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"Harper."

"I mean it, Cam." She finally looked at me, and her eyes were red and swimming and so fiercely kind I could barely stand it. "You matter. Even if you're not mine, you matter. You matter so much."

Then she opened the door, and the morning came in, cold and bright, and she walked out into it.

The door clicked shut behind her.

I didn't move. I stood in my entryway and listened to her footsteps on the front walk, and then the car door, and then the engine, and then silence.

I went to the window by the stairs and pressed my hand flat to the glass.

The car was already turning at the end of the street. I could just make out the shape of her in the back seat, her forehead against the window, her curls catching the first light.

She didn't look back.

I stood behind the glass and watched her go, because that was all I was allowed to do. Watch from inside my beautiful house, where nobody could see me, while the only woman who had ever really seen me was driven away.

I went back to the bedroom because I didn't know where else to go.

The sheets were still damp where she'd come apart in my hands. Her perfume was on my pillows, citrus and warm skin. The indent of her body was still in the mattress, and the water glass was still on the nightstand, half full, a faint crescent of her lipstick from last night on the rim.

My belt was lying on the floor beside the bed where I'd dropped it.

I picked it up and ran my thumb over the leather where it had been wrapped around her wrists. I could still feel her pulling against it. I could still hear her saying yours, I'm yours, please, and I'd made her say it. I'd made her say it twice.

And then I'd let her walk out my door.

My legs gave out. I sat down on the edge of the bed with the belt in my hands, and I couldn't get up.

I'd had her for exactly one night.

And it had been perfect.

And I'd let her walk away because I was too scared to choose her over the safety of staying hidden.

I don't know how long I sat there. Long enough for the light to move from the floor to the foot of the bed. Long enough to realize the sound I was hearing was me, breathing like I'd been punched, in an empty room.

I hadn't cried since the second championship. I didn't cry now. It was worse than that. It was like the whole inside of me had been hollowed out, like a gym after the lights go off.

I went through the rest of the morning on autopilot.

I showered until the water ran cold, trying to wash the smell of her off my skin and failing because it was burned into my memory. I stripped the bed and remade it with clean sheets, corners tight, pillows squared, because the idea of sleeping in the others again felt like torture. I put the belt in the back of my closet where I wouldn't have to look at it.

Then I cleaned the kitchen. It was already clean. I cleaned it anyway, every surface, because I needed my hands busy, and because cleaning was one task I could control. I wiped down the counter twice. Polished the espresso machine. Made a double shot I couldn't drink and poured it down the sink.

I stared at my phone. It didn’t have any answers for me.

Around nine, Trish called.

"Isla told me," she said without preamble. "Are you okay?"

"I slept with Harper." The words came out hollow.

"I know. How are you feeling?"

"Like I just made the biggest mistake of my life."

"What happened?"