Read Online Shattered (Shattered #1) by Heather D'Agostino - Free Book Online

not a person, I’m just someone you used to see
while you were biding your time to get away from here.”
    “That’s not true. I loved you Nick,” I began to cry. At this point I was
so torqued up that I had begun pacing in front of him. “I still do,” I ground
out between my teeth. “I still do.”
    “Yeah…well…” he stopped himself before he could say anything else.
    My head jerked in his direction and I glared at him, “You can’t tell me
that you’re happy here. That you wouldn’t leave the first chance you got.”
    “No, I can’t, but I can tell you that I would have never made that
decision without talking to you first. It would have been a joint decision
Leah. It wouldn’t have been taken lightly either.”
    “You think I didn’t agonize over this for days?” I tossed my arms in the
air. “I was only given five days to decide. This decision was life altering. It
was my one shot at Olympic gold. Those chances don’t come around more than
once.”
    “You sound like your parents,” he groaned. “I think you wanted out of
here so bad, that you jumped on the first chance you had. You didn’t care about
what it took to do it, or who you stepped on along the way. You saw me as
something that was holding you back,” he turned and began walking back to the
door of his truck.
    “That’s not true and you know it!” I shouted at his back. “If you really
loved me back then, you would have understood what that offer really was. You
would have supported me!”
    He stopped mid-stride and stiffened before shaking his head, “You have
no idea what I did for you. None what so ever.”
    I crept up behind him and placed my hand on his shoulder lightly before
whispering, “Tell me.”
    He spun so fast, I had to step back to keep from getting knocked down.
“I had several scouts come to see me before I graduated. UNC, Clemson,
Virginia…” he threw his hands out to the side. “We’d only been together for a
little over a year. I thought what we had was special,” he spit the words out as
if they left a bad taste in his mouth. “I turned them down…all of them…for
YOU!” he glared at me. “I wanted to stay here and be with you,” he pointed a
finger at me as he stepped closer. “I took a job I hated, and stuck around here
to keep building something that I thought you wanted too. I knew I’d never be
NFL material, but I could have gotten a free education.” At this point he was
so close to me I could feel his warm breath feather across my face. “I musta
been a damn fool to give all that up.”
    My mouth dropped open at his admission. I knew UNC wanted him, I knew
others did too. Back then as a sophomore, I had no idea what he was giving up.
I took him for granite. He was right. “I’m sorry,” I begged. “You’re right. I
didn’t deserve you.”
    We stood there nose to nose glaring at one another for what felt like
hours. All the pent up frustrations we had with one another boiling just below
the surface. I knew that if I let them out, I would never be able to take back
the anguish I’d cause. Nick’s eyes darted from my eyes to my lips and back to
my eyes. I saw the desire behind them. He still felt something for me somewhere
in there. He was fighting to keep it buried, but being here…back at this
place…it was bringing it to the surface.
    “Can we try again?” I whispered almost pleadingly. “Start over? See what
happens?” I was rambling and I knew it, but I wanted so desperately to see
where this would go.
    “I don’t know if I can,” Nick dropped his chin down on his chest. “How
do I know that you won’t up and leave again?”
    “You don’t, but I think we owe it to ourselves to see where this could
go. We were great back then and we were only kids, I bet it would be amazing
now.”
    Nick nodded his head and sighed, “Fine…we’ll see what happens.” He took
a few steps back and opened the door to his truck. After climbing in, he sat
there, and shook his