Even if it’s too late.
Chapter 28
Sam
Theemailarrivesinmy inbox before I choose what to wear.
Reece Wilson has shared a file with you.
I freeze, towel wrapped tight around me, hair dripping cold trails down my back.For a full minute, I stare.Part of me wants to delete it.To pretend I never saw it.Pretend he doesn’t still live in the part of my brain that won’t shut the fuck up.
But curiosity is a bitch, and I’ve never been good at walking away from things that hurt.
I click it open.
And there it is.The assessment.The entire damn thing.
Every heading and section are perfectly aligned.The tone is professional.He didn’t just finish it; he poured himself into it.It reads like both of us—his voice, my notes, our ideas—woven together as if we were still working side by side instead of not being on speaking terms at all.
I scroll down slowly.My heart races with each paragraph.
He recalled everything.
Every conversation we had in the library and in his room before things got messy and we forgot how to be anything other than broken and bleeding.He used the structure we argued over for half an hour.The quotes I highlighted.The dumb shit I said about emotional language and contrasting perspectives that I was sure he wasn’t listening to.
He listened.
He took everything we created and made it meaningful.
Honestly, I’d been drowning in panic over failing this assessment, and I still didn’t reach out.I couldn’t.Because if I messaged him about the project, then I’d be messaging him.
But he did it regardless.
Not for credit.
For me.
I bite the inside of my cheek and scroll all the way to the bottom.There’s no note.No message.No “I’m sorry” tagged on the end.Just the work.
My heart aches because this is the most genuine thing he’s ever given me.And it guts me.
I slam my laptop shut before the tears start falling.
I’ve spent all this time telling myself he never once cared about me.That I was nothing to him but a punchline, a two-hundred-dollar joke passed between guys who think feelings are for games, not girls.
But this, I don’t know what the hell this is.
He didn’t have to do it.He could’ve let the whole project fail, let me drown in it and struggle alone, or ask him for help that I wasn’t ready to beg for.But he didn’t.
He took everything and carried it alone, quietly.
Maybe that’s who Reece truly is.
Not the cocky bastard with the fuck-you smile and the hands that know exactly how to ruin a girl’s good sense.Because this isn’t some fuckboy move.This isn’t him trying to win points or slide back into my good graces with a wink and an apology.This is something else.
I don’t know how to handle that version of him.
I sit still for a minute before I get up and go through the motions: get dressed, pull my hair into a high ponytail, hands trembling slightly.
