Unloved (The Undone, #2)

by Peyton Corinne

“I think you’d be really easy to love,” she says. It’s a lax, whispered compliment, one she doesn’t know sounds like a gunshot in my head, hitting me straight in the chest.

“And I score on defended nets all the time.” Freddy shrugs, then leans across the now-too-short table to peer up at me with playful eyes and a pretty smile. “The goalie makes scoring more difficult, not impossible.”

I know my place. I’m not really part of the Koteskiy-Reiner duo. I’m the pretty third wheel.

I make a vow then to protect her, the pretty girl with butterflies in her messy curls, even if she’ll never really be mine.

“I’ll be your friend, Ro,” I say. “I want you to see me as your friend.” “I’d like that, Matt.” She smiles, small and gentle, and I feel another layer of care and protectiveness reach out from me to her. A friend—not because of being on the same hockey team or some kind of trade-off. Just my friend, because she wants to be.

He’s gone before I can say that it’s still hard for me to get the laces just right. That sometimes my mind starts to wander, and I forget where I am or what I’m doing, so I need someone to watch me do it—to help.

“But… I’m not good with words. I thought the numbers would be easier.”

Sobs In a learning disability

I think I’m in love with her—not even romantically, but on some soul level. I feel devoted to her.

You’re the most amazing, wonderful person I’ve ever met, and sometimes I nearly make myself sick over what I’ll do without you when this is over between us. In my dreams, I take care of you the way you take care of other people, and you’re relaxed and calm. And before bed, you tell me how easy it is to love me. I’m starting to think I’d give up anything, even hockey, for that life with you.

“Sometimes the people we love most hurt us the easiest, even if they don’t mean to.”

When Mom got sick, Archer quit his job and moved in with us. Spoon-fed her when she was too tired. And I’d been so blinded by my own grief and anger that I didn’t see it was because he was so in love with her. Devoted, and then distraught afterward.

“I think falling in love with you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”

Ro tied one of the ribbons from her hair onto my bag. For good luck, she told me. I’m practically preening, shuffling my bag nearly into the center of the dressing room for the guys to see it. To ask me about it. It’s from my girlfriend, I almost scream when Holden finally asks.

“I want baby Elsie to know about her namesake, about Mom. And I want her to know how much you loved each other.” I clear my throat now, feeling almost sick at the mix of nerves and excitement. “You’ve always been a father to me, and I want her to know you as my dad—as her grandfather.”

Sobbing and throwing up right now

In our house, there is so much love, it overflows.

Sobbing inconsolably