CODY
She opened the door, and I pulled her into my arms immediately without saying a word. The sound in her voice over the phone had sent me running for the door. I’m not dumb enough not to know what she deals with. I know better than anyone how my female fans can get. Some are innocent enough, just showing their appreciation for someone who plays the game well, and then there are the ones like Susie, who don’t know where the hell to draw the line.
To think that she fears I might leave her for one of them makes my guts hurt. I sometimes forget how innocent she is, and then she does something like tear up over a ten-year-old video game relationship that I’d long forgotten to remind me. “Lisa, what did I tell you before? Forget everything else, and just watch me and what I do. Even if you can’t believe my words, let my actions speak for themselves, OK.”
She nodded her head and got closer, but I wasn’t buying it. Something was off. I leaned back so that I could see her face better, to read her eyes. “What happened?”
“What do you mean? What makes you think that something happened?”
“You have sad eyes.”
What the hell could’ve happened between the time I left her and now?
“Oh, my dad just told me something that made me kinda sad, that’s all.”
“What? Is someone hurt, sick?”
“No, nothing like that. It was about my mom’s friend that died a long time ago.”
I rubbed her cheek gently with the pad of my thumb, wishing that I could keep that look off her face, that I could shield her from all the sadness and heartbreak. It’s weird feeling this strongly about another human being. That wish to wrap her up in something soft and keep her safe is something that haunts me, whether she’s out of my sight or standing right in front of me.
It’s not soft, cute, or adorable, those moments happen too, for sure, but the gut-wrenching worry comes along with it. I have every reason to feel this way because I know something she doesn’t, a danger that she’s not even aware of. I hadn’t seen Susie in the crowd that had gathered earlier, but Henderson had, and what he described made me sick to my stomach.
I find myself in the precarious position of having to protect Lisa from whatever is going on in her head without telling her about the threat that Susie poses. I’ve allowed myself to accept Lisa being part of the sorority because Alexis and Jess promised not to leave her alone there ever, no matter what the situation may be.
Still, each time she goes anywhere near that place, I pace around for the hours that she’s there. She hasn’t mentioned anything happening, and neither have they, but I know it’s only a matter of time before Susie does something stupid again. If only I could be certain that she’d come after me and leave Lisa alone, I wouldn’t mind, but the fact that she showed up in disguise is troubling.
I’d been stressing over that when I called, only for her to sidetrack me with her comment about my admirers. I know what people think. I’ve heard some of the stupid shit that comes out of their mouths. Some of them seem to think that I’d settled, that after years of holding out, they’d expected me to end up with someone else, better, in their estimation, which is a bunch of bullshit.
I don’t know if half the damn campus needs glasses, but not one of them, including the ones who’ve said that shit behind my back, can hold a candle to her. She’s not blonde, tall, and flashy, which I admit most of the guys on the team go for. But if those women only knew the truth, that most of the guys see them as steppingstones, something to do while in college, pun intended, before settling down with someone exactly like her, they’d shut the hell up and leave my girl alone.
I hear it almost every day. How did I get so lucky? And this is coming from the guys who hook up with those females who talk the most shit. “You didn’t have to come all the way over here this late at night.” She ran her fingers down my chest.
“Of course I did. I hate the thought of you spending even one second with those thoughts in your head.”
“I wasn’t really serious; I was just pulling your leg. But now that you’re here….”
“What do you want?” As if I didn’t know. I pretended to evade her hands that caught at me, which made her laugh, which is what I was after. That sound can soothe me like nothing else could. “I won’t pester you about the car anymore either. I was stupid before. I shouldn’t care what anyone else thinks as long as we know the score right.”