And now there was no more ours.
I sat back on my heels and stared at the smoking remains of my bucket list. My eyes were dry now—I’d cried myself out earlier, and the anger had burned away the rest. All that was left was a hollow ache in my chest and the acrid smell of burnt paper.
The list had served its purpose. But I didn’t need it anymore. And I sure as hell didn’t need the reminder of everything I’d shared with a man who could throw it all away with a few well-chosen lies.
Because they were lies. I was sure of that now.
I just didn’t know why he was telling them.
I cleaned up the ashes, opened my window to air out the smoke, and climbed into bed still wearing his old hockey shirt because I wasn’t ready to take it off yet. Tomorrow I would have to face reality. Tomorrow I would have to figure out how to exist in a world where Liam Farrell had chosen to walk away from me.
But tonight, I let myself grieve. Not just for him, but for the future I’d started to imagine.
That future was gone now.
But I would build a new one. One that didn’t depend on a man who was too afraid to let himself be loved.
I just wished believing that didn’t hurt so much.
FORTY-EIGHT
Two weeks.
Fourteen days since I’d walked out of Ava’s apartment and shattered my heart beyond recognition.
Three hundred and thirty-six hours since I’d looked into her eyes and lied through my teeth about not wanting her anymore.
Not that I was counting.
The puck came at me and I deflected it on autopilot, sending it sailing toward Foster on muscle memory alone. My body knew what to do. It had been doing this for years—skating, passing, checking, shooting. I didn’t need my brain for hockey anymore.
Which was good, because my brain had stopped working properly two weeks ago.
“Nice pass,” Foster called, but he said it with the same careful tone everyone had been using around me lately, like I was a bomb that might detonate if they said the wrong thing.
I grunted in response and skated toward the bench for a water break. Coach had been riding us hard this week,pushing us toward our next matchup with MSU, but I couldn’t find it in me to care. The fire that usually burned in my chest when I played hockey had gone out. All that was left was ash.
Gordy settled onto the bench beside me. “You good?”
“Fine.”
“You’ve said that about forty times in the past two weeks.”
“Then maybe you should stop asking.”
He was quiet for a moment, watching the rest of the guys run drills on the ice. “You know if you need to talk?—”
“I don’t.”
What was there to talk about? I’d made my choice. I’d done the right thing—thenoblething. I’d freed Ava from the ticking time bomb that was my genetic predisposition toward destroying the people I loved.
So why did I feel like I was the one who’d been destroyed?
Coach blew the whistle, calling us back onto the ice, and I pushed off the bench with a relief I didn’t deserve. At least when I was skating, I didn’t have to think. Didn’t have to feel. Didn’t have to remember the sound she’d made when I told her I was getting restless—that small, wounded noise that haunted my dreams every night.
You’re saving her, I reminded myself for the thousandth time.This is the kindest thing you can do.
But the words rang hollow now. They’d been ringing hollow since the moment I’d driven away from her apartment and sobbed in my truck like a goddamn baby.
