“I’m tired of being this angry version of myself filled with repressed pain. It’s time for me to tackle the monkey on my back. Starve it out rather than keep feeding it my pain and resentment. I don’t want to be that person anymore.”
He talks more about his childhood and some of the things that went down, the mic catching everything. As he speaks, I can hear the listeners in my head already. People taking sides. People judging. People turning our real life into content.
It’s not something either of us needs.
We get another red light and have to wait to cross. Foster turns toward me this time, and something about the look in his eyes steals my breath. The sounds of the city fade away. I find myself scared of what he’s going to tell me.
“I love you.” His voice is filled with strength and certainty. “So much. And I took that love and I threw it away like it didn’t matter. If you give me another chance, I’ll never do that again. You have my word. You don’t have to decide right now, you don’t have to?—”
I should make him sit in it.
I should make him say it again.
I should make him prove he won’t take it back the second he gets scared.
But my heart has my body moving before my mind can catch up.
I throw my arms around his neck. “I love you. I love you too.”
His arms go around me tightly, as if he’s worried I might change my mind.
“You’re making this too easy,” he murmurs into my hair.
“No.” I pull back enough to look at him. “I’m making it about us. I needed you to stop fighting what you feel. To stop being scared of it.”
He stares down at me and cups my face.
Then I remember the mic.
I glance over my shoulder.
Lex is standing on the sidewalk wide-eyed, holding her phone as though she just captured podcast gold.
Then he says, “There’s more.”
My stomach tightens.
I pull out of Foster’s hold and take off my mic, then his. I hand them back to Lex. “Thank you. It means a lot that you did this for me. Now please… go away.”
Lex looks between us. “Well… you’re welcome,” she whispers without her usual snarkiness. Then she walks down the sidewalk, leaving us alone.
“You have to know it all before you accept me back in your life,” he says.
A cold shiver shoots up my spine.
We pass the doctor’s building and keep going, cutting into a small park with benches and a fountain. He leads me toward a bench tucked away from the sidewalk.
When we sit, he keeps my hand in his. “I had to leave Seattle last year.”
I stare at him. He’s made it clear he wanted out of Seattle without really explaining why, but saying he had to leave feels different. “Why?”
He looks at our joined hands. “Because my dad was betting on my games.”
I go still. My skin goes cold. How could a father put his son’s career in jeopardy like that?
“The bookies came to me with a bill.” He looks around for anyone eavesdropping. “It was big. They said they’d leak my name if I didn’t pay up. So I paid. And then I did everything I could to get traded and away from my father. Jagger put out the feelers, and Chicago wanted me, so I pushed for it.”
My heart is pounding hard and fast.
