It cut me like nothing I’d ever felt before. I hadn’t kept her safe like I’d promised. I’d failed her.

Fighting the urge to break down, I slumped down on her bed and stared at the silver moon through her white curtains, wondering out loud to the large, empty room, “Where the f**k have you gone, baby?”

Two pictures on her night table caught my eye. The only two pictures beside her bed—hell, in her entire room. One of the two of us kissing before one of my games, her dressed in my Tide jersey, her legs wrapped around my waist and her arms gripping my neck as she smiled in happiness against my lips. The second was of Mol as a kid, with her Grandma, back in England. I couldn’t help but crack a small smile as I picked up the image of the tiny girl with too much hair, freckles, and the biggest f**king glasses I’d ever seen. But that smile soon turned into a whole world of pain. She’d gone. She’d f**king broken her promise and left me. No girl, not one person left who was mine. She’d been put through too much, and when the shit hit the fan, she’d cut and run.

As I stroked my thumb over that cute, smiling, five-year-old face, a tear trailed down my cheek and splattered onto the glass. I didn’t know what to do without her; she’d become my whole friggin’ life. I could barely think back to the days when she wasn’t by my side, loving me and giving me what I needed. Christ, it’d been that way since the day she literally ran into my life, trampled on my shit, and stole my dead f**king heart.

The bedroom door cracked open and Ally, my cousin and one of Molly’s best friends, crept into the dark room. “Hey, Rome,” she said, her voice soft and guarded. I didn’t look back at her—couldn’t—and eventually she sat down beside me, not uttering a word.

I was still staring at the picture when Ally reached over and took it from my hands. “She’s definitely one of a kind, isn’t she?” she said with a sad smile.

I huffed out a strained breath and nodded, taking back the frame, feeling a lump clog up my throat.

Ally sighed and grasped my hand tightly. “She ran?”

My silence gave her the answer, and my head fell forward with dejection. “What the f**k am I gonna to do without her, Al?”

“She’ll come back. I’m certain. She just had too much to deal with. Hell, I bet she never thought people like your parents even existed, never mind that she’d be on the receiving end of their shit. Most folk don’t believe people are capable of such cruelty. It’s just we know better, that’s all.”

“I can’t do this without her. I can’t f**kin’ live without her by my side.” I finally looked at Ally, whose brown eyes watched me helplessly. “I like who I am now with her, because of her. I hated the man I was before.”

“She will come back,” she reiterated, this time with stern conviction.

I wasn’t so sure.

“I can’t stop thinking about the day we met. It keeps playing on a loop in my mind.”

Ally laughed and laid her head on my shoulder. “I remember it, too.”

“There was always something about her, you know? Something I wanted, needed. Even back then. I knew she’d understand me if I just let her. I could see something special in her, and she in me.”

“Then hold on to that because Molls sure felt it too, still does. She’s just clouded by grief. Think of everything you guys have been through. She won’t leave you permanently after that. You’re meant to be.”

Lying back on the unmade bed and staring at the ceiling, I let the anger buried inside me rip loose, growling a loud “fuck!”

My hands tightened, cracking the photo frame’s glass, but I ignored the slicing pain in my palm, too concerned with cleaning Molly’s beautiful five-year-old face, now smeared with my blood.

“Christ, Shakespeare,” I rasped, fixated by those caramel eyes. “Where the hell have you gone?”

“Rome?” Ally said quietly.

“What?”

“You’re getting all angry again.” She paused for a long moment. “I don’t want you going back there. You’ve been so much better lately.”

Sucking in a pained, stuttered breath, I said, “Because of her. I’ve been better because of her.”

“Then tell me about it. Tell me how y’all fell in love. I know a little bit, but not the whole story. Talk to me.”

Slowly sitting back up, I looked my worried cousin in the eyes. “I’m not sure I can, Al. It’s all so raw.”

Ally rubbed a soothing hand down my back. “It’ll be good for you. You need to remember why you changed, what brought you guys together. It’s good to talk. I can’t see you go back to Rome, pre-Molls. It was like you’d been numb your entire life, never letting anyone in, and meeting Molly woke you the heck up.”

Feeling a burning in my chest, I glanced over to the balcony—our balcony—and my eyes blurred at the onslaught of memories racing through my mind.

“I… I guess it all began months ago. I recall it so clearly. It was just like any other normal, typical day…”

1

The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa

Several months ago…

I felt it the minute it left my hands. It was perfect: the spiral just right, the speed and angle faultless. I watched, holding my breath, as the ball sailed through the air, gliding smoothly down the field, then landed right into the outstretched hands of Gavin Sale, the wide receiver. It was the sixth pass I’d hit with such accuracy in the last hour alone, and this time, the team all stopped and stared at me standing frozen, still in my position.