grip the edge of the tape and I tear it, patting the loose end down and moving to the next finger.

“Nah, I’m all good. I can tape myself,” I say, ripping for the next finger.

Wes pauses at the dugout entry, leaning back on the brick wall and kicking the toe of his shoe against the chain-link gate across from him. His shoes look brand new, and I feel my lip tug higher at that observation. I look up at him as I twist a piece of tape around my pinky, and he smirks under his hat.

“Stubborn,” he says.

“Yeah, well, I like to be predictable,” I say, tossing the roll of tape toward my bag as I stand.

I continue as if he isn’t here, but I know he won’t leave. He’s moving back in, trying to find the ease we used to have. Part of me is dying for it, too. But I can’t forget the look on his face when I held up the note I thought he had left, and I can’t forget that sick feeling that took over when I realized those clues were never from him, that he didn’t want to be found.

“How often have you been getting work in out here?”

I roll my eyes at his question since my back is to him. He follows me to the storage room at the back of the dugout. After I open it with my father’s keys, I toss them to him.

“Hold those. If I lose them I’m as good as dead,” I say, and there’s a sliver of a pause after that word—dead—when we both stop breathing and lock eyes.

“Sure,” Wes finally says, putting my dad’s keys in his pocket.

I start pulling out the nets and the tee, and Wes takes the heavy things from me. If he’s going to be here, I might as well benefit from it, so I let him prep my hitting station while I pull out my training bat and the new one my dad bought online when I said I was going to play again.

“I’ve done some basic fielding. Lots of running, and hitting indoors, over at the cages on central. I’ve worked with Kyle a bit, and my dad. But I have a trainer,” I say, stopping when I realize Wes has finished with my net, and he’s staring at me, eyes somehow reflecting the blue of the sky to be even more brilliant.

“What?” I ask.

I know what. What makes me weak. It hurts to fight it, but it also hurts to give in.

His left eye crinkles as his cheek lifts and his lip raises in a half smile. His head shakes slightly. “Nothing, it’s just…you’re a goddamned force to be reckoned with. I’m…I’m proud of you, is all.” His teeth grip his bottom lip briefly when he’s done, and I feel my body rush with the tingle of adrenaline, a blush that is innate for me when it comes to this boy.

“Thanks,” I say, opting for grace over saying something cruel.

Wes nods toward the tee, dumping out the bucket of balls, swinging it upside down to use as a stool and placing the first ball on the tip for me to hit.

“Come on, let me be useful. I’m out here,” he says.

My eyes squint and I exhale a short sigh, but I step up to the tee and line up my feet and bat. I cock my arms back and focus on my technique—leg, hip, lower body twist, hands inside, hit. I let the sound of the ball cracking off my bat sink in while Wes puts another ball in place for me.

“You never did say why you were out here,” I say, waiting for his hand to be out of the way before swinging again.

Wes lifts another ball, rolling it in his hand and grinning before looking up at me.

“Last night, when you left early? Kyle gave you shit, and you said you had to get up early to practice before work,” he says, putting the ball in place then tapping his finger against his temple. “I locked that little bit of info in here.”

I study him, fully aware that my lips hint at a grin. I feel the smile wanting to come out, but I hold it where it is—at a fraction. My eyes blink and focus back on the ball, and I swing again.

“I left a little after you did, so I could make sure I got up early, too,” he says, and I let my bat fall to my side while he loads the tee. I wait for him to add more to his story, to tell me he sat outside my house, but he doesn’t, so I test him on it.

“You went home and right to bed then, huh?” I ask, bringing my bat back to my shoulder.

“Yep,” he says.

I freeze in my stance and move my eyes from the ball to Wes, his focus on the ball he expects me to hit, the next one already in his hands.

“You liar,” I say, and his eyes flit to mine. I swing and crack the ball, then drop my bat back down to lean my weight on the handle. “You sat outside my house. I saw you.”

Our eyes lock and in a breath, our mouths have matching smirks.

“I did,” he admits without much fight.

