Faking It

Chapter 48: The Look On Your Face

The goalie dove. The ball tipped off her outstretched fingers.

And into the net.

I fell to my knees, pretty sure that I was screaming. Audra flew at me from beside the goal and slammed into me with a whomp, tackling the pair of us to the ground.

"You bloody brilliant queen!" she shouted, as the rest of the team crushed atop us in a victory scrum. Deanna threw her arms around me, tears streaming down her cheeks, while Reyna let out a victory scream as she dove onto Deanna's shoulders.

Somewhere, beyond all the cheering, the ref blew her whistle, ending the game.

It was all a blur as we climbed to our feet, a tangle of arms and legs and laughs and tears. Somehow, we formed a semblance of a line to shake hands with Harcourt, and then suddenly Reyna had her hands on the championship banner.

"All right, grab your sweatbands! It's picture time!" she whooped, hanging off Deanna's shoulders again, waving the banner like a cape.

My feet ground to a halt. I'd been so caught up in laughing and hugging and celebrating that I hadn't noticed the varsity boys, all of them in their team sweatshirts, handing out flamingo pink sweatbands.

No. Not now. Not right in the middle of this victory. Not during the biggest win of my entire life. I wasn't going to let anything rain on this parade.

I grabbed Audra's arm. "Let me take JJ's."

"Yeah, whatever!" she said brightly, then called out to Gyeong-Ja, who was fighting her way through the throng of bodies coursing onto the field from the bleachers.

I kept my eyes straight ahead, fixed on Audra's brother, and studiously avoided looking at any of the other varsity boys. He'd stretched up on tiptoe, only noticing me when I planted myself in front of him.

"I think that's mine," I said, reaching for the sweatband.

He held it away with a gentle smile. "This one's not for you, love. But that one is." He pointed over my shoulder.

Something swooped low in my stomach. JJ must've read the hesitation all over my face, because he rested a hand on my shoulder and turned me.

Theo stared at me through the crowd and, the moment our eyes met, his expression brightened into a grin. Not the arrogant, razor's edge one. The open one. The honest one. The one from Thanksgiving. It kicked the air straight from my lungs.

Somehow, I forced my legs to move. He spun the sweatband around his finger as I approached, and it was absolutely unfair how good he looked in his jeans and leather varsity jacket.

I reached for the hot pink blur to get this over with. "If you're doing this to gloat—"

He held it away. "Gloat? About what? That was all you. And damn was it gorgeous."

I hated the way my breath shuddered when I exhaled, so I crossed my arms. Determined not to look at him and that grin that was making my knees feel all wobbly again, I said, "Then what do you want?"

"To talk to you. It's been kind of hard to do lately." He held out the sweatband.

I frowned. That wasn't fair. It's not like I was the one who'd started the whole ignoring each other business. That was all him, and I didn't like his implication that I was behind it.

"If it's so important, you could've just replied to my texts." I tried to swipe the sweatband, but he'd hooked a finger into it and didn't let go.

At least he had the grace to look ashamed. "Yeah...see, that's the thing." He tugged on the sweatband, pulling us a step closer together. "I owe you an apology. For that, and everything else."