Sunlight

Chapter Six

Seven Seas // Echo & The Bunnymen

Kyra

"I'm ready to blow up my world for you," he says.

I don't know how to respond, so I stay quiet. I watch him. I look for a crack in the facade telling me that he's giving me a line. A hook.

A lie.

But nothing cracks. He's solid as a rock. Steady. Pete stands tall across from me, so far from the cocky player he was in high school.

"Words are cheap, Pete." I wipe the remainder of my tears before crossing my arms. "I've heard a lot of words in my life. I'm tired of empty promises. I'm ready for action."

Even my words right now are empty promises, the hypocrite I am. I have zero faith that Pete will put anything he says into action, so I'm not afraid to give him the rope he needs to finish the job. Killing off any remaining thread of hope I have that my feelings for him won't crush my soul before I can escape from beneath them.

He rubs his jaw, eyeing me in the moonlight. Thing is, under the cover of near darkness, it isn't so scary to make declarations like he just did. Blowing up his world might sound perfectly reasonable to him right now.

But in the light of day, when the sun comes up, promises made in the dark tend to disappear.

"Ky, I didn't leave you because I didn't want you. And I didn't leave because I was afraid of Jeff."

Scoffing, I shake my head as I answer. "Right. Then why? Got some amazing scholarship offer you couldn't refuse? We both know you couldn't take the heat. You couldn't handle the threat that Jeff finding out wouldn't wreck your friendship."

He steps into my space, taking my hands in his. Eyes imploring me to listen.

"No."

I close my eyes, shaken by his touch. "Right."

Pete comes impossibly closer. His lips inches from mine, eyes still begging me to hear him out.

"Yes," his voice drops to a whispered plea. "I was afraid of losing Jeff. But Ky, I would have lost him because of me, not because of him."

"What?"

"I wasn't good enough, Ky. And he knew it. He would have kicked my ass because that night we kissed, I did it to prove a fucking point. Yeah I was tempted. You'd had my attention far longer than I want to admit. But I'd stayed away out of respect for Jeff. He wouldn't want a guy like me anywhere near his sister." His eyes search mine. "And honestly," he takes a deep breath. "I didn't want a guy like me near you, either."

I try to step back, but Pete's hold has slid up to my arms and he pulls me closer.

"I left because I didn't deserve you. Not the guy I was. Not the way I'd acted."

"Oh, and now you do?" Again, I shake my head with a scoff.

"Yes."

I feel the weight of that one word, uttered in pain, in regret, but also in truth. I hear the struggle he's gone through to say that one word and mean it.

And he does.

He owns it.

"Yes?" I utter my question in hopeful wonder, something I would have never believed possible where Pete's concerned. Hope? Never. He left me in the most vulnerable place I'd ever been, having laid bare my heart for him at the time.

"Yes." His nostrils flare, his jaw strains before he continues. "I've put every habit down. I focused on baseball and school and nothing else."

"Baseball? But you had a football scholarship at Fallbrook."