The color drains from Savannah’s face. She pulls herself from her chair, comes to where I’m standing. The walls of this room are glass. Any passerby might see me reach out and stroke her face. I do it anyway, thumb against her cheek, fingers brushing her hair. If this is the last time I’ll get to touch her, I want to commit it to memory. As if I could forget anything about her.
“He said something during that conversation,” I say. “It sounded like the team told Brayden that he needed to…” I stop myself. She loves Brayden, that much is clear. If he married her and lied to her, what else could he be lying about? “It sounds like they told him he had to get married.”
Savannah goes pale again, this time differently. Slowly, she nods. “They did.”
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“And you married him anyway?”
“I did.” She takes a tiny step away from me. “I needed…I needed a lot of things. I wasn’t lying to you when I said Brayden was there for me when no one else was. He’s paying my tuition. He made sure I had migraine meds even when my insurance lapsed.”
“And all you had to do wasmarryhim?”
“Not for real. It wasn’t supposed to be a real relationship. I thought we’d get married, I’d go to school, the team would get off his back. We’d get divorced in a few years and would go our separate ways. I didn’t expect to—” Her voice goes watery.
“Fall in love with him,” I finish for her.
She nods. A tear spills over onto her cheek. She flicks it away.
Right. So I know where I stand. The place I’ve always been standing: outside looking in. “He loves you too.”
She looks up at me in surprise. “He hasn’t said that.”
“Trust me,” I say. For a moment, everything inside me is made of sharp edges. That must just be what having your heart broken feels like. “I’d know.”
Savannah smiles at that. Steps toward me.
I want nothing more than to take her into my arms, to go back to her house, their house. A house I thought might one day beours. Which will make the next thing I have to say to her even harder. “The team knows about us—about all of us.”
That makes her stop. “Oh.” So much in that single syllable. “What’d they say?”
“They don’t approve.” An understatement.
Savannah swallows. I follow the movement down the line of her throat, a tiny motion I’ll miss, along with the rest of her. Then she squares her shoulders. “So what if they don’t like it?”
“Things don’t work that way, princess.”
She flinches at the word. The first time I called her that—when she’d sat in the car as if it was her right, when she took my heart just as quickly—I meant it as a tease. In the times since then as affection. Now I wield it as an insult. She takes another step backward.Good. If she leaves of her own choosing, it’ll be easier for me to walk away.
“The team controls my contract for another three years,” I say. “They can trade me or demote me or simply cut me. Same with Brayden.”
“They wouldn’t do that. You’re both good players. They need you.”
Not more than I need them. “I didn’t go to college. I didn’t have a plan B. I drove all night hoping that a team would give me a chance. Now one has. I can’t throw that away, not after I’ve worked so hard for so long. This is what I was meant to do.”
“Why does it sound—” Savannah’s voice hitches. “Why does it sound like you’re breaking up with us?”
“I’m sorry,” I say. Because I am. Because my chest feels like it’s cracking open and everything inside me is pouring out. If the team cuts Brayden or trades him or does a hundred other things, those won’t just affect him—they’ll hurt Sav too. “I’ll see you around.”
She blinks back another tear. “What does that mean?”
“You know what it means, Savannah.” Her name feels strange in my mouth. Savannah Forsyth. That’s who she is. Notprincess. Not anything else. Certainly not mine. “We need to stop this. We needed to have never started it at all. If this gets out, they’re going to—” I shake my head. People will paint her a homewrecker, a cheater, any of a hundred other worse things. “They won’t be kind to you.”
Her chin begins to shake—fuck—more tears gathering in her eyes. If anyone else ever made her feel this way, I’d do whatever I had to in order to get them to stop. Now, I’m the one doing it and the only way this will stop is if I end things between us. She rummages through her purse, clearly looking for a package of tissues, and shuts it with an exasperated sigh when she doesn’t find any.
I don’t have anything either—I’m standing before her, empty-handed.
