I sat there in the dark, phone pressed to my ear long after the dial tone faded, whiskey pooling warm and useless in my lap.
She'd hung up.
And I'd let her.
I stared at the phone until the screen went dark. My thumb hovered over her name—Donovan, B.—like I could undo it. Call back. Say something that mattered instead of slurred accusations and jealous bullshit.
I didn't.
The bottle sat between my knees, half-empty now. Or half-full. Depended on how optimistic you wanted to be about a man drinking alone in the dark because the one person who made him feel like something other than a failure just told him goodbye.
I wasn't feeling optimistic.
The first swallow after she hung up went down easier than it should have. So did the second. By the third, I couldn't taste it anymore. Just heat. Just numbness spreading through my chest like frost.
She's protecting you,I thought.And you called her drunk to yell at her for it.
Father of the year. Coach of the year. Man of the goddamn century.
I set the bottle on the floor before I finished it. Not out of discipline—I just didn't have the energy to lift it anymore. My arm felt like dead weight. My whole body did.
The couch cushions smelled like old smoke and regret. I sank into them, let my head fall back, stared at the water stain on the ceiling that looked like a fist or a flower depending on how drunk I was.
Tonight it looked like her.
Billie.
I said her name out loud. Quiet. Barely a whisper. Like if I said it soft enough, the universe wouldn't hear me wanting something I had no right to.
She was gone. Not just off the phone—gone. Back to Nate, or back to herself, or back to whatever life she'd had before I stumbled into it and wrecked everything I touched.
I closed my eyes. Saw her anyway.
The way she looked at me in that locker room. The way she'd pulled me closer when I tried to pull away. The way she'd whispered my name like it was something sacred instead of something cursed.
You ruined her,the voice in my head said.Just like you ruin everything.
I didn't argue.
My phone buzzed once—probably Gideon, probably asking why I wasn't answering emails or returning calls or pretending to give a shit about anything that wasn't her.
I let it buzz. Let it go silent.
Lay there in the dark with her name on my lips and whiskey in my veins and nothing—no one—left to hold onto.
She was gone.
And it was my fault.
Chapter 21
Billie
Ihadn't slept.
Couldn't.
Every time I closed my eyes, I heard his voice—rough and slurred andbroken. Heard him telling me I was happy. That it didn't look fake. If I'd already forgotten what we did in that locker room like it meant nothing.
