Chapter 13
COLLAPSE: DEFENSE COLLAPSES AROUND THE SLOT
Idon’t know what to make of him living here.
Any of it.
I loved him once. Part of me always will.
Thinking back to my conversation with the girls the other night, my admission that his presence reminded me of the love I had for him. Until I spoke with them, I wondered if there was something wrong with me.
I mark Malik’s test with an extra five points for successfully helping tutor students after school. Autumn also gets an additional five points for documenting tutorials for our online tool—IXL.
I’m so absorbed in my work, I don’t realize anyone’s at my door until I hear the knock—one firm.
Three fast. One firm. My heart skips. There’s only one person who has ever knocked on my door like that.
My red pencil tip breaks on Autumn’s paper as realization hits—Brennan’s on the other side of my door.
As I surge out of my chair, fury wars with curiosity. “What the hell is he doing here?” I don’t question how he figured out where I live as there’s only two Delgadinas in this town. Still, “He has some nerve.”
I don’t bother with grabbing a robe. Brennan has seen me in less than the pair of oversized pajamas—a gift from Maya she had made in Italian silk decorated with a mashup of calculus, geometry, linear algebra, and physics-inspired notations.
I fling my door open ready to blast him. Only, I’m taken aback by his red-rimmed eyes and tear stained cheeks. I can’t stop the concern that escapes my lips. “Brennan? Are you okay? What happened?”
He inches closer. “You. You’re what happened.”
The doorway suddenly feels overwhelmed with his size and the heavy tension bouncing between us. Not wanting to air my dirty laundry in the hall, I step back to invite him in but don’t allow him past the entryway.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your work.”
“What makes you think I was working?”
A sad smile wafts over his face before he splinters what’s left of my heart a little more when he demonstrates how well he knows me.
“You always wore pajamas whenever you were working on something important for school. I remember…” His voice trails off as he must come to the conclusion that whatever he was about to say doesn’t belong to the two people in this space today.
They belong to the couple who loved each other years ago.
A couple that no longer exists.
Brennan looks like he’s aged a decade since we ran into each other at Cedar Market. Like he’s suddenly carrying a burden far too weighty for him to manage. His shoulders are slumped, head bowed like he’s bracing for the impact of another blow instead of avoiding it.
Then he looks up and his eyes are the same impossible blue, but they’re dimmed. Like the light behind them was turned off.
Warning bells go off. He knows. I’m certain of it. “What was so important you had to come to my home this late?”
“I needed to talk to you.”
“Eight years, and whatever you have to say is suddenly urgent?”
He flinches. “That’s why I’m here.”
Well, this should be interesting.
Silence stretches thin while he tries to find the right words. His gaze flitters around my cozy apartment before he deliberately forces his gaze back to my face. “I just came back from OKC,” Brennan says.
“Do you want a trophy?”
He steps forward. “Amy, Mark told me the truth.”
My anger flares first and hot, but it’s the hurt underneath that threatens to crack me open.
I tried to tell Brennan the truth back then.
No, I begged for him to listen to me and he chose to walk away.
Now, years later, because someone else finally corroborated what he should have believed, he wants to do what? Apologize?
He opens his mouth but I hold up a hand, still processing what I feel.
It’s not relief; it’s grief. A final ending for the girl who begged to be believed, for years that could’ve been different.
The systematic feelings of sorrow and rage I lived with from knowing my truth was never enough on its own.
That I couldn’t compete with the lure of fame.
I pull myself together before drawling, “Congratulations. What do you want for finally knowing what I’ve known since the day you walked out of my dorm room?”
“He confessed. Showed me conversations where Brielle admitted she was the one who uploaded the photo.” His voice breaks. “He admitted that he knew.”
A short, humorless laugh escapes. “Let me get this straight. When everything went down, my saying ‘I didn’t do it’ wasn’t enough. But Mark finally grows a conscience and suddenly I’m credible?”
Brennan’s voice drops. “That’s not—”
“That’s exactly how it happened!” I roar. I take a deep breath and reign in my emotions. “I’m glad Mark finally told the truth. Really. It must be a relief to know you didn’t sleep with a slut and a liar. Oh, wait. Those were just the rumors going around about me at school.”
“Amy…”
“Pity,” I finish lightly, “that I wasn’t worth believing without a signed confession attached.”
His head drops between his shoulders.
