CHAPTER 21

Closing the door behind us, Derek gestured for me to take a seat on my bed. He pulled my desk chair over to sit across from me.

Derek inhaled a deep, shaky breath before speaking. "Derek wasn't my name in school, and my hair was much shorter. I used to have my basketball number marked on the back of my head like a lot of the guys. I think I know why you don't remember me. I was older, and we ran in completely different crowds. Plus, I was a Junior, and you were a Freshmen."

I searched his face, trying to place him. Freshmen year was the year they diagnosed Mom with cancer. It was the roughest year of my life since her survival odds were so low. Mom's operation to remove the mass had been bad, but the chemo afterward had been even worse.

My mother was a cancer survivor going on three years, and an awful virus had taken her from me in one day.

Life is a nasty bitch.

I'd somehow made it onto Varsity during Freshmen year, but I was so worried about my mother I barely reme