I’ve never had someone outside of my parents care about me this much. No one has ever fought for me like this. But it doesn’t change things. No matter how much I wish it did.
Tears fill my vision to slip silently down my cheeks.
Gabriel presses his forehead to mine and I close my eyes, letting my tears continue to fall. His thumbs swipe at my cheeks and I breathe in the smell of his cologne, taking comfort in the familiar scent for longer than I should.
“I know I’m not perfect,” he whispers. “But don’t ask me to give you up.”
I open my mouth and he stills, bracing himself as I hammer in the final nail.
“You have to.”
PART TWO
THE STRIKER
CHAPTER 27
GABRIEL
“Gabe, man. You gotta talk about this,” Felix says, concern creasing his forehead as he lingers in my doorway.
“I’m fine,” I grunt, shoulders hunched without looking up. No way in hell am I about to rehash how Cecilia ripped my heart out and stomped on the pieces.
Sharing my fucking feelings isn’t going to make what I’m dealing with any better. In fact, I’m ninety-nine-point-nine-percent positive it will only make things worse.
Felix steps further into my room, persistent bastard that he is. “You’ve been a ghost for weeks. I know something happened with you and Cecilia, but when any of us so much as says her name, you either bite our heads off or you shut down. What gives?”
I rake both hands through my hair, emotions churning violently in my gut.That’s because she ended things.What a fucking joke. I don’t even know why I’m so torn up about this. About her. It doesn’t make any sense. But nothing about my feelings for Cecilia made sense. They didn’t need to.
She was just … fuck. I don’t even know. She was her, and I was me, and together, we fit. We just fucking fit.
I told her I loved her. Me. I said those three fucking words. Words I’ve never said to any other girl before. I handed her my still-beating heart and let her carve it up as she saw fit, trusting that she felt the same way I did.
Idiot.
I don’t know what I was thinking. I trusted the girl who snuck beneath my armor when no one else could. And when I laid myself bare at her feet, she told me to walk away. Like severing this connection between us is so damn easy.
Maybe for her, it is. But it’s not like that for me.
I can’t stop caring about her with the flip of a switch. If it was that easy, I wouldn’t feel like this. Like my fucking soul is cannibalizing itself, leaving behind a gaping wound in my chest.
I fucking hate it.
I rub at the ache beneath my ribs, desperate to ease some of the pain.
We weren’t dating. She wasn’t my girlfriend. We were just …fuck.
Even now, I don’t know how to describe what we were.
And a part of me thinks I never needed to.
I didn’t need a label to know it was special. That what was going on between us was different. More than anything I’d ever had before with another woman. But for some irrational reason, it sort of pisses me off that I can’t even call her my ex. As far as anyone else can tell, we were never anything.
“Just leave it alone,” I snap, hands clenching at my sides to hide their faint tremor. I can't keep reliving the worst day of my goddamn life. Not if I want to keep what's left of my sanity.
Heavy footfalls sound down the hall before Julio—another of my roommates—fills the doorway just behind Felix, browfurrowed. The combined weight of their stares makes my skin prickle uncomfortably.
Christ. They’re turning into mother fucking hens.
