Even now, when everything inside me was collapsinglike a bad dive, I couldn’t stop noticing the way a curl had slipped from behind her ear, or the faint flush creeping up her throat, or how she looked both exhausted and unfairly stunning at the same time.
Attractive. Annoying. Infuriatingly observant.
She was a contradiction I didn’t have the energy for.
“Ledger,” she said again, soft this time, almost careful.
I hated that my pulse skittered at the sound of my name on her lips.
“I’m fine,” I forced out.
“You’re lying.” No hesitation. Just simple and direct.
I let out a shaky laugh, humorless and brittle. “And you suddenly care?”
Her expression flickered—hurt, irritation, something else layered beneath. “I’m not heartless.”
I stared at her, swallowing the hard knot in my throat. Because that was the problem. She wasn’t heartless. She wasn’t cruel. She wasn’t even the enemy I kept pretending she was.
She was just … Roxie.
And somehow that made this worse.
I dragged a hand down my face. “Roxie, seriously. Not today.”
“Then when?” she shot back. “Because you look—Ledger, you look scared.”
My breath stalled.
Scared.
No one ever said that to me. Not Coach. Not Talon.Not my parents. No one saw through me like that, like I was glass instead of stone.
I stepped back again, creating space I suddenly, desperately needed. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Then you need to stop looking like the ground is falling out from under you.”
I let out a rough exhale. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know enough,” she whispered.
And something in her voice—quiet, certain, not pitying, not prying—hit a crack in me I didn’t realize was there.
For one terrifying second, I almost told her.
Almost.
But then the wall slammed back into place.
I shook my head hard. “I can’t do this.”
Her brows pulled together. Not frustrated, not angry. Just searching. As if she was trying to piece together a version of me I’d never shown her.
She opened her mouth like she wanted to say something else, but I didn’t let her.
I turned away.
Because if I stood there one more second—tired, unraveling, staring at her like she was the one solid thing in a day that had gutted me—I might break in front of her.
