The shoulder aches distantly in its sleeve. I ignore it.
I think about the moment Bryce hit me. The sound of it. The ice coming up fast. I think about the sound of Rhys getting there first. And the look on his face — that one unguarded second before I opened my mouth — genuine. Just someone moving toward someone else because they were hurt and it seemedlike the obvious thing to do. And maybe because we’ve gotten closer lately.
I told him not to touch me. In front of everyone. Like he was the problem, as if he was always the problem. I push the pace slightly and feel the burn in my legs spread upward.
The thing about Rhys is he has always poked at me. Always found the string holding everything together and pulled it. Always made it his personal mission to get a reaction out of me and I have resented it and I have hated it and I have spent months blaming him for the state of things between us. But in that moment on the ice he wasn’t poking at anything. He was just — there. For me.
And I hurt him for it. I know I did. I’ve seen Rhys angry, I’ve seen him amused, I’ve seen him in every mode of the game he runs constantly, and what was on his face when he walked away from that ice was none of those things.
Maybe I’m taking out my own shit on him.
Because I’m always running from it.
I round back toward the coffee shop and slow to a stop outside, hands on my knees, chest heaving, shirt soaked through, trying not to throw up. The afternoon light is doing something gold through the trees and my lungs are burning and my shoulder is complaining and I feel like I might be sick and I cannot tell if that’s from the run or from my own thoughts.
I’m not my father. I know that. But some mornings when I look in the mirror I’m not sure the difference is as big as I need it to be. I straighten up and even out my breathing. Square my shoulders — one of which immediately protests.
Two weeks.
I have two weeks to figure out how to be in the same space as Rhys Callahan without either of us coming apart. Two weeks to become the version of myself that has everything under control again.
I’ve done harder things. Survived way worse. I press the heels of my hands into my eyes and stand there on the pavement outside the coffee shop in the cold.
I’ve done harder things.
I’m just struggling to remember what they were right now.
Chapter 35
Rhys — Past
What I didn't understand yet — couldn't, because I was dumb and in love for the first time and apparently incapable of seeing what was right in front of me — was the difference between someone who isn't ready and someone who was never going to be ready. Whose fear was eventually going to turn you into the problem.
I didn't live in fear, but maybe I should have.
Marcus went silent for a week.
A full week of nothing after months of every day. No texts. No waiting at my car. No finding me in the hallway or sliding into the seat next to mine at film sessions. Just — gone. Like someone unplugged him and put him somewhere else.
Do you know what happens to you when you're used to talking to someone every single day and they just disappear? It's withdrawal. It's actual withdrawal. Your body doesn't know the difference. You reach for your phone and there's nothing there and your chest does this panicked tightening — like you can't get enough air in. Like something essential has been removed, something your body needed to survive, and your system hasn't figured out how to compensate without it yet.
I went to practice every day and looked for him and he was there and also unreachable and that was somehow worse than if he'd just been gone. He was avoiding me. Avoiding the whole situation.
Pain is the only word for it. Just pain, everywhere, all the time, with no place to put it but back inside.
He found me on a Thursday after practice. Parking lot. Waiting by my car the way he used to — except everything about it was wrong. Hands in his pockets. Eyes doing something I'd never seen in them before.
Shifty.
Scared.
Nervous.
I felt the distance between us before he even opened his mouth. Felt the ringing start in my ears. Felt my body understanding what my brain was still trying to catch up to.
"They talked," he said, rushed.
"Okay." I kept my voice even. "So we talk to them together. We tell them—"