I wait for Wes to place the ball, swinging through it when his hand moves away, trying to think of nothing but the work—my goals. It’s impossible, though. There’s too much when I’m near him. My mind won’t focus, instead spinning out of control with questions and conversations I have with myself, because I don’t want to have them with him. I avoid them, because every single question leads to a bottomless pit, and I don’t want to be trapped in something dark again.

“You haven’t asked,” he says, palming the next ball—holding it hostage.

My lips smile tightly to cover my gritted teeth.

“Asked what?”

I know what. About the bomb he dropped. I haven’t asked, because I think maybe I knew. Just the same, I don’t want to know. My opinion of Shawn has plummeted. I don’t want to think of the two of them sharing traits.

Wes rolls the ball from his fingertips back into the bucket, and I fall back a step, defeated and frustrated. My stomach clenches as Wes rubs his palms over his cheeks and chin, leaning forward and glaring at me at the same time. My bat resting on my shoulder, I give in, exhaling slowly and letting my eyes linger on his blue.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” I ask.

“Because I hated him…I hate him.”

His answer comes fast, and it jars me. It is the opposite of everything I’ve known of Shawn through his eyes. I thought he was beloved to Wes—the man who rescued a lost boy and gave him love when his foster parents wouldn’t…over and over again.

“He told me to get me to go with Bruce and Maggie, after the hospital. I didn’t want to leave, because staying with Shawn had always felt like home. But he said I was supposed to be with them,” Wes says, his voice breaking with a betrayed laugh.

His eyes look down at the ground between his feet before his head turns sideways, and his eyes shift back to me.

“I was a one night stand with some woman he paid. She left me on his doorstep,” he says, mouth tugged in on one side. “He said I wasn’t born to live with him, though.”

His eyes linger on my face, and I fill in the blanks.

I would need a hero. That’s what Shawn had told me, and he wanted to make sure that Wes was close by.

“Why Bruce?” I ask.

“It wasn’t so much Bruce, as it was Maggie,” he says, adjusting his position on the bucket, stretching to one side. “Maggie has family close by—a sister. They’d talked about moving here a lot.”

“And you would be near me,” I say, barely above a whisper, my eyes blinking to the empty dugout while I process. I can see just enough of Wes to tell he’s nodding in agreement.

I am a job. I’m his job.

After several seconds of processing, I reach forward and grab my own ball from the bucket, putting it in place and swinging hard. I’m about to do it again, but Wes anticipates and slides one in place before I have a chance.

“Quit helping me,” I say, bringing my bat forward gently and tapping the ball from the tee like a pool cue.

Wes picks the ball up and puts it back, so I repeat my movement, knocking it to the ground again. The routine goes on a few more times, each time Wes placing it down more sternly, and me jerking the ball away with my hand as he replaces it with another one. In some other life, this would be cute flirtation—we’d both be giggling, and end up with our hands tangled and our lips locked.

But that’s not what this is. This is me trying to prove something, and Wes trying to prove me wrong.

“Gah!” I gasp, tossing my bat end over end to the ground next to Wes.

Turning my back to him, I take a few steps away, into the field, then dig my fingers into my hair, pulling the band from my ponytail and spinning to look him in the eyes. He’s still sitting on the bucket, a ball in his hand, and unsurprised eyes staring right back at me. My chest thumps in frustration, and a few seconds pass before Wes leans forward slowly and sets the ball from his hand on the tee. My eyes zero in on it, and we both remain silent for nearly a minute.

“Why didn’t you want to come back?” I ask him without looking at him directly. I avoid his eyes, and I give him the security of knowing I’m not seeing through him when he speaks. I just need this answer. I need it more than I need air.

“I never said I didn’t want to come back,” he says, his voice low and quiet.

I wait, my eyes still on the tee and the ball he sat there for me to hit. After several seconds, Wes’s hand interrupts my trance as he reaches for the ball again, taking it away from my view. I won’t look at him, but I can see from my periphery that he’s struggling. His elbows are on his knees, and he rolls the ball in his hands, over and over, as if one of these times the right words will be written between the stitches for him to read to me, satisfying the hole in my heart.

“I said I couldn’t come back.”

