Rival Hearts (Rival Love #2) (12 page)

He looks over at me. “I know I dove too deep.” He sounds pissed at himself; I smile because it reminds me of myself.

“Just a bit. Rock back more when they say ‘Take your mark.’ You’ll get more spring, and it will help you skim dive instead.”

He nods and hops out of the water. This goes on for about a half hour before Coach Grim tells Amber and me to drive off the blocks. Between the Snickers bar and being distracted with helping my teammates I feel a little better. I’m not thinking about Caleb or his impending fatherhood.

With a clearer head than I started my day with, I step up to the blocks, take a deep breath, and adjust my goggles over my eyes. “We’re going to shake things up in here. I want you to race. Hundred-yard free sprint. Are you ladies up for it?” Coach Grim asks.

I nod. Amber does too. “Winner gets first pick of who’s on their team for a good game of water polo.”

Amber looks over at me. “You’re going down, Fletcher.”

“Oh, Amber, keep dreaming,” I chime back.

Coach Grim tells us to take our marks. I grip the edge of the starting block and rock my weight. I glance to my right at Amber. The whistle blows, and I shoot off. The cool water awakens me from my comatose state. I’m sprinting through the water and flip into the wall with ease. Each time I take a breath from the right I make a mental note of where Amber is. I’m ahead, doing well. I can hear the other swimmers shouting our names. Screaming at us to go. And then I hear him—“Sky!”—when I ran out of the YMCA in New York, and “Don’t touch her,” when we were outside the coffee shop and Kevin was telling me how he’d been cheating on me for three months. All these memories of Caleb pour in and I need them to stop! I shake it off, but it’s almost too late. I’m coming into the wall too hot. I turn, and miss my mark.

“
Fuck
!” I scream into the water. This is going to cost me. I watch Amber catch up with ease, and I feel sick.

She will not beat me. I kick as hard as I possibly can and glide through the water. But I’m getting tired. My lungs are on fire. And my muscles, if they could talk, would be using a healthy amount of profanity to describe the pain I’m putting them through. I flip into the wall again, sprinting out my last twenty-five.

It’s not enough. I tap the wall and know without looking Amber has a gloating smile on her face. She beat me. Since eighth grade, I’ve won every match between Amber and me. This shouldn’t have happened.

Clawing my goggles from my eyes, I pull myself from the water and swallow hard. I force myself to glance over at Amber. Is she smiling? Yes. But her eyes tell me she knows Caleb completely warped my brain and that’s the only reason she won.

Chapter 21

Caleb

Sky hasn’t talked to me in a week. I thought her being in New York was a ball-buster. This beats all. I see her walking the halls, laughing at lunch with a group of swimmers, and at the house, what with her room so close to mine. Skylar is killing me.

Danielle isn’t making this any better. She insisted on having a sit-down with my uncle. Danielle’s mom apparently couldn’t make it, something about nips and tucks. I don’t know. But Erin was there, which somehow made it worse. I listened to Danielle babble on and on about how she wanted to do the right thing, while Erin gave me the evil eye. My uncle gave me the “I can’t believe you did something so freaking stupid” stare. But my entire body went numb when he said, “Erin did a test using the urine sample you provided.” He made a face. “It seems you are, in fact, pregnant.” He sighed. “Don’t worry, Danielle, Caleb will be responsible for his actions.”

Then he looked over at me and said, “That means he will not only be in the child’s life, but he’ll be in yours, too.”

Before I could ask what that meant he said, “Caleb, I know this is not how things are done these days, but I’m old-fashioned and you’re going to marry Danielle as soon as she graduates.”

“What the hell? No! I’m not ever marrying her!” I screamed.

I was practically off the couch and running for the door, but my uncle snatched me up and pushed me right back down into a chair. “There is not going to be a debate. You’ll do this or you can kiss the trust fund your parents left you goodbye. This is called being responsible, Caleb. We’re men and we own up when we mess up.”

I don’t give a shit about the money. But he wasn’t just talking about the trust fund and he knew I was aware of this. On my twenty-first birthday, the deed to the house I grew up in will transfer to me—providing that nothing happens to me and my uncle doesn’t step in and state otherwise. That’s what my parents will stated. Currently, the house is being rented out by a nice family, and my uncle has been putting that money aside for taxes and repairs. And any leftovers go to me.

