Chapter 32 – Beau
Chapter Thirty-Two
Beau
The knocking starts like a warning, but then it turns violent. Bang. Bang. Bang.
I haven’t moved from the damn couch in hours.
I’m still in yesterday’s clothes, for Christ’s sake.
There’s a crusted bowl of cereal on the coffee table that I made myself at some point, an attempt to trick myself into thinking I was hungry, which rests right next to my phone with two unopened texts from Cooper.
One of them probably says I got the job. The other: Where the hell are you?
I send up a silent prayer, begging the powers that be that it is not Cooper at the door because I don’t have the energy to lie to his face again tonight, when a familiar voice slices through the silence like a blade.
“Beau! Open the door!”
Her voice on the other side of that door paralyzes me.
Not because I don’t want to see her, but because I want to see her too much.
But I don’t want her to see me looking like shit and feeling ten times worse.
I don’t want her to know that my body is still a battlefield, even if the bombs stopped two weeks ago.
I haven’t called to explain what is going on with me.
I haven’t said more than a few clipped words via text to her since I felt myself slipping and didn’t know how to let her catch me.
I’m scared that if she looks at me the way she used to and sees something broken in me, she’ll leave, and I’m not sure I’ll survive it.
But now she’s here, and I don’t have a plan.
Hell, I barely have a pulse at this point.
I drag myself off the couch and head toward the door, pulse pounding in my ears.
My entire body aches as I move with a dull, dragging pain, like my body wants to remind me who’s in charge now.
I run a hand over my face, jaw rough with stubble, and check my reflection in the picture near the door.
I look like hell, still pale and so worn down that the bags under my eyes feel permanent. Better, but not right.
I open the door, and my heart fucking stops.
Alise is standing there, staring at me wide-eyed, flushed, and chest heaving like she ran the entire way here.
Her eyes sweep over me, taking in the hoodie that’s swallowed my frame more than usual, the sharp angles of my face that didn’t used to be there, and the sag of my shoulders I can’t quite fake out of existence.
All the heat in her expression blows me wide open.
I’ve been pretending for weeks that I’m fine, but at this moment, I know she sees everything.
Her mouth opens and closes as she lifts a hand like she’s about to press her palm to my chest and check if I’m still in there, but she stops halfway, dropping her arm and pressing her lips into a thin line.
Her entire body goes tight with restraint, and then I see the fury rise.
It burns through the panic on her face, devouring the confusion, until all that’s left is raw, hurt fire.
“What the hell,” she seethes. “You’ve been here this whole time?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve been here in your condo, and you didn’t call? Didn’t text? Didn’t tell me what was happening?”
“I—”
“No.” Her voice shakes, high and brittle and sharp with betrayal. “You don’t get to start with ‘I.’ You don’t get to stand there and act like you’re surprised I showed up when you dropped off the face of the fucking planet.”
She pushes past me into the apartment. The air shifts with her as if her presence has weight, and the room’s real again just because she walked into it.
“You disappeared, Beau,” she says, spinning around. “You vanished. And I tried to stay calm, I tried to be patient, but what the hell was I supposed to think? You ignored every check-in. You sent one-word replies as if I were a stranger who never mattered.”
“You did.” My voice catches. “You do. God, Alise, you do.”
“Then why did you shut me out?” She’s shaking now—hands, voice, everything.
“Why the hell did I have to find out about Mercer being fired and Cooper taking over as head coach from Darius yelling at the TV like it was breaking news? Do you know what that felt like? Sitting there, hearing that, and realizing you already knew. There was no way you didn’t, and you still didn’t say a word. ”
Her eyes fill with tears, but she blinks fast, refusing to let them fall.
I take a step toward her, the need to comfort her and make all the pain go away overwhelming.
She recoils as if I slapped her. That single step back from me, like I’ve become something she can’t trust, is the worst pain I’ve felt since the last flare ripped through my body like wildfire.
“I thought maybe you were hurt,” she says, her voice trembling with too much restraint.
