For a second, his expression cracks completely. Pain replaces anger so fast it steals the breath from my lungs.
“You disappeared,” he says, quieter now. “And I understand why you thought you had to… but those girls still had to stand there without you.”
Panic claws its way up my body. “You don’t understand.”
“Then help me understand how to love you through this,” he says, voice breaking completely now. “Because I don’t want to walk away from you, Annika… but right now I don’t know what to do.”
The fracture in my heart widens, sharp and unbearable. Yesterday he looked at me like I was everything. Today, I can’t tell if he’s trying to hold on or let go.
“Please tell me you didn’t know how bad it was,” he says, and this time the anger cracks enough for me to hear the plea underneath it. “Please tell me there’s something I’m not understanding.”
My mind races as I search for an explanation, trying to recall what I saw or what I thought was happening.
His expression softens. “I work with kids through my foundation,” he says, quieter, no less devastating. “I see what this kind of damage does.”
His eyes lock in mine. “How could you just walk away?”
His voice drops at the end, rough and wrecked instead of furious now, like the question hurts him as much as the answer might hurt me.
Tears blur my vision. “I didn’t walk away,” I whisper, but it sounds weak, even to me.
He moves his head from side to side, disappointed and hurt. The look on his face guts me because he doesn’t seem angry anymore. He looks heartbroken.
Parker drags a hand over his mouth, looking away from me for the first time. “Witt warned me I was too close to this. That maybe I was seeing what I wanted to see.”
My stomach drops. The contents of my breakfast, threaten to spill out.
His eyes close like the words hurt him too. “And maybe you were right all along,” he says quietly. “Maybe this was a terrible idea.”
His words don’t just hurt, they make me feel hollower than I did before we connected. It feels like he’s shutting down and shutting me out of his life.
THIRTY
PARKER
I pinch my eyes, a mountain of tears building behind my lids. None of these girls should have had to go through this.
What do you do when you can’t take anymore?
You leave. Or at least I do. Left Michigan. Left Hockey.
You don’t stand there and let it get worse. You don’t let someone take a sword to your heart and let them carve a deeper scar.
And maybe that’s why this feels worse than betrayal.
Because Annika taught me to trust again while hiding the one thing that explained everything about her. What makes her who she is.
My cleats snap against the concrete, each step louder than the next, echoing off the tunnel walls like a countdown.
One step.
Two.
Three.
“Parker.”
Annika’s voice breaks behind me. For the first time, she’s not steady, not controlled. She’s broken.