“Was it just Mark’s confession that convinced you?” I ask, my voice steady in a way I don’t feel.
His hand slides into his pockets. “Part of me already knew. From the moment I saw you again, I began to question everything I thought I knew.”
“Yet, you’re here after speaking with him,” I spit.
“I didn’t need the proof after he confessed. I asked for it so I could give it to you.” He offers an older model cell phone to me but I don’t reach for it.
What Brennan doesn’t know is I don’t need it.
He stammers, “I didn’t believe in you back then. I believed what was convenient. What was shown to me.”
The words hit low and sharp. Not because they’re new, but because they’re finally being said. I say nothing, waiting my turn. “That’s what your mind rationalized? That I’d sabotage my future. Ours?”
His lips part before he clamps them shut.
“Because all Brielle did was exploit a bigger problem.” My voice is steady despite the pressure in my chest. “She just showed you how little faith you had in me to begin with. You used a convenient excuse to break my heart.”
“You know that’s not true.”
I scoff. “Please.”
His movements are slow, like he’s bracing himself before accepting an even heavier burden. He unlocks the phone, turning the screen toward me. What he’s showing me are screenshots of a text thread. I carelessly flip through the back and forth between Brielle and Mark.
It’s nothing I’m not aware of courtesy of Christin and Aio. In fact, the data they pulled was much more detailed—timestamps, metadata logs, IP addresses. A technical breakdown from a third-party expert who clearly explains it may have been my body but it was without my consent.
All of which I used when I sued the crap out of DormLust for refusing to take down the photo after repeated attempts once I moved back home.
But apparently, Brennan knows nothing of that. Yet, he’s staring at me with hope—like this device could be his absolution.
“I know handing this to you doesn’t fix anything.”
“It doesn’t.”
“But I couldn’t let you not know I know the truth.”
I meet his gaze. “I didn’t need your proof to know I was innocent.”
“I know. This wasn’t for you. It was in the event you ever ran into problems in the future.”
I hand him his phone which he takes back, securing it in the pocket of his jeans. His hands don’t shake but his jaw quivers before he whispers, “I can’t undo failing you.”
There it is. The real betrayal. My voice is flat when I ask, “Why do you think I demanded you leave that day?”
“You’re right. I was the one who destroyed us. I never gave you a chance to speak. I was wrong. I’m so sorry, Amy.”
My chest aches. Not in a dramatic way. In the quiet, hollow sense of something that healed improperly because there was no other way for it to. “You didn’t listen.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t stand up for me.”
“I know.” His voice is anguished.
“You didn’t even—” I stop myself, because listing Brennan’s mistakes could cause him to be here all night.
“I know,” he repeats, softer this time. He swallows hard. “I suppose everything that’s happened to me recently is just karma catching up.”
My brows draw together. “Huh?”
“I deserve losing everything since I claimed the right to my success at the cost of your dignity.”
I glare at him. “None of what happened to me has anything to do with you, Brennan. Don’t use your ego to link the two.”
The air shifts. He lifts his eyes to mine, and there’s no defensiveness there. Just raw regret. “I don’t expect forgiveness.”
Time compresses into a single, breathless moment where I recall the buckets of tears I shed. Knowing that I had only a handful of people outside of Willow Creek who knew it wasn’t me who self-sabotaged my life. The slow rebuilding of my sense of self.
There is closure in what Brennan’s saying to me despite my claim I didn’t need it. After staring at him for a long moment, I remark quietly, “You don’t get to decide what this means.”
“What?”
I didn’t plan to move. But something inside me cracks open. I’m not certain what it is and I refuse to name it. Maybe it's a full circle of grief. Maybe it’s that residual love.
Still, this is my choice.
I edge closer.
His breath stutters. Just once.
I lift my hand, stopping inches from his chest, giving him time to make a choice.
He holds his breath, not closing the distance.
So I do.
I touch his lips with mine. It’s hardly more than a brush. It’s not hunger. It’s acknowledgement. It’s me saying goodbye to the version of us that never stood a chance. I’m struck by the electricity that’s always sparked between us. The kind that doesn’t care about timing, or truth, or heartache.
The kind that remembers every almost, every what-if, every moment that was stolen from us.
When he takes me into his arms and deepens the kiss, I realize that for me, what started as a goodbye from grief is colliding with a truth I refused to admit even when my mother asked.
Brennan McCallister is a wound I never recovered from.