I started to tell him how much he sucked at the same time I spotted Sky in the entryway. I’ve never seen Skylar broken until that very moment. God, the look on her beautiful face made me want to rip out my own heart and hold it out for her to stab. I’ve never felt so disgusted with myself.

In English class, I tap my pencil against my notebook. The whispers and rumors whiz around the room, and all of them are about me. Skylar flinches in her seat when some of them reach her. I should say something, defend myself, but what’s the point?

Ms. Norris lectures us about a new assignment coming up. Apparently it’s worth half our grade. Again, I don’t really give a rat’s ass. My life is officially ruined. There’s no college for me. There’s no future life with Skylar. Nope, I’m going to be stuck in hell with some shit job.

“Caleb, you want to partner up?” Kayla asks. Skylar stares at her desktop and I want her to look at me. I need to get some kind of idea of how she feels about this. “Caleb?” Kayla asks again.

I shake my head and decide to find another group. The choices are slim. There’s Cindy Fisher and Heather Zorn, who are the biggest damn gossip queens ever, so I can see us not getting shit done. I didn’t pay enough attention to what we’re supposed to be doing for all that bullshit, either. Then there are the two nerds in the back, Jackson Rivers and Gary Hicks. Both guys I’m pretty certain might hate me more than Skylar but I’m taking my chances.

Stopping at their group I say, “Hey, you two looking for an extra?”

Gary looks at me like I’m an alien. Jackson has a sour expression which is a clear indication he’d rather eat shit and die than have me as a partner.

“Do you really think we’re stupid enough to fall for your bullcrap? Gary, he’s clearly playing us. Well, we’re not going to let you sit over here only for us to do all the work and your lazy, dumb, jock ass to get an A. So go leech onto some other group.”

Wow. I mean, props to Jackson for telling me off. Freaking kid finally grew a pair. I shrug. “Look, man. I know you don’t want me here. I know you hate me because I probably made fun of you in the locker room during gym. But I need a group to work with. I’ll do my fair share. If I don’t, you can tell Ms. Norris so she gives me an F. Fair enough?”

Gary and Jackson huddle up. Every few seconds they look over at me and begin whispering again. Finally, Gary and Jackson break apart. “You have to do us a favor. We want invites to two parties, and we want dates with Emily Wheeler and Amber Ortiz,” Jackson says.

Okay, the parties I could totally do, the dates, though … I’m not sure even the son of God could pull that off. I mean, these damn kids are super nerds. Dressed up as warriors and shit and doing battle crap on the weekends. Yes, full on weird, pretend reenactments.

“And what if I can’t get you dates with those girls? Would you settle for any girls at all?” I mean ’cause seriously, those chicks are way out of their league. Surely they must realize this because this is life, not some bullshit romantic teen movie.

“As long as they don’t have man hands and could be mistaken for a guy, I’m cool. Oh, and not Selena.” Gary leans in close and whispers, “She smells like dirty feet. And she pretends to know which is the better ship, the Enterprise or the Death Star, but she doesn’t know.” I’m pretty sure half the girls on this planet have no freaking clue about that. Hell, I don’t even know the answer, but guessing from his tone, I’d say the Death Star.

Jackson pulls him back and shakes his head. “Don’t tell him stuff like that. He could go blab it to one of his jackass friends. Then the whole school will be against us because of some deranged version he tells them.”

I roll my eyes and pull up a desk to them. Once I slump into the seat, I sigh. “Look. I’m not going to go tell anyone anything. If you haven’t noticed, right now, I’m kind of the star in the gossip floating around here. All I need to know is which girls are not on the list to get you dates with. And try to be reasonable here, guys.”

After a lot of debate, they give me a list of potentials. Some are, again, out of their league, and some seem like they’d be easy to convince. But I might still need a girl’s help on this end, and right now, most of the chicks here have dagger stares for me.

***

Skylar comes into the house around nine. She got her shifts back at the coffee shop in Summit. Which I guess is great for her but sucks balls for me because it makes seeing her even around the house that much more difficult. She drops her overstuffed bag by the front door and clamors into the living room.

