Something shifts painfully in my chest like a bruise being pressed just hard enough to remind me it’s still there. I drag in a breath that doesn’t make it all the way to the bottom of my lungs, and for the first time tonight, I don’t hide the shake in it.
“I keep replaying the look on her face when she said it and pulled away from me,” I say quietly, letting the words loosen the knot behind my ribs. “The way she looked at me today, like I was someone she had to guard herself from.”
Beau’s jaw tightens, a subtle shift that says he’s holding back the instinct to defend whatever fragile middle ground exists between the two of us. “That’s not what she was doing.”
“How do you know?” My voice cracks, pulled thin in the places I’ve been trying to keep sealed.
“Because I’ve seen that look before.” He glances at the ice, at the empty lines carved by my skates. “Alise used to get it when she wanted something so badly she didn’t trust herself to want it. When she needed space to breathe, even though the last thing she wanted was distance.”
I close my eyes long enough to let the truth hit without the world watching me take the blow.
“She’s scared, Kyle. And fear makes people do things that look like rejection, even when they’re holding on with everything they have left.”
The irony of that settles thick and bitter at the back of my throat. I know what it feels like to be scared, to be left standing in the wreckage of something that mattered. And I know exactly how much of me she still has, even when she pretended she didn’t.
“I thought I could handle it, could give her space, be patient, keep the peace, whatever she needed, because it was her.” My hand curls into a fist, knuckles going tight. “But watching her smile like nothing happened… hearing her laugh like the last few weeks meant nothing?—”
My voice breaks in the middle of the sentence, a sound I wasn’t expecting.
“I didn’t think it would hit me like this,” I admit, finally letting the truth surface. “I thought if I kept moving, kept skating, kept pretending?—”
“That it wouldn’t hurt,” Beau finishes forme, not as a question, but as an answer you only offer when you’ve lived it yourself. “And it does because it’s real.”
The words land with a weight that sinks straight through me, settling somewhere beneath my sternum, where everything else tonight has already come apart. I want to pretend that this ache is temporary, just another bruise that’ll fade if I work hard enough. But Beau said it like a fact, not a theory. Hearing him say it out loud breaks open something I’ve been gripping too tightly to even recognize.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” I admit, the confession scraping up from the deepest, unspoken corner of my chest. “Wanting her. Losing her. Still wanting her, even knowing she doesn’t think she can choose me. It feels…”
Beau doesn’t rush to fill the silence. He lets it press in until the truth in it has nowhere left to hide. Finally, he drops his gaze to the ice. “When Alise pushed me away, I kept telling myself I’d wait as long as it took to convince her it wasn’t a phase or that I’d suddenly forget about my feelings for her. I wasn’t trying to be noble or patient. I just knew she was worth the ache.”
He looks up at me, and it’s unnerving. Like he sees straight through the walls I thought I still had left.
“You love her, and you’re terrified she won’t let you.”
My breath stutters, sharp at the edges, as if he said something too impossible to swallow.
“You’re scared she’ll pick safety over you, becausethat’s what people do when the world has hurt them enough times.”
“What if she does?” I stare at the ice, watching the thin lines my blades cut into the surface.
“Then you let her,” Beau says. “And you still show up. Not to convince or chase her, just to be the person that doesn’t disappear.”
His words hit something raw I didn’t realize had been waiting to be acknowledged. I drag a hand over my jaw, the motion grounding and useless all at once. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough for that.”
“You are. You’ve always been the one who leads with your heart first, even when you’re scared. That’s not a weakness, Kyle. That’s why she fell for you in the first place.”
A breath shudders out of me, shaky and uncontained. “Doesn’t feel like she did.”
“She did,” he says without hesitation. “You just scared her. And she scared herself.”
For a moment, the realities we’ve been wrestling with fall into a quiet between us. Beau shifts his stick against the ice. “You don’t have to fix any of this right this second. You just have to let yourself feel it.”
I shake my head once, weakly. “Feeling it is the worst part.”
“I know.” He steps closer, the gesture careful, brotherly, understanding in a way that cuts through me. “But it’s also the first honest thing you’ve let yourself do since the terrible interviewtoday.”
“I don’t know where to put it.” I swallow hard, the motion tight, uneven.
“Stop trying to. For once, just let it hurt.” Beau gives my shoulder one steady, anchoring squeeze. “I’ll leave the lights on for you.”
