“I’m like Dad. A selfish manipulator who thinks people are property.”
“Stop.”
Grace’s voice is firm. She stands and plants herself in front of me. She’s small, fragile—but right now, she’s a rock.
She cups my face with her freezing hands and forces me to look at her.
“You are not Dad.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“It’s easy for me to say because I know. Dad is a cheating asshole. Dad manipulates women for his ego, uses them like trophies, then tosses them aside when he’s bored. Dad has never protected anyone in his life except himself. Dad is like Sloane’s ex—and she ran from him. You—”
She squeezes my cheeks, keeping my gaze locked on hers.
“You’re jealous? Of course you’re jealous, idiot. You’re in love. It’s normal to want to punch the guy who hurt the person you love. That doesn’t make you a monster, Cohen. It makes you human.”
“I don’t want to be like this,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “I don’t want to make her feel trapped. I don’t want to be the reason she hurts.”
“She’s not hurting because of that, idiot. And don’t use the ‘I’m like Dad’ excuse to run away just because you’re scared you’re not enough for her.”
I freeze.
My breath catches in my throat.
Grace hit the target—burying the knife exactly where it hurts most.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” she continues, her tone softening. “You’ve always thought she was too much for you.”
I sink back onto the crate, defeated.
“I’ve had this damn voice in my head,” I admit, staring at the dirty snow. “From the very beginning. She’s perfect. A dream. She’s smart, classy, she’s… luminous. She walks like the world owes her something—and it does. And me?”
I spread my arms, gesturing at myself, at my mess.
“I’m the Becker problem child. The bad boy. The broken one. The guy who only knows how to kick a ball and screw things up.”
I close my eyes, and Sloane hits me all at once. Not the composed, untouchable Sloane—but the one from that night. Unreal. Like an angel.
“It was different with her, Grace.” I murmur. “That night at the club—I didn’t even know her name. I didn’t know who she was. I just looked at her and thought—holy shit. This isn’t real.”
I press a hand to my chest.
Something clicked in my chest. Something I’d never felt before.
And realizing that, for her, I might’ve started out as nothing more than a way not to think about another man—
it guts me.
Grace sits back down beside me and takes my hand, squeezing it tight.
“Okay,” she says gently. “Yeah. That hurts. I get it. But think for a second, thick skull.”
She leans in, eyes serious.
“If you were just a distraction… why would she tell you?”
I look at her, thrown. “What?”
