His lips twitched up at the corners, but a smile didn’t grace his lips like I’d been hoping for.
“I…do you want to go to my place and have some pizza?” he asked hopefully.
Did I? Was I ready for that step?
I knew that he was just being nice, and honestly, what did I have to lose here? This was my teenage fantasy come to life. So what if he was being sweet?
“I could go for pizza,” I admitted. “As long as you want me there, that is.”
The smile that graced his lips was small this time, but most definitely there.
“You want to follow me?” he asked. “Or I could drive and bring you back to your car later tonight.”
“I can drive,” I lied. I wanted to ride with him more than I wanted to take my next breath. “You’ll just have to drive slow. My night driving skills are a little less awesome than my day ones.”
He snorted. “I think you should ride with me, then.”
I barely contained my excitement.
“Okay,” I breathed.
He walked around to the passenger side of his truck and opened the door, offering me his hand.
I took it and climbed up, very aware of how close he was the entire time.
Once my ass hit the seat, he stared at the hole in my pants, just over my knee, for a few long seconds, before his face turned up and his eyes met mine.
“I had a really bad day,” he told me. “And I’m glad that you stayed.”
Then he touched one fingertip to the skin that was poking out of the hole and then backed up before closing the door softly.
I swallowed and felt my belly fill with butterflies.
He rounded the hood of the truck and hopped into his seat easily, automatically reaching for his seat belt as he turned to survey me.
“You okay?” he questioned.
I swallowed and nodded. “I did tell you that they think I’m bad luck…”
He snorted. “Somebody tells you that enough, I’m sure at some point you’re going to start believing it. A person isn’t bad luck…though, just sayin’, baseball players do consider their superstitions very important to them.”
I snorted. “Oh, I know that.”
His brows rose. “You do?”
I nodded. “My brother played.”
“Your brother?”
I nodded. “He, uh, died when I was eighteen. He was two years younger than me in school. His name was Gavin.”
Ezra’s face instantly changed.
He’d heard about Gavin.
Everybody in the town of Gun Barrel had heard about Gavin.
You only had to live here for a week to find out what happened to Gavin.
Why?
Because Gavin was the boy that died in the middle of a baseball game his junior year, and we had a sculpture of him in the middle of the city park, and a plaque at the school, as well as a wing at the hospital dedicated to him.
“That was your brother?”
I nodded.
“I heard about a boy that died, and his parents were the ones to buy us the HeartGuard shirts,” Ezra murmured.
I felt my stomach tighten.
That’d been my brother’s contribution—my eldest brother, Croft, anyway.
Gavin had been playing mid-season. He’d come up to bat his second time, and the pitcher had thrown a wild pitch and struck him in the chest. The ball had made contact with his heart at just the right moment—according to doctors—and his heart had stopped.
He’d died in the middle of that field, and despite the coach at the time, as well as my own father, giving him CPR, he hadn’t made it.
Gavin’s passing was also why almost every single sports complex in all the schools had defibrillators—just in case something tragic like that happened again.
“Shit,” he murmured. “I should’ve put two and two together.”
I smiled and looked down at my lap. “It’s hard for that to happen. I was always very shy and introverted while Gavin was the life of the party. We didn’t look like each other, and we certainly didn’t hang out with each other. It’s easy to see how you missed it.”
He looked at me with a wry smile on his face. “Gavin Crusie is an unusual name. There is only one set of Crusies in this town, and that’s your family. Everyone knows the Crusies…I should’ve put two and two together. Trust me. I feel stupid.”
My lips twitched. “You were a big kahuna star quarterback Superman for the Sooners at the time of his accident. There’s no way that you would’ve known when you were busy winning the…” I trailed off, wondering if I should relay my obsession with him.
“I know,” he murmured. “We may have won the college championships, but it’s hard not to hear about that happening. My whole family told me. It was a big deal.”
It was a big deal.
In fact, it still was a big deal.
Every time baseball season came around again, my family made a big production about making sure that they got each player a HeartGuard shirt in the area, college and high school—at least Croft did, anyway.