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"I just realized, you crossed an entire country to chase this." His thumbs brush the tears off my cheekbones. "Don't lose your nerve now."

He kisses my forehead and grabs his bag off the chair. And at the door of the ugly little family room he stops and turns back. And he gives me the smallest, saddest, most hopeful smile I’ve ever seen on his face.

"For what it's worth." He shoulders the bag. "That fight out there wasn't about Jax doing something wrong."

And then he's gone, and that sentence rings in the air like a struck bell.

That fight wasn't about him doing something wrong.

I grab my coat.

I'm going to find Jax tonight, and I'm going to tell him the truth, all of it, and I'm going to let him break my heart to my face if that's how this ends.

But I’m finished being a coward.

Chapter 17: Jax

I've been standing at my living room window, running Derek's voice on a loop. ‘Tell her the rest.’ He’s right but I feel like the ice fell out from under me.

I've pulled up her name on my phone, because what is there to even say. Hey, Margot, funny thing, I've been wanting you since before you had a drivers license and I let your brother believe I'm a saint tonight.

There's no version of that conversation I come out of still on my skates.

Then the knock comes.

Not the buzzer. A knock, which means somebody got past the doorman downstairs, which means it's either Cade or Margot.

Maybe Cade told her what I said and she’s here to tell me the deal is off and there’ll be no more lessons.

I brace myself and open the door, and Margot is standing in my hallway.

Her mascara is smudged down her cheeks and she doesn't wait for me to get a single word out.

"There's no Ethan."

The floor tilts under my feet. "What?"

"There's no Ethan. There was never an Ethan. I made him up because I’m a coward." The words come fast and terrified, like if she stops she'll never start up again.

"I invented a fictional man because I didn’t want you to know how much I want you. So you'd never guess the truth. It was the only way that I could be near you and touch you without having to tell you I… I like you."

I can't move. I feel like I got body slammed against the boards.

"Jax, please, say something, because…" Her voice breaks in the middle.

I pull her inside. I close the door and my hands are on her face. I make her look at me.

"There was never anybody else for me either." My voice doesn't sound like mine. "Not one of them, Margot. Not a single woman. It was you the whole time. Since you were a teenager tagging along to join us at the rink."

Years of held-down truth is pouring out of me and I couldn't stop it if I tried. "I've never brought a woman home. Because not one of them was you. There has only ever been one Callahan I've been out of my mind over, and it's you."

She's crying harder now.

I press my forehead to hers.

I want to tell her. It claws up my throat. Tell her the truth about the party. I open my mouth to give her the truth. "Margot…”

She grabs my hands. "I just want the real you, and I want you before I lose my nerve."