"That's not on you?—"
"It is on me!" She pulls over into a parking lot, turning my truck off. "It is on me because you did this for me. Because youloveme. And now I have to carry the weight of your choices for the rest of my life."
Chase's car drives past us as I sit here watching Maya fall apart, knowing I did this, knowing my need for revenge might have cost us everything.
"I love you," I say quietly. "I love you, and I couldn't stand knowing he was still out there, still working, still living his life like he didn't destroy yours. Like what he did to you didn't matter."
"So you destroyed your own life to prove it did matter?" She wipes her eyes roughly. "That's not love, Jackson. That's ego. That's you deciding you knew what I needed better than I did."
"I wasn't thinking?—"
"Exactly. You weren't thinking." She turns to look at me, her eyes red and swollen. "There's a difference between protecting me and throwing away everything we have. You made a choice today. A choice to risk your career, your freedom, our future together. And you made that choice without consulting me at all."
"I was trying to protect you."
"I don't need you to protect me!" Her voice rises. "I need you to be my partner. I need you to talk to me, to make decisions with me, not for me. I need you to understand that I've been fighting to reclaim myself, and you just took it away again."
The words hit me like a physical blow. "Maya?—"
"Do you know what it felt like to get that call?" She's sobbing now. "To hear that you'd been arrested? To realize that you'd lied to me about where you were going?"
"I knew you'd try to stop me."
"Of course I would've stopped you!" She slams her hand against the steering wheel again. "Because this was never going to end well. Because violence doesn't fix violence. Because throwing your life away doesn't give me mine back."
"I'm sorry."
"Are you?" She looks at me with something close to desperation. "Because the lawyer told me you said you'd do it again. That you have no remorse for what you did."
"I don't regret making him hurt?—"
"Then you're not sorry." She cuts me off. "You're sorry I'm upset. You're sorry you got caught. But you're not sorry you did it."
I want to argue, want to explain, but she's right. I'm not sorry for breaking Carson's nose, for cracking his ribs, for making him bleed on that hospital floor.
"I can't be with someone who thinks violence is the answer," Maya says quietly. "I can't be with someone who makes choices like this without talking to me. I've spent so long learning to take control of my own life, and you just made me feel powerless all over again."
"Maya, please?—"
"I need time." She wipes her eyes again. "I need time to process this, to figure out what this means for us. Because right now I'm so angry I can barely look at you."
We sit in silence, the weight of her words crushing me.
"What happens now?" Maya asks finally, her voice hoarse from crying.
"Lawyer says the best case is probation. The worst case is jail time. Either way, I lose the captaincy, possibly my career."
"And Emma?"
"What about her?"
"She's going to find out." She touches the pendant through her shirt. "This is going to be all over the news. Hockey captain arrested for assaulting a doctor. They'll dig into why, they'll find my rape report, they'll connect the dots. I wanted to tell her myself. On my terms. And now that's gone."
She's right. The choice of when to tell Emma about the rape—it's been ripped away because I couldn't think beyond my rage.
"I'm sorry," I say again. "I'm so fucking sorry for all of this."
"I know you are." She starts the car again. "But sorry doesn't fix this. Sorry doesn't give you back your career. Sorry doesn't undo the fact that you lied to me and threw your life away without giving me a say in the decision."
