Greek (Palm South University)

“Hey, babe,” she answers. “I thought we had another forty-five minutes.”

“We did. Uh, do. Um…” I grab the back of my neck, casting a look at Chandler. “Hey, would you mind if we rescheduled?”

A pause on the other end was my only answer.

“I can explain later, but a friend just helped me out of a bind, and… well, again, I can explain later. But if you’re cool with it, could we have our date tomorrow night instead?”

The silence is long before Cassie finally says, “Sure. I mean… Yeah, I don’t see why not.” She pauses again. “Who’s the friend?”

“It’s Chandler, the one you met when we video chatted after Big/Little reveal.” I let out a breath of a laugh that fogs in the cold night air. “She literally just saved my ass. I owe her a drink.”

“Oh.”

I smirk, narrowing my eyes as I turn even more so Chandler can’t read my lips or overhear. “Is someone jealous?”

“No!” A pause. “I just… you promise she’s just a friend?”

I don’t mean to laugh, and by the way Cassie screams my name when I do, I know it’s an asshole mistake. “I’m sorry,” I say, still laughing. “It’s just, the fact that you think I’ve got eyes for literally any other woman but you is hysterical.”

“You’re a prick,” she says, but I can tell by the way she says it that she’s smiling, too. “I’m sorry. Of course, you should go have fun. I know you don’t know anyone there, and I’m glad y’all have become friends. I just…”

“You miss me,” I finish for her. “And I miss you, too. And if it’ll ease your mind, I’ll tell you a million times. She’s just a friend. You are the love of my life. You have nothing to worry about.”

She sighs. “That does help.”

“I love you,” I say softly. “Call you in the morning?”

“Text me later tonight,” she says. “When you’re home.”

I chuckle. “Yes, ma’am.”

“And Adam?”

“Yeah?”

“Have fun.”

I blow her a kiss through the phone before we both hang up.

BALLING UP ANOTHER DOVE chocolate wrapper with my left hand, I close one eye and stick my tongue out, aiming for the ceramic decorative bowl on the coffee table.

“She lines up the shot,” I say softly. “And… she shoots!”

With a flick of my wrist, the blue and silver foil wrapper goes flying.

And completely misses the coffee table altogether.

I blow out a breath through flat lips, looking at the empty bowl and the tiny foil balls littered all around it. Then, I look at the TV, at the rerun of America’s Top Model, and then out the window at the palm trees swaying in the breeze along the beach.

Sighing, I grab another piece of chocolate.

I know without a mirror that I look as pathetic as I feel, and I wish with everything in me that I could snap out of my pity party and get back to the bad bitch I was before the accident. So far, I’ve only been able to pull myself together long enough to go to work, give it all the energy I had, and then come home and cry about the fact that I can’t go to the pole studio.

Not that I haven’t been invited.

Karen has called me almost every day, has even popped by unannounced a few times, saying the girls miss me and they’d love to have me back — even if just to coach from the sidelines until I’m well enough to get back on the pole.

But she doesn’t understand how much even the thought of that scenario breaks me.

To be watching and unable to do, to coach without being able to show, to have this vital part of me ripped away… possibly forever…

It’s been akin to losing a lung, each breath reminding me that I’m closer to death.

I’m close to being able to start PT — or so my doctor says. But I’m healing slower than he first anticipated, and every time I hear him tack another week on the end of my sentence, despair creeps in and grabs ahold of me tighter and tighter.

I thought I knew heartbreak, thought I knew depression.

I’ve never known any kind of pain quite like this.

A whistle shakes me from my thoughts, my unfocused eyes drifting from the TV screen to where Brandon is standing at the edge of the hallway. He’s freshly showered after his long run this morning, his short hair damp and glistening, gray sweatpants hanging deliciously off his hips. Without a shirt on, I have a front row show to the phenomena that is his abdomen, with his pecs and biceps a solid opening act.

“I didn’t know I was dating a basketball star,” he muses with a grin, eyeing the wrappers all over the ground.

“Watch out, Lebron James.”

He chuckles, arching a brow at the TV as he makes his way across the room to the couch. He plops down next to me, carefully pulling me into him while being mindful of my shoulder. “So, what was wrong with her?” he asks, nodding to the model now wrapped in a blanket and looking pale as hell at the judging ceremony.