“Maybe you were mad because I said something wrong. Maybe you were sick of waiting for me to decide. I’ve replayed every moment we’ve spent together since that kiss like a fucking post-game review, trying to figure out where it all fell apart. ”
“I didn’t want—” I try to explain, but she shatters before I can get the words out.
“I didn’t want to smother you!” she screams, the sound ricocheting off the walls. “I didn’t want to make it worse. So, I stayed back and waited. I trusted that if you needed me, you’d show up. And you didn’t.”
Her hands ball into fists at her sides, nails digging crescent moons into her palms. She’s trembling, not like she’s cold, but like something inside her is about to rupture.
The silence that follows is unbearable. I don’t breathe.
I can’t, because I’m the one who did this.
I did the one thing she told me she was afraid of.
I made her feel like she was too much when she’s always been the only thing keeping me from drowning.
I take a step toward her, but she flinches away again like her body’s still braced for impact, and I’m something to protect herself from now.
That guts me, a quiet, internal tear like something rips loose in the center of my chest and keeps tearing, deeper and deeper, until I’m not sure there’s anything left.
I did this because I love her so much, I don’t know where I end and she begins. And now she’s standing here, broken because of me, staring like she doesn’t recognize the man in front of her anymore. And maybe she shouldn’t, because right now, I don’t either.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you—”
“But you did!” she screams, her voice cracking like lightning through a brittle sky. “You’re hurting me right now.”
Her chest is rising too fast, shoulders tense, fingers flexing at her sides like she’s bracing to be hit, but the only thing striking her is the truth I’ve made her live with.
She looks like she’s ready to bolt and leave me standing in the wreckage of everything I didn’t say.
And the worst part is, I would deserve it.
I take a step forward, hands raised in surrender, but she stumbles back, eyes wide with disbelief. With pain.
“You don’t get to do that,” she spits, voice trembling. “You don’t get to vanish and then touch me like I’m yours.”
I flinch because she is right. I don’t deserve any of this. A chance to make amends. A second chance to prove to her I’m all in, but mostly, I know deep in my soul that I don’t deserve her.
“Every day, I waited for you to call.” Her voice breaks open on that word, breath hitching like a sob caught in her chest, but it refuses to come out. “I checked my phone like it was keeping me alive because one word from you could stop the ache.”
I can’t breathe. My lungs burn, my chest feels as if it’s caving in. She takes a shaky breath, and it sounds rough as it drags through her throat on the way out.
“I still wanted you, even when it felt like bleeding out.”
I can feel the pulse in my neck hammering. My jaw tightens, my hands twitch at my sides, and my skin feels too tight, like my body is rejecting the space between us.
“I didn’t know how to let you in,” I say, hoarse. “I didn’t want to drag you down with me.”
“You don’t get to make that choice for me.”
She says it with fire, but her voice trembles on the last word. And for the first time, she doesn’t move when I step toward her.
“You don’t get to tell me you care,” she chokes out, “and then disappear.”
Then the thread deep inside me that’s held everything back for too long snaps, and I lunge. My hands find her face, thumbs sliding onto damp cheeks, fingers tangling into her hair like it’s instinct. Her breath hitches, a sharp gasp that barely hits the air before I crush my mouth to hers.
It’s not pretty or gentle. It’s clumsy and messy and desperate, lips parting on a sharp inhale, teeth clashing, breath mingling—hers quick and furious, mine ragged and pleading. Her mouth tastes like salt and fury, like this is my last fucking chance I have to make the most of it.
She shoves hard at my chest with both hands, and I stumble a step back, but she doesn’t let go. She grabs my shirt instead, yanking me back with a strangled sob and kissing me like she hates me for making her need this so badly.
A low, guttural groan escapes as her back hits the drywall with a dull thud, and I press my body into hers.
One hand slides to her waist, the other cradling the back of her head like she might break if I’m not careful.
She arches into me, fingers sliding into my hair and pulling hard, and the sensation slices clean down my spine.
We kiss like we’re starving and trying to erase all the things we didn’t say with lips and teeth and breath.
She gasps when I tilt her head, tongue sweeping into her mouth, and our knees buckle.
We cling to each other like gravity just flipped upside down.
The air between us is hot and electric, crackling with everything that’s never been safe to say.