I swallowed hard.
“All I know is it feels like I can’t ever measure up. Wyatt will always come first, and I either have to learn to accept that or move on. And I don’t know if I can.”
“Accept it or move on?” Bell clarified.
I dropped down beside him, feeling utterly defeated. “Either. Both.”
“Do you want me to be your captain right now, or your friend?”
I took a moment to weigh my answer. If I said friend, Bell would sit here with me and let me feel what I needed to feel. But I’d been wallowing in this shit for days, and it was killing me. I needed someone to pull me out. “My captain, I guess.”
“Okay. Here’s what I know. You’re playing like shit because you’re not sleeping. And I know you’re not eating. You’re pissed off at Sebastian, and you’re pissed off at yourself, and all of that is coming out on the ice.”
“Wow," I snorted. "Tell me what you really think.”
He bumped my shoulder. “That’s what I’m doing. The question is whether or not you’re ready to hear it?”
I nodded. “I am. I don’t want to blow this.”
“Good,” he said, leaning back on his palms, shoulders loosening a little. “You can’t control what Sebastian does. You certainly can’t control this Wyatt guy. The only thing youcancontrol is how you let this define you. So what’s it going to be? You going to continue to spiral, or are you going to get your shit together?”
I lifted my chin fractionally higher, feeling my chest puff out a bit.
Fuck, Bell wasreallygood at this motivational shit.
“I’m going to get my shit together,” I vowed, the words sounding more confident than I actually felt.
“That’s what I like to hear.” He slapped his palm against my knee and pushed to his feet. “Now don’t look at your fucking phone for the rest of the night. Order room service and take a long, hot shower. And for god’s sake, get some sleep. I don’t want to lose to L.A. tomorrow.”
“No one everwantsto lose,” I reminded him.
Bell grunted. “Fair point. But I hate that fucker Chet Doyle, and any chance I get to remind him he ain’t shit is a chance I’m not going to pass up.”
“Aye aye, captain,” I said, saluting him with a grin I was surprised to feel on my face.
Before Bell could open the door, I blurted out, “What do I do if he never comes back?”
His expression turned sympathetic. “Then you grieve the relationship you might have had, and you keep living. And maybe vote for the other guy.”
I barked out a laugh, not expecting the joke. “Already planned on it.”
He rapped his knuckles twice on the doorframe. “Get some sleep, T.”
“Night, Bell.”
The door clicked shut behind him, leaving me alone again. This time, though, I didn’t feel quite so lonely.
In fact, for the first time in days, I finally believed I might get through this.
CHAPTER 26
SEBASTIAN
Every Monday,Maya called our weekly sit-down to order with whatever name the administration’s talking heads most recently lobbed at liberals. Last week, it was the Woke Mob Agenda Club. The week before that, the Godless Socialist Committee. She always capped it off by rattling through a roll call of the team—a rundown of every stereotype the right feared, except for me, the token straight white guy.
This morning, she rapped her knuckles against the conference room table three times—her version of a gavel—and cleared her throat with exaggerated formality. “I hereby call to order this week’s meeting of the Radical Left Scum Club.”
Without looking up from his phone, David murmured, “You used that one three weeks ago.”
