Page 229 of Saving Forever with the Hockey Captain

The Blizzards will have their captain back. There will be road trips.

Playoffs.

Endless interviews.

A career he sacrificed everything to build.

A future that stretches so much farther than these hospital walls.

***

If I stay, he'll try to fit me into that future. He'll make room for me because that's who Jamie is. He carries everyone. He always has.

I refuse to become one more person he feels responsible for.

He deserves the freedom to chase every dream he's worked his whole life to reach without wondering whether he's leaving me behind.

My chest aches.

"I love you too," I whisper into the empty car.

The words arrive where he cannot hear.

Maybe that's how they were always meant to.

I reach into my tote bag and pull out the envelope I've been pretending I didn't already prepare.

My resignation.

Tomorrow morning, before anyone arrives, I'll leave it for Dr. Reynolds.

Mrs. Alvarez will understand.

Jamie won't.

Not now.

Maybe someday he'll forgive me. Even if I never forgive myself.

I start the engine. The road leading to my place has never felt so impossibly long.

***

By midnight, my apartment no longer looks like mine.

Books disappear into boxes. Kitchen cupboards stand empty.

The framed photograph that Mom insisted I put on the bookshelf is wrapped carefully in newspaper.

I pause in the middle of the living room.

It echoes.

Funny how quickly a place stops feeling like home once you've decided to leave it. I zip the last suitcase closed and lean against the kitchen counter, letting the silence settle around me.

My gaze lands on a navy coffee mug. Jamie bought it after one of our appointments because I'd complained the hospital coffee tasted better than the coffee maker in my apartment.

"Now you'll have no excuse," he'd said with that infuriatingly satisfied grin.