I touch his face, my hand cool against his hot, agitated skin. “I’m happy for you, Danny. Being the starting wide receiver as a freshman is everything you dreamed, and you deserve it. You’ve worked so incredibly hard for this.”
“No. Not without you,” he pleads, more tears welling in his eyes.
“Our love is something that I will carry with me always. Our relationship was everything to me.”
He reaches for me and cradles my face in his hands like it’s glass that’s about to shatter.
“I’m so sorry. I’m trying to get my thoughts straight…please don’t do this to us,” he begs.
“I’ve been put third, fourth, fifth,last, from other people my entire life. If I don’t put myself first, you’ll continue to put me second—whether you mean to or not.”
I love him enough to settle for the same cycle of treatment. It’s time for me to take care of myself.
“That won’t happen. I’ll make sure it won’t. I promise.” His voice comes out hoarse, drenched in agony. I remove a hand from his face to wipe away the tears dripping off his chin.
My eyes are glassy, my own tears refusing to fall. I shake my head. “I have no doubt in my mind that you’ll become the best player the league has ever seen. Go be great. You were destined for this.”
“I’m destined to be withyou, Gracie. I’m destined to be yours. I can’t do this without you. I can’t doanythingwithout you.” Desperation laces his tone.
“If you ever find yourself trapped in anxiety, don’t forget to focus on your feelings, not just the facts. You’ll get through it. I know you will.” My hands fall to my sides, and his drop, too.
“I don’t want this, Grace.”
I give him a sad smile and wrap him in a hug. Tired of standing, we slowly drop to the floor and sit together, holding each other on the cold tile.
“I will always love you. I will always love you. I will always love you,” he whispers into my hair, over and over again.
“Shhh. It’ll be okay,” I murmur into his neck.
“I’ll never get over you.”
I say nothing back.
Chapter 36
Grace
He says nothing back. My declaration that he abandoned me seems to have stunned him into silence.
“Let me ask you something. How do you think I found out about your transfer, Danny?”
He shifts on his feet, visibly uncomfortable. “I know it was the newspaper article, Gracie.”
“Yes…and no. I was in class with a teammate of yours. He walked in, slammed the paper on the desk, and shouted, in front of everyone, ‘your boyfriend is a sellout.’”
He winces.
Shivering, I recall how it felt. “The aggression…it reminded me ofhimall over again.”
He bows his head, maybe realizing that not everything went the way he thought it had.
“I was a kid.” His voice cracks on the last word. “We planned for you to come with me when I got drafted anyway. To me, it was simply moving our timeline up by a few years.”
“You were thinking about timelines while I was thinking about us. I was so…fragile at eighteen.” My voice comes out soft, and I instinctively make myself smaller, grabbing my elbow.
After Danny dropped Easton, my group of friends dropped me. It was a slow burn dismissal, one that I didn’t know was happening at first. I thought I was still in the group chat, but I didn’t know they’d created a new one without me. I thought they weren’t having a ton of parties due to the season starting, but I just wasn’t invited. The elation I felt at gaining a group of girlfriends quickly fizzled into a devastating reminder that most friendships aren’t actually forever.
“You knew what I was going through. I was at a new college where I only felt truly comfortable with you. Mae was getting older, and I still had so much of my past haunting me,” I whisper, like it’s still a secret I have to keep. “If I was so important to you…”
