“I thought if I could just keep her here long enough, she’d realize she didn’t need to go. That she was meant to stay. I just…I just couldn’t lose her too.”
The weight of her words settles over me. Because haven’t I been there? Haven’t I just spent days terrified of losing Petra too, ready to do anything to make her stay?
Then something else occurs to me: “But your mom…what does she know? Wouldn’t she have to start dealing with the tuition bills?”
“I told her I got accepted too…that I got a scholarship and would work part-time so she wouldn’t have to worry about paying anything.”
Claire wipes the tears from her face with the frustrated gesture of someone who hates crying but can’t stop. “I know it was wrong. I know I should have just told them how I felt instead of lying. But I panicked. And now I don’t know how to fix it.”
My hands find her shoulders with the awkward gentleness of someone who doesn’t usually do comfort in these situations but is trying anyway.
She sniffles, meeting my gaze with those eyes that look so much like Petra’s when she’s hurting.
I squeeze lightly, channeling every motivational speech I’ve ever ignored. “You made a mistake. But you did it because you love your sister.”
She nods rapidly, lips pressed together like they’re holding back an avalanche of emotion.
I sigh, rubbing my face because this is way above my pay grade but somehow my problem now. “We’ll figure this out.”
“You say that like it’s fixable.”
“Everything’s fixable.”
It’s a lie, of course. Some things break and stay broken. Some mistakes reshape everything that comes after. But standing here in my aesthetically-challenged apartment with my girlfriend’s little sister who just confessed to an elaborate fraud, I realize sometimes the lie is kinder than the truth.
“We’ll figure this out. It’s gonna be okay, I promise. I’m gonna help you get this sorted out.”
“You will?”
“Of course. I’m here, and I’m gonna help you.” I embrace her as she stifles a sob.
“And please don’t say anything to Petra,” she says.
“I won’t.”
“Thank you,” she breathes out, unsteady.
Don’t thank me yet, I think.We’ve got workto do.
Because now I’m not just the guy dating her sister. I’m the guy who knows the secret that could detonate everything. The guy who has to help an eighteen-year-old navigate the minefield she created out of love and fear and the very human inability to let go of the people who matter.
My apartment might be flat, my furniture might be ignoring architecture, and my bookshelves might be a monument to literary failure. But at least those are fixable with some throw pillows, recessed lighting, and a few trips to IKEA.
This? This is going to require a different kind of reconstruction entirely.
And I thought learning how to pirouette was complicated.
Chapter Nineteen
I step into the Sentinels’ locker room, and while the usual sounds are all there—equipment bags unzipping, pre-game music blasting, a soccer ball bouncing off the walls—a tension underscores it all. Trade rumors are circulating like a virus nobody wants but everyone catches.
The front office is still sniffing around that nineteen-year-old “phenom,” the one everyone swears is the second coming. Trades mean casualties. Musical chairs where someone doesn’t get a seat. And when you’re the guy who spent months as expensive injured cargo, you know exactly which chair is getting pulled first.
I focus on what’s in my control like taping my stick, re-lacing my skates, and executing all my pre-game rituals because if I think too hard about being traded, about whatmightbe, I’ll have no chance to prosper in thenow.
Tonight’s opponent: the Detroit Spartans. The last time I faced them, I was carted off the ice halfway through the game with a fully torn hamstring.
I tighten my grip on the stick until my forearms throb. Tonight is different. Tonight, I’m different. I’m not the same guy who was scraped up and discarded last time we played them.
