I sat on my bathroom floor, drafting and deleting breakup texts for what felt like hours but was probably just minutes. Each version more honest than the last, each one articulating a different fear:
I can’t risk my career again.
I can’t be someone’s secret again.
I can’t watch you choose your career over me when it matters.
I can’t survive another Charles.
All of them true. All of them terrifying. All of them reasons to end this before it got worse.
But I couldn’t send any of them.
Because underneath all the fear and the logic and the career calculations, there was one undeniable truth: I didn’t want to end it.
I wanted Griffin. The way he looked at me when he thought no one else was watching. The vulnerability he showed me that he showed no one else. The possibility of something real, even if it was complicated and risky and years away from being public.
I was attracted to him—physically, yes, but also to who he was underneath the captain’s mask. To his intensity and his competitiveness and the moments when he let himself be soft with me.
That attraction was stronger than every logical reason to walk away.
I deleted the last unsent message and typed something different:
Wesley
Hey. Breathe.
Then, before I could overthink it:
Wesley
Holloway’s observant but that doesn’t mean everyone is. We’re okay. We just need to be more careful.
Griffin
I know. I’m sorry. This is harder than either of us expected.
Wesley
Not your fault. I knew what I was signing up for.
Griffin
Doesn’t make it less frustrating.
The message made my chest tighten. Because I’d wanted to run. But I hadn’t. And I wasn’t sure if that made me brave or stupid.
Griffin wasn’t Charles, though, and today’s lunch was just one small example of that.
Wesley
For what it’s worth—I’m glad you remembered my sandwich order. That meant something.
Griffin
Everything about you means something to me. Good night, Wesley.
Wesley
