Behind the Pitch, a novella: Seeking Serenity 1.5 Read Online Free PDF

annoyed me most.
    “Please let me see you,” I sent her only to get a “you hit an old man. Assface” text in reply.
    What the buggering shite is an assface anyway?
    Yesterday I waited outside of her building for her to leave work. She’d had me barded by the skinny, pimpled-face kid with the ugly green campus police uniform and flashlight on his hip who sat in front of the lobby doors glaring at me for a half hour straight. When she finally left, I chased after her like the sad, pathetic amadan I am.
    “Autumn, wait, please. Can I at least talk to you for one bleeding second?”
    When she turned toward me, eyes going soft for just the smallest second, I thought I’d get a hug, a kiss, something that told me I hadn’t lost her completely. But then our gazes met, held, and then her anger flared swift.
    “Go talk to Joe. He’s the one you should be apologizing to.”
    I watched her dart away from me itching to grab her, pull her close to me, tell her I was desperate for her forgiveness. But I stayed rooted to my spot, sighing with a weight of something fierce and thick that felt like shame bubbling in my chest.
    Her friends won’t speak to me either. It seems Layla’s intrusion in our fight has ripped quite the wedge between those girls. Mollie and Sayo are speaking to Layla, but Autumn is still not quite as chummy.
    I only know this because Donovan has finally decided that he might fancy Layla and began to chat her up. She’s given my best mate small morsels of information, but little else.
    My chest still hurts. My breathing is constricted and I quickly realized none of these ailments are physical. I miss Autumn. There, I said it. I miss her smile and her hair and the way she makes soft little moans in the back of her throat when she’s dead asleep.
    She is killing me, but then, that has always been the case.

 
     
     
    She will be the death of me.
    McShane with her long, ginger hair that smelled like cotton candy one day and some weird flowery scent I can’t place the next.
    McShane who kissed me back like she meant it, like she wanted more of me that day in the basement.
    McShane who walked away hacked off when Morrison and I started throwing fists at each other after the match, when he got a bit too caveman for my liking. Pouncy bollocks. He deserved it. Telling me that McShane was his, that I needed to stay away from her.
    And now, fecking now, she was blowing me off at this loud, obnoxious club.
    I didn’t know what she was fussed about. Really, she should have thanked me. I was only looking after her. But try convincing that stubborn woman of anything.
    “I haven’t needed a man since my dad skipped out on us,” she said. “And I got over the domineering caveman shit after Tucker. Now it only pisses me off.”
    As though I needed telling. I saw who she is, how she is. I saw that she’s strong, that she’s capable. But fuck me if I couldn’t seem to quell the need to look after her anyway, to protect her. What was it about this girl? Why couldn’t I stay away?
    And why the hell did she have to look so damn gorgeous?
    I watched her dancing with her friends across the club. She kept downing drinks, Scotch of all things, as though it was water. Her hips moving in that tight dress called to me, had my eyes swaying from her face and lingering there far longer than seemed decent.
    But to hell with her if she thought I’d chase after her. I did have some pride, you see.
    She moved to the beat, swaying here and there, against her pissed friends, hammered to shite. They danced together with liquid ease, their bodies touching, bouncing, grazing against each other and it was all I could do to keep from running across the club and pulling McShane to me; to have her nestled against my chest, her hot breath moistening my neck.
    Shite.
    I shouldn’t have been thinking of that. Not just then. Not there, not when I’d had too much drink. Not when I could still smell her on my shirt. Not an hour before, I’d