State of Grace | ONGOING

Chapter 17

Sunday morning after a game usually meant a hangover, but the Spartans had suffered their first loss the night before with Theo subbed out for her injury and I had been more than happy to skip their pity party afterwards. With the revelation I'd had yesterday that maybe Bo wasn't my forever, I'd also been glad to have a night to myself to think about what I needed to do next. It wasn't going to be fun, but I would rather be a bit uncomfortable than be a cheater.

I pulled up outside of Bo's house with a takeout bag of breakfast from our local bagel place in my passenger seat. I knew Bo and the rest of the guys would need something filling after whatever shenanigans they'd gotten up to last night. The exact details were a mystery. All I knew was that I'd received some very drunk texts from Bo and I had a missed call from Theo with no voicemail.

I hopped out of my car, the bag of food clutched in one hand as I made my way up to the front door. I tried the doorknob, hoping to be able to slip in quietly in case the boys were all asleep still but it was locked. I had to resort to banging on the door until it opened, revealing Wayne in just a pair of boxers.

"Sorry if I woke you up," I said, then lifted the bag into his view.

"Nah man, it's fine, you brought food" he said, his voice low and gravelly from sleep. He grabbed the bag from me and headed to the kitchen where the boys were all sitting around their kitchen table with massive cups of coffee and bottles full of water.

"Good morning," I said quietly, bending over to press a quick kiss to Bo's cheek when his arm automatically reached out to corral me into his lap. "I come bearing breakfast," I added, and they all perked up.

"Oh thank god for girlfriends," Ian muttered and grabbed a breakfast sandwich from the paper bag on the table. The crinkle of the bag and the sandwich wrapping was all I could hear for a few beats until Bo broke the silence.

"She's mine, find your own," Bo said possessively and squeezed my hips. I looked down at him with fresh eyes. His possessiveness was normally something I ignored, but right now it was just plain unwarranted. Ian had known me for the last three years, much the same as Bo. He didn't think of me like that at all. And vice versa.

And while I still thought Bo was ridiculously handsome, with his short black hair and deep eyes, his charming smile didn't have the same effect on me anymore as he tried to pretend that his comment was lighthearted.

"I think he knows that, bubba," I said quietly. He looked surprised when he met my gaze and saw that I wasn't joking. I was seriously standing my ground for this. For maybe the first time in our relationship.

"It was a joke," he deadpanned. I shrugged slightly, not breaking his gaze like I normally would have. Maybe now wasn't the right time to decide to grow a backbone about his stupid jokes. Or more accurately it was exactly the right time, it just didn't feel like it when he stared up at me like I was doing something horribly wrong. "Shit, are you in a mood or something now?"

"I'm not in a mood," I said tiredly. This relationship was starting to drain me in a way that I'd never realized before. I gave so much of myself to Bo, time and love and sacrifices, and I was often met with the same rock wall of a barrier that he kept between us unintentionally. When we were eighteen and young and in love, none of the future stuff seemed to matter. I had so much ahead of me and I wanted to have fun. I thought the things I didn't like about Bo or our relationship were things that would change over time but I was never great at expressing what I needed and he was about as intuitive as a bag of rocks so nothing ended up changing.

Well that wasn't entirely true. I'd changed. I'd done a lot of growing and learning in the past three years, and Bo was still the eighteen year old I'd first fallen for. It just didn't feel compatible anymore.