The Lost Quarterback Returns
The instant I plunged into the pool, Isabella’s scream lodged in her throat—like a violin string abruptly snapped.
Three meters underwater, her skirt billowed like black seaweed, tangling around my wrist. I seized her ankle and hauled her upward; my fingertips brushed an old scar along the inside of her calf—the one she’d gotten at seven, when she shoved me into a glass door to snatch the strawberry cake from my hands.
Breaking the surface, she choked and coughed, curling into a shrimp-like hunch, her mascara smeared into two bruised streaks beneath her eyes. On the poolside, my mother gripped her champagne flute until it clicked and groaned in her hand. My father stood crookedly, his tie askew, his gaze locked onto the mole behind my left ear—the exact spot marked “distinguishing mole” on his twenty-year-old sperm donation records.
“Asher?” My mother’s voice trembled. “You… you were placed in foster care at five…”
“By you,” I said, wiping water from my face. My soaked work vest clung tightly to my chest, revealing an old, worm-like scar just below my collarbone. “That day, Isabella wore a new dress—and tossed candy wrappers at me through the car window.”
Sirens pierced the party music. Two officers stepped forward, cuffs glinting. Before they could speak, Isabella grabbed my arm: “Wait—he saved me!”
Before the words fully left her lips, her phone slipped from her drenched skirt pocket. The screen lit up with an unsent text draft:
[Dad, Asher broke in again today—to steal the ring. This time I caught him on camera opening your safe…]
I looked down at her. Water dripped from her jawline into the pool, rippling outward in quiet, concentric circles.
Turns out the sharpest blade is always hidden inside the sweetest wrapper.