"I know." I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. Hard. Like I could push the tears back in. "I just—I can't keep doing this. I'm losing my mind and I'm hurting Emily, and I didn't even—I didn't even want to get back with her. I just felt so guilty about everything that I thought if I could just fix it, just be who I was supposed to be—"
The words broke apart.
"But I can't."
Noah didn't try to fill the silence. Just sat there. Steady. Solid.
"She tried to have sex tonight," I said. Quieter now. Hollowed out. "And I couldn't. It just—doesn't work. With her it doesn't work. And when she stopped, Noah—"
"Yeah?" He said.
"I wasrelieved. I was so relieved I could barely breathe."
The room was very quiet. Just the fridge humming. The distant sound of someone's music through the wall.
"That's not her fault," Noah said.
"I know it's not her fault."
"And it's not yours either. Not in the way you're making it."
I dropped my hands. Looked at him. His expression was steady. Open. No judgment anywhere in it—just the patient clarity of someone who'd been waiting for this conversation and was ready for it.
"I don't know what to do," I said.
"Yeah you do."
"Noah—"
"You just told me you can't control it. You just told me he's everything." He held my gaze. "You know what you want. You're just scared of what it costs."
My chest went tight. "Of course I'm scared. I have to come out. To the team. To Coach Hale. To my mom." My voice dropped. "My scholarship could—" I stopped. Breathed. "And what if I do all that and he leaves again? He's already done it once."
"That's the real one," Noah said.
"What."
"Not the scholarship. Not the team." He met my eyes. "That he'll leave again."
The truth of it landed like hard in my chest.
I looked away. My hands were still shaking. My face was still wet. The dorm room felt too small and too big at the same time—small enough that I couldn't escape what I'd just said, big enough that the silence filled every corner.
"Yeah," I said. Barely sound at all. "That's the real one."
We sat there for a minute. Neither of us saying anything. Just sitting together in the dark room while the truth I'd been running from settled around us like dust.
"Saturday's the mixer," I said finally. "Emily's coming. Sunday's the scrimmage—she's coming to watch me race with him, in front of everyone, and she doesn't know any of this." I looked at Noah. "Forty-eight hours."
Noah nodded.
"Emily deserves better than this," he said. "You know that."
"I know."
"And so do you. You deserve to stop tearing yourself apart trying to fit into something that doesn't fit."
"What if I choose wrong?"
