“Did he accept it?”
“Not really. He walked out. I don’t blame him.”
“Then start there. You fix things with your best friend; you fix the one thing you can deal with. But what I’m about to tell you is something you probably don’t want to hear.”
My dad is quiet for a moment. I can hear the soft background noise of his house—music low on some speaker, the hum of traffic beyond his window. It’s always calm there. It was the only place I felt safe when I left.
“You need to tell Noah the truth,” he says at last. “He deserves that much.”
I watch a couple of students cut across the parking lot toward the track. Their laughter echoes faintly, and I wonder what it feels like to have something that light again.
“He’s going to hate me.”
“You hurt him,” my dad says, but I know he’s not being unkind, “that’s the truth. But it doesn’t make your reason any less valid. What his father did—what hethreatened—wasn’t something you could ignore. You did what a lot of people wouldn’t have had the strength to do.”
I let out a breath that’s half-laugh, half-groan. “You always do this.”
“Do what?”
“Say the right thing. Make me feel worse and better at the same time.”
He chuckles softly. “That’s called parenting.”
We fall quiet again, but it’s easier now. The worst of the storm has passed, at least for tonight. The ache is still there, the guilt still raw, but I don’t feel like I’m drowning in it anymore.
“I’m proud of you,” he says after a moment. “Even when you fuck up. Especially when you admit it.”
“I don’t think I can do this, Dad,” I breathe.
“You already are. Just try not to hit anyone else on the way.”
A sudden laugh breaks out of me. It doesn’t last long, but it’s real, and that’s more than I’ve had in a while. “I’ll try.”
He hums on the other end. “Call me tomorrow.”
“I will.”
“And Damien?” he says before I can hang up.
“Yeah?”
“Tell him when you’re ready. Just… don’t wait until it’s too late.”
We say our goodbyes after that. I let the phone sit in my lap, fingers loose around it, staring out the windshield at the fading light.
I don’t know when I’ll be ready to tell Noah everything. But I know I can’t keep avoiding him like he’s a ghost, when I’m the one who died.
Noah
Twomonths.
That’s how long I’ve been living in this house that feels more like a paradox than a home. The Sin Bin is always alive—someone yelling from the hallway, music thudding somewhere, someone laughing too loudly. But somehow, I’ve never felt more alone.
Two months of pretending that everything is fine, that I belong here, and that the silence between me and Damien doesn’t hang heavy at all. Two months of walking past him in the kitchen and ignoring the ache in my chest when he looks right through me.
We don’t talk at all. Not since the day I arrived and saw him for the first time in four years. Not since I realized I still haven’t learned to stop loving him. I know he’s avoiding me. Hell, I’m avoiding him, too, but that doesn’t make things easier.
I’ve had my phone in my hand multiple times with my thumb hovering over either my mother’s or father’s number, thinking Ishould just leave. It would be easier to take another gap year in Milan or go back to training with my father.
