Vegas Aces: The Wide Receiver Complete Series

CHAPTER 1 TRISTAN

I stand entranced as I stare across the small space separating us.

At first I think it’s a vision. A mirage. Something I want to see since I’m here at home again, something that means home to me more than this house, more than the bed I glanced at when I walked in, more than the table in the kitchen where we gathered as a family of three for thousands of meals.

I must be hallucinating. I must be seeing things. I’m exhausted after another season, after two days on the road to get here and worrying about my dad’s health.

I keep my eyes on the mirage across the yard, afraid if I even blink, she’ll disappear. My chest tightens as nostalgia hits me and mingles with shock that she’s here, and an old, familiar rush of feelings tingles along my spine.

I saw the drapes opening, and then our eyes met across the space. It’s not just some vision.

My hand moves up to rub at the ache near my heart.

It’s real.

She’s home.

She’s everything I remember…yet somehow more.

And here I stand, in the middle of the room that hasn’t changed much at all since I graduated high school and headed toward the University of Illinois without looking back, staring across the distance at the girl I’ve loved since I was twelve years old.

I realize only now that I’ve loved her for over half my life even though she only filled in about six years of my history—from when I was twelve through when I turned eighteen. But just because she left doesn’t mean I ever stopped loving her.

I hold up a hand in greeting, and her surprised eyes dart briefly over to my hand before she raises her hand in a wave, too. She rests her fingertips on the glass, and I take another step toward my window and do the same. Our eyes are still connected, some silent conversation passing between the two of us as we both seem to be in the same state of shock that the other one is here.

My eyes flick down to her right hand.

She’s still wearing my promise ring.

I’m not sure what that means.

A thousand different questions plow into me at once, but a few seem to stand out above the others.

Why is she here?

How long will she be here?

What really happened all those years ago?

Is there still a chance for us?

Why is she still wearing the ring?

I’ll only learn the answers if I ask the questions.

I flick the lock on my window then slide it open, the blustery air from the early February afternoon blowing in at me, but I can’t feel the cold when her warmth is just across the small side yard separating our houses.

I sit on the same bench under my window where I met her hundreds—maybe even thousands—of times during our youth.

She slides her window open and sits, too. She shivers a little as the air from outside hits her.

And just like that, it’s exactly like old times.

Except it’s not.

It can’t be exactly like old times. Not with everything that happened between the two of us. We’ve both moved to different places in our lives at this point.

Not forward, and maybe not onward, but different .

As I stare across the space before either of us says a word, I immediately know we’re both different people than we were back then.

My first thought is that I’m curious to know whether we can get back to where we once were despite everything.

It’s far too early to be having thoughts along those lines, yet there they are like a first impression that I won’t be able to get out of my head.

“Tessa Taylor,” I say softly.

“Tristan Higgins,” she murmurs.

I clear my throat awkwardly. I’ve never really had trouble when it comes to women. They don’t make me nervous. They scream my name when I’m out on the field. They wear my jersey with my number beneath my last name, and none of that does a single thing for me. It’s all the same shit I’ve gotten used to over the last few years.

Yet something about this woman is setting me on edge. She’s making me nervous. She’s putting me in a place I’m not used to being in all just by uttering my name.

“How have you been?” I ask.

She closes her eyes a beat with a huffed chuckle, her eyes down when she finally answers. “Cutting right to the heart of things like you always did.”

I’m not sure how the question asking how she’s been cuts to the heart of things, but I gather her answer is more complicated than a cursory good .

“I’ve been better,” she admits. “You?”

“Same. But I’ve also been worse.” I can’t hide the accusation in my tone. We both know I mean when she left…something that still doesn’t make any sense to me.

She presses her lips together. “Same.”

“What are you doing here?” I ask, trying to tick off the questions in my mind by starting at the top.

“I, uh, quit my job and sort of just need a reset. With my dad’s recent passing, I thought my mom could use the company. What better place to reset than home, right?”

Something seems off in her tone, like maybe there’s more to the story that she isn’t telling me.

She always told me everything…until that day she didn’t, I guess.

And now she’s holding onto things that she isn’t ready to tell me, something that gives me a pretty big indication that the answer to my question about whether there’s any chance that we could find our way back to each other falls a little closer to the negative side. Or if it’s not a negative, it’s definitely going to take some work.

“What about you?” she asks. “What are you doing here?”

I chuckle. “As it turns out, I’m here to reset, too. The season just ended and I needed to get out of town a while.” I think about telling her about my dad’s illness, or about my situation with Savannah, but somehow it doesn’t feel like the right time. If she’s leaving things out, I can, too.

I just hope we can get back to a place where neither of us is leaving something out of the conversation.