Chapter 13: Out Loud

Mason's POV

Lila's fingers went still in my tie.

"Don't tell me what?" she said.

I hadn't said a word.

I had only thought it, and she had heard it, and I watched it land on her face.

"Okay," I said. "Out loud. The club moved my signing to this Friday."

She waited.

"They want the papers back by Tuesday. They want me in their office Friday morning. And they want me in camp on January third, not in March."

"January," she said. "In the middle of the season."

"In the middle of the season, and the middle of the semester."

She let go of my tie and smoothed it flat with both hands, which made it harder to think.

"You're going to take it," she said.

"I don't know yet."

[He's going to take it. Of course he is. It's what he's wanted since he was ten.]

It came to me in pieces, the way hers always did, but this time I knew whose it was.

I had spent two weeks thinking my own head was cruel to me.

It had only been her, scared.

"I can hear that," I said.

She went red to the ears. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Just say it to me."

"Fine. I think you should take it."

"That's not what you think."

"It's part of what I think." She looked at the coats. "The rest of it can wait until I stop shaking."

I wanted to take her face in my hands and tell her the rest of it was my problem, not hers.

Instead I asked what I had been afraid to ask for a month.

"Do you want to know why I didn't tell you?"

"Because you're a coward."

"Because you'd have pushed me out the door," I said. "You would have said take it, go, I'm fine. You did it with Tori. You tried to hand me over."

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