A phantom chill washes over me, and I finally move, heading back toward the bedroom. The door is still half-open, just as it was left. I walk inside and stop at the foot of the bed. The sheets are a disaster, a tangled wreck of cotton that looks exactly like my life right now. I can still see the indentation where he sat on the edge of the mattress, pulling his shirt back on, his muscles tensing under the fabric as he prepared to walk out of my house for the second time tonight.
I reach out, my hand trembling, and smooth the fabric of the duvet. My skin still feels the ghost of his touch—a low-voltage hum that won’t go away.
“I’m not going anywhere.”That’s what he said, or at least that’s what his eyes promised and what my brain heard.
But as I stand here, staring at my empty bed, the guilt starts its slow, methodical crawl back up my throat. I think Jace believes the divorce papers change the rules. That they make this clean, or make it easier to want him without consequences.
He doesn’t understand. He’s the coach; he thinks in terms of wins and losses, of moving forward once the whistle blows. Does he think the game is over because the clock hit zero on his marriage?
He doesn’t realize that in a town this small, a clean break is more of a theory than a guarantee. There are just jagged edges that catch on everyone who passes by.
I pull the duvet back and climb into the bed, but I don’t go under the covers. I just lay on top of them, staring at my ceiling.
My mind drifts back to the years after college, the messy, agonizing months where we were caught in a cycle we couldn’t break. We never had those long, romantic talks about 'forever' or 'for now.' We were just us, an unspoken thing that existed in the spaces between our obligations and reservations. It was always a game of 'it is what it is,' neither of us brave enough to say the words that would have changed everything. Then came the day I finally broke, the day I told him I couldn't do it anymore. That I refused to be the other woman in a life he was already building with someone else. I walked away to save myself, and not long after, the pregnancy made his choice for him. I wasn't the one he left, but Sierra was the one the world made him stay for.
Then I think about the way Emma looked at me when she told me the divorce was final. There was pity in her eyes, a softI’m sorrythat felt like a slap. She knows. Or maybe that’s me projecting again. Maybe she knows nothing at all and I’m already bracing for the verdict that hasn’t been delivered. They don’t say it, but I feel like they’re looking at me that way, like the girl who waited. The girl who stayed in the shadows, a secret tucked away in a drawer. Meanwhile, Sierra played the part of the perfect wife at every charity gala, every community fundraiser, and every Friday night game where the town watched them like they were royalty.
His words echo in the quiet room, and I squeeze my eyes shut.“I wasn’t the man she deserved because I’ve always been in love with someone else.”
It should feel like a victory. It should be the thing I’ve wanted to hear for so long. But instead, it feels like a heavy weight being dropped into my lap. Because if he’s always loved me, then every smile he gave her, every “I love you” he muttered to her, was a lie.
And if he could lie to her for years, what stops him from lying to me when things get hard again? When the town starts whispering? When his career takes a hit because the "stable coach" turned out to be human?
I roll onto my side, tucking my hands between my knees. I’m exhausted, but my brain is a live wire. My mind keeps circling back to the sheer weight of the last four weeks. He’s been free for a month, and he stayed away. He waited until the ink was dry, trying to do it the "right way" before showing up on my porch.
But was it? Was that the right way? If he hadn’t come tonight, would I have sought him out? I’m not sure I would, because fear has always been louder than courage for me. I am deathly afraid of the repercussions, of the way the air in the grocery store will turn cold when I walk past Sierra’s friends. I'm afraid of being the punchline in a story about a broken home.
I feel like the walls are closing in. Jace is free. He’s single. And I’m paralyzed, stuck between the past and the future.
Rolling to my back again, I stare up at the ceiling fan as it cuts slow, rhythmic circles through the dim light. My mind starts to do that thing it always does when I’m overwhelmed. It retreats. It goes back to the safety of the past, even though that past is riddled with things I’d rather not remember.
Like the day I realized Jace and I would never be. It was a Saturday afternoon, and the heat was oppressive. I was at The Brew House, but I wasn't waiting for Jace. Not officially. We had been over for months—at least, that was what I told him the last time he showed up at my door. I had finally found the spine to tell him I was done being the person he came to when things with Sierra went sideways. I was done being the secret.
I was sitting at a corner table, trying to focus on a book, when the bell above the door rang. I didn't have to look up to know it was him. My body recognized his presence before my brain did. But when I finally lifted my eyes, he wasn’t alone. He was walking in with Sierra.
They had been on and off for years—a carousel of drama that lived in certain circles. The booster dinners, the fundraiser tables, and the places where reputations mattered more than truth. I thought this was just another "on" cycle, another attempt at making the dream work. But the way they were walking was different.
Sierra didn't look poised as she usually does. She looked like she was vibrating with a frantic, desperate energy. Her face was blotchy, her eyes red-rimmed and wide with a kind of raw terror that made my stomach drop. Jace looked even worse, like he’d been hit by a freight train and was still waiting for the world to stop spinning.
He was ghost-pale, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his gaze fixed on the floorboards as if they held the answer to a question he didn't want to ask. They sat at a table near the window, and I watched as Sierra reached across the table, her fingers trembling as she gripped his arm. She said something I couldn't hear, her mouth twisting with a sob she was trying to swallow, and then her other hand went to her stomach. It wasn't a graceful movement, it was a frantic, protective clutch that felt like a guillotine dropping on my neck.
The air in the coffee shop vanished.
Jace looked up then, his eyes scanning the room as if he were searching for an exit, and he found me. For one split second, his mask slipped. I saw the sheer, unadulterated panic in his eyes. He looked at me like a man who had just realized he was trapped in a life he didn't choose, looking at me to save him.
But I couldn't. Not this time.
I didn't wait for an explanation or for him to come over and tell me how they were going to "figure it out." I grabbed my bag and walked out the door. That was the day the "what ifs" died. That was the day our paths were set in stone. It was also the day I realized he was never going to be mine, and I became the ghost haunting the edges of a life he hadn't even started living yet.
I blink, the ceiling fan in my bedroom coming back to reality. My heart is racing, that old familiar ache in my chest flared up again.
It’s only been what? A year and a half since I walked away, but in my head, I’m still that girl running out the back door of a coffee shop.
I reach for my phone on the nightstand. I want to text him. I want to tell him, 'Don't come back. I can't be the woman who helps you forget the last five years.' But I’m afraid. Afraid that if I tell him to stay away, he actually will. And I’m even more terrified of that.
I pull the duvet over me this time, seeking the warmth Jace left behind. I have to face the world tomorrow. I have to walk into work and pretend I didn't spend my night nearly becoming the woman the town already thinks I am.
I close my eyes, but I don't sleep. I just wait for the sun to come up, terrified of what the light will show. The night had been unbearable. But the daylight? That’s what I was afraid of.
