All the fight has gone out of me. I drop to my knees, huge breaths heaving from my lungs. “It’s the truth,” I gasp out, my entire body wracked with the effort to breathe. She waits, silently watching as I work to even out my breathing. “You know I got in with a bad crowd,” I continue. “You saw them.”
“Lucky,” she says with disdain, and I dip my chin in acknowledgement. He wasnotmy friend. “The team— It was just like I’d feared, only so much worse, Steph. And I was too proud to ask for help.” I shake my head. “The hometown hero,” I spit out, disgusted with myself, “but I couldn’t cut it on the court or in the classroom.
“A friend offered me some chemical assistance, and things just … devolved from there, I guess you could say. I was convicted for possession and distribution. When you showed up, I was awaiting sentencing and living in absolute denial.” I choke out a harsh laugh. “I didn’t even think I had a problem. Kept telling myself I wasn’t like the rest of those lowlifes that hung with Lucky.What a joke. And he kept telling me it was no big deal. Said I’d get a slap on the wrist. But the judge was an alumnus and took particular offense to my dealing on campus. He said I had harmed the team’s reputation, never mind that it was a teammate who originally offered it to me. So I got eight years. Did four and then spent two more on parole before I was able to leave the city.”
Steph pads silently over to where I’m kneeling and sits down beside me, cross-legged on the cold rock. “And after that?”
“Pretty much what I told you that night in the bar. I traveled around doing odd jobs. After prison, I never wanted to stay in one place too long. Lived a nomadic life for a lot of years.”
“You never thought about coming home?”
“Lots of times, but I was too ashamed. And the more time that went by, the more lies I told my family, the harder it was to imagine ever coming back.”
She reaches out and tentatively places a hand on my thigh.
“So what changed?”
I shrug. “Got tired of running. Heard my brother was getting married and realized how much I’d missed out on. Once I started thinking about returning home, the floodgates opened and …”
“And?”
“And all I could think about was you.”
She sucks in a sharp breath, moving to pull her hand away, but I grab it and interlock our fingers. Slowly, ever so slowly, she drags her gaze to mine.
“It’s always been you, Steph,” I say quietly. “I tried to forget you—lord knows Itried—but you were always there. Just under the surface and tucked close to my heart. I have so many regrets from back then, but the biggest one will always be hurting you. I can’t say I regret pushing you away, even now, because it wouldn’t have been a life for you, with a boyfriend in prison. I couldn’t have asked you to wait. But I do regret how I went about it. If you believe anything, I hope you can believe that.”
This time, when she tries to pull away, I let her, dropping her hand and climbing to my feet as she does the same.
“I don’t know,” she says, putting distance between us again.
“Don’t know if you believe me?”
She shakes her head, a single tear trailing down her cheek. “Don’t know what to do. What— what to think. This is … a lot. I just—”
“Please, Steph,” I cut her off. “Please give us another chance. We were always meant to be together, Sunshine. I know you know that. I know you feel this, too. We just … took a detour, but we’re here now.”
That sounds lame even to my own ears, but I don’t know what else to say as the panic begins to rise. I study her microexpressionsas her face shuts down. I can see her detaching again, rebuilding those goddamn walls right before my eyes.
“That’s what you call it? Adetour?”
I shake my head at her, unsure of how to respond. This is going totally off the rails.
“BecauseI’dcall it a broken heart,” she continues.
“Don’t mistake my words, Steph, don’t imagine it was anything other than heartbreak for me too.”
She scoffs. “Hardly. You made a choice, Riley. You don’t get to rewrite the past now. You didn’t just hurt me, youdestroyedme. And you did it little by little, stealing my sanity, picking away at my self-confidence, formonths, before finally dealing the death blow. When I found you in that disgusting building, you let me believe there was still a chance for us, that we could fix things. You screwed me on a dirty mattress, then left me alone in a scary basement to go be with— with—”
She shakes her head as furious tears slide down her face. I want to kiss them away. I want to pull her into my arms and tell her it was all a bad dream. But I can’t do that.
What Icando is set the record straight.
Finally.
When she speaks again, her voice is heartbreakingly soft, and it cracks on the last word. “To go be with that woman.”
“Steph—”
