The QB's Nerdy Addiction novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Acknowledgments

On Wednesday it rained so hard that the library windows turned white.

We finished at eleven, and Gage looked at the parking lot and then at me.

"You walk home."

"It's nine blocks."

"It's nine blocks of that."

"A ride isn't a place," I said. "Rule one says we work in the library. It doesn't say anything about trucks."

"I'll take it," Gage said.

His truck was old and black and smelled like cut grass and leather.

He turned the heat up to the top and sat there with both hands on the wheel, not driving yet.

Rain hammered the roof.

"I need to say sorry about Saturday," he said. "You didn't sign up for that."

"You don't owe me an apology."

"I showed up at your work and asked you to read to me at midnight."

"I could have said no."

"Why didn't you?"

I looked at the dashboard, at the little orange light that said the door wasn't quite shut.

"Your face had a mark on it," I said.

He laughed, once, quietly.

"My dad doesn't mean it," he said. "He just doesn't know how to stand in a stadium and not be the one on the field."

"He grabbed you in front of cameras."

"I know."

"That's not about not knowing how to stand."

He turned his head.

For a second I thought he would be angry.

He looked at me for a long moment, and then he said, "You say what you see. Do you know how rare that is?"

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