Saying Goodbye, Part Two (Passports and Promises Book 1) by Abigail Drake Read Free Book Online

right?”
    “Yes,” she said, “but they can kick it forward. Watch. I think Thomas is about to score.”
    Another player kicked the ball ahead. Thomas took off, amazingly fast for such a big guy. He dove over the line, ball in hand, then jumped to his feet and raised his arms in the air with a victorious shout.
    “He seems pretty good at this,” I said.
    Kylie snorted. “He’s one of the best. He’s being offered a position on the national team.”
    “For Scotland? But he plans to go to grad school. In the States.”
    Disbelief colored her pretty features. “Then he’s passing up the opportunity of a lifetime. He can always go back to school, but he can’t play rugby forever. It’s a brutal game. It’s not for old men. Or the faint of heart.”
    When play resumed, Thomas got slammed to the ground, and a pile of other ruggers jumped on top of him. I dropped my paper coffee cup. It slid right out of my gloved hand and fell to the sidewalk, splashing my toes with hot coffee, but I barely even noticed. My eyes were on the rugby field.
    He popped up a few seconds later, a huge grin on his face, and I let out a sigh of relief. Kylie gave me a knowing smile. “As I said. Not for the faint of heart.”
    I picked up my coffee cup and tossed it into the trash. “I thought they were going to smush him.”
    “He’s pretty tough. It would take a lot to ‘smush’ Thomas.”
    I watched her closely. “I’m sorry about last night, Kylie. I know you wanted to spend time with him, and I sort of monopolized his attention, first by getting drunk, and then by getting sick.”
    She laughed. “You monopolized his attention because you were the only girl in the room he cared about.”
    I shook my head. “No, you don’t understand…”
    “You’re the one who doesn’t understand, Sam. I have no interest in Thomas. I’m actually seeing someone else. Kind of. I only flirted with him to see if you’d get jealous, as a favor to him. Although he had no idea what I was up to and looked just as confused as everyone else.”
    “He did look a little confused.” I frowned. “You wanted to make me jealous?”
    She nodded, linking her arm with mine and giving me a squeeze. “And it worked, didn’t it? Things seem better between the two of you this morning.”
    “They are,” I admitted. “I have to apologize for something else, too. I hope you don’t think I was being judgmental about your job. I agree with what you said. I really am seeing only half the truth. I…I need to see it all.”
    When she looked at me, I saw a sad shadow in her brilliant green eyes. “As long as you know, there are some things, bad things, and once you see them they can’t be unseen. They stick with you. I saw those things as a nurse in Australia, and I’ve seen those things, in a different way, here. Do you understand what I mean, Sam?”
    I thought about the way Dylan had looked the day I found him in his apartment, the way the spark went out of my good friend Gabriela’s eyes the day after she’d been raped. I understood what Kylie meant all too well.
    “Pretending the darkness isn’t there doesn’t make it go away. It makes it stronger.”
    She blinked in surprise. “Well, then. I guess you do know what I’m talking about.”
    When the game finished, the men, covered in mud and blood, took off their shirts and grabbed a beer from a cooler on the sidelines. Kylie went to congratulate Malcolm. Thomas came up to me, bare-chested, and for a moment I couldn’t speak. He looked like a god, someone the ancient Greeks would have carved in marble and worshipped. His smile widened when he noticed my reaction. Then I saw a cut on his face and scowled.
    “You’re bleeding,” I said, pulling a tissue out of my pocket. I moistened it with my tongue, and then tried to clean the blood off his cheek.
    “It’s nothing,” he said, leaning close so I could reach his face better. “What did you think of the match?”
    “Well, it’s a fairly