“You said you wouldn’t,” I interject. My eyes flit to him, but I look away quickly. “Wouldn’t…it’s…it’s different than couldn’t.”

Wes stands, his shadow crossing my line of sight, but I remain focused. My hands are fists at my sides, and my pulse is drumming. I’m hot, my hair starting to stick to my shoulders and neck, but I leave it wild. I’m wild.

“I thought if I stayed away…if I wasn’t a part of your world, then maybe the bad things would stop,” he says.

I breathe. My chest lifts. It falls.

“It hurt,” I say, finally breaking and looking him in the eyes. He’s leaning against the dugout fence, his hands to his sides, a ball still clutched in one, and his head leaning to one side. “When you didn’t come home; when you were missing…it hurt. When I found out you were alive...”

My mouth quivers a smile that only lasts for a breath at the memory of hope. I take a few steps closer, feeling the tightness in my hands as I squeeze them. I clench so hard my nails cut into my palms.

“When I found out that the texts and the note…that they weren’t from you…” My head shakes. Wes stands tall, but I hold a hand up to stop him from moving forward. I don’t want him close—not while I say this. My eyes lock with his.

“It broke my heart. It broke it,” I wince. “But so help me, Wesley Stokes…you will not break my spirit.”

I shake my head, and pull my lips in tight.

“Go home, Wes,” I say.

He doesn’t move, so I utter it again.

“Go home. I can do this. I can do it all—on my own,” I say. “I do not need a hero.”

His head falls to the side again, and his eyes begin reflecting the morning sun. I know if I stepped closer I would see the redness in them. I would see the tears forming. I stay where I am because I need to be strong. I can’t let him in, not even the slightest bit. He will just leave again when he thinks his work is done.

Wes holds my gaze until the glossiness disappears, finally stepping forward and dropping the ball from his fingers into the bucket and my dad’s keys in the grass by my things. Stopping there, he lets his arm dangle limply over my equipment, small twitches firing away at his fingers, itching to go against my wishes. His breathing is slow, and his lashes blink in a steady rhythm with his thoughts as he looks at the ground. A small gasp leaves his mouth as his lips part, ready to speak, and my chest is slammed with a kick of hope that he’s about to say something that will make everything I’m feeling go away, that will take us back to the beginning or the middle—to before. Then my heart fights back, pushing that hope right out into the open, away from me.

Wes’s heart…it pushes too. His eyes close and his fingers curl, perhaps ridding his hand of the temptation to touch me. His mouth closes, too—washing away the desire to kiss mine.

He takes a few slow paces toward me, still not looking me in the eyes, but stops when I tuck my chin and move back in reaction. His stare goes to my hands, still holding on to themselves with all of my strength.

“I know you don’t need a hero, Joss. You are the strongest person I know. Even so, I can’t help myself. I never could. And not because someone told me I was supposed to, either.”

His head lifts just enough at that last word, and with a single blink, his eyes are back on mine. I count the seconds that we both stand still. I count both hoping my number is small, and that it also goes on forever.

I get to seven, and Wes’s eyes finally move to the ground.

Eight, and he closes them as he nods.

Nine, his fingers flex at his side, his will too weak to hold his hand up any higher to say goodbye, his heart too guarded to speak again—guarded like mine.

By ten, his back is to me. I don’t move until I lose my sight of him from the corners of my eyes. I don’t turn to look at him fully until he’s a shadow. And I never cry. Not once. Because I don’t need a hero…because I’m a liar, to myself more than anyone.

A hundred swings turn into two hundred, and eventually, my blistered hands cannot swing anymore. I pack up my equipment, putting away the pieces that stay at the school, and then begin my slow walk home so I can get ready for my job.

I busy myself through every step by thinking about the math—how many weeks until I have enough to buy some piece-of-shit car that’s new enough for Rebecca’s friend to alter. I pull my phone out and flip through used-car postings, wishing I had the cash now. When my feet hit the familiar territory of the sidewalk outside my house, I put my phone away and look toward home. My head lifts just in time to see Wes’s truck turn the corner up ahead.

He was waiting for me—seeing me home safe.

And I hurt all over again.