Page 132 of Hard Pass

Damn it. She was right.

I keep moving without acknowledging because what the hell do I say to that?

“Valor? Where are you going?” another teammate calls out.

I don’t slow down but say over my shoulder, “I’ve gotta take care of something.”

The drive is a blur filled with snapshots of earlier. Dublin’s face when I left. The way her voice broke when she said she was done. The way I just . . . let her.

Because that’s what I do. I let things happen and don’t push back. Don’t make it worse. That’s how I survived growing up. That’s how I’ve handled everything, but this . . . this isn’t that.

This is her.

She told me exactly how this would play out and I still let it happen.

It’s not like I could have stopped what was already in motion . . . but I could’ve tried to devise a plan. I could’ve stayed.

When she opens her door, when she looks at me, my heart sinks.

Her eyes are red and her face is pale. Oh fuck. This is not okay. How will she survive this?

Will she let me in? I shoulder half the blame here and yet when she looks at me, I feel like I should be taking all of it.

“Hey,” I say softer than I expected.

She doesn’t say anything but steps back to let me in. Fuck.

This is what Dublin Locke looks like when her world truly implodes. And the fact that I’m here, that I couldn’t leave her to grieve alone, says what’s going on for me.

I can’t shrug this off, stay silent, not engage . . . the way I’ve managed to with many fucked-up things in my past. Including my dad’s constant barrage of insults and fault finding. Including my teammates giving me shit. Including my mom and what she failed to provide.

Shrugging it off means the woman before me doesn’t mean anything to me and for fuck’s sake, she does. And in ways I don’t think I realized until she opened the door with a quivering chin and desolation in her eyes. She’s been trying to be strong.

And you left her to deal with this all on her own, Valor. That’s on you. Fuck me.

So I step inside and correct my error, doing what I should have done before. I pull her into a hug and hold her tight. I don’t have the words to fix this fiasco, but I do have arms and yeah, pulling her against me, holding her while she cries, that’s what I should have done before.

I lead her to the couch and pull her onto my lap, my chin on her head, offering comfort even when I know it won’t take the damage away. I don’t offer empty platitudes. I don’t tell her it’ll be all right.

Both are things I doubt she wants to hear nor will believe. Instead, I just hold her while she exhales the pent-up fear and worry and shame so that she knows she’s not alone in this even though that goddamn fucking article made it sound like she was.

When her sobs subside and her breathing finally evens out, I press a kiss to her temple and murmur, “It was a shit article.”

“We already knew that,” she says but doesn’t release the grip she has on my shirt.

“You were right. About where they’d place the blame. How they’d frame the story. How people might see it and us individually.” I sigh and it’s coated with shame. “I’m sorry I disregarded your concerns. Call me an asshole. Call me naive. Call me all the things. They’d all be right.”

“As good as it might feel in the moment, calling you names won’t fix anything,” she says, eyes fluttering open and up at me for the first time. Jesus. The heartbreak. It’s killing me. “Nothing will.”

Knife? Meet heart, then twist.

“Right now, maybe. But in time, it’ll eventually die down. I know that doesn’t help at this moment”—I brush a kiss to the tip of her nose—“but it’s the truth.”

She nods rapidly as if trying to make herself believe me. “I’ve talked to the people who matter to me—my parents, Willa—and ignored the dozens of other calls asking for a comment . . . but it still just sucks knowing people out there will hear this and that’s all they’ll ever know of me.”

“Why don’t you give a comment then?”

“Why?” She snorts. “So I can give them yet another thing to pick apart about me? I’m either too mopey or not sorry enough. My shirt is too low cut so clearly, I’m a slut. My voice is too whiny. I mean . . . at this point it doesn’t matter what I say or don’t say, they’ll both be just as damning in someone’s eyes.”