I smile, but she acknowledges me with nothing more than a glare. “Hey, um, can we talk?” I ask.

“No. Where’s my mom?”

“Out with my uncle. Some dinner party for work she had to go to. Someone was retiring, I don’t know.” I follow her into the kitchen. “Look, I know you hate me. I know you probably have thought of a thousand ways to kill me. But I don’t know what you want me to do, Sky. I’m sorry. You’ve got no idea how sorry I am.”

She turns her wild eyes on me and slams her hands on the counter. “What are you sorry for, Caleb? For not getting into my pants? For getting that girl pregnant because now you have to marry her? Or are you sorry for messing with my heart and head?” She sniffles and pulls away from the counter.

I hurry over to her, wrapping my arms around her waist, and pull her to me. “Baby, you know I’m sorry for hurting you and putting you through this. And the part about getting into your pants, come on, really? You know damn well I’d wait until you were ready, so don’t mark me off as a total asshole.” She sniffles. “Sky, you know I love you. And I don’t give a damn what my uncle says, I’m not going to marry her. She’ll never get me or my heart. That’s yours. You do know that, right?”

Sky pulls back slightly and looks up at me. “It doesn’t matter anymore.” She pushes away and runs out of the room. I rush after her, but it’s too late. She slams the door to her room in my face and locks it.

I kick her door out of frustration. “Damn it!”

Chapter 22

Skylar

School is
eh
. Home sucks. Work is okay. Swimming, though, that’s good. So far, everyone has been supportive of me returning to the team. At lunch, I have a place to sit. Well, more like four places because there’s a lot of us.

Biggest thing is, I need to keep myself really busy. It helps me forget. Or at least it helps me not think about Caleb. But that shatters as soon as I come home. I mean, his room is right there, so close to mine, it’s like I can hear him breathing. That’s ridiculous, I know.

If his room being so damn close to me wasn’t enough torture, finding his scent in places like my car or around the house breaks me. My insides are hollow, and the sight of him makes me want to die.

Love is the worst thing in the world. Because if someone rips it from you, you’re me. A zombie going through the motions, faking smiles, and pretending you’re so much stronger than you really are. And when the darkness comes and I’m inside my room, I hug a pillow and cry myself to sleep.

Danielle passes me in the hall, wearing a smug smile and giving me the “He’s all mine now” look. Caleb isn’t walking with her, but he is straight ahead, standing at his locker. She probably just left him, that gloating witch.

I watch his muscles tighten against his t-shirt as he grabs some books from the top shelf in his locker. I miss those arms. The way they held me and melted all my worries away. I shake my head. They aren’t my arms anymore. They’re Danielle’s and the baby’s, but not mine.

I go to my locker, which is eight down from Caleb’s, and make a mental note to not look at him. My body wants to. My heart slams against my ribcage, and my skin even tingles with desire to do everything I will not do.

I swing in the combination twice before I get the dumb thing open. I lean my head against the door, loving the cool metal against my skin. “Hi,” a deep voice says near my ear.

Jumping back, I look up at the person saying hi to me. A tall, broad-shouldered guy with dark hair, fake tan, and brown eyes smiles at me. “Hi,” he says again.

“Hey,” I reply.

“Amber said you had practice sheets she needed. I’m Zander, by the way. I’m on the diving team, but am also the copy bitch. Well, I work in the office in the morning so, everyone assumes that means I’m their go-to guy for things. Passes, copies, office supplies. You know.” He flashes another sexy smile.

I nod. “Sure.” I drop my book bag to the ground and pull out my folder labeled “Swimming” and hand it to him.

“Thanks.”

He starts to turn away and I stop him. “Wait. I, um … ” I snatch the folder back and pull out a couple of pages then give it back. “Sorry. These are mine.”

“That’s cool. So, you’ve been doing pretty good. Team’s gotten a lot better. You excited about our meet against Harris?”

“What?” I thought they already swam against my old school. The week I left they were supposed to have a meet against them. I thought I avoided this and for damn good reason. My mouth gapes open.

“I can see someone is a little shocked. We had to cancel the last meet. Our pool was screwed. I guess Harris couldn’t let us have the meet at their school. Conflict of something. So they waited until ours was fixed and scheduled a makeup meet.”