Chapter 30
DON’T SHOOT THE MESSENGER
KNOX
It’s been three days, fifteen hours, forty-eight minutes, and eleven seconds since I gave Staten one hell of a Judas kiss before leaving her in the dust.
I haven’t spoken to anyone. Not her, not my teammates. I’ve missed a couple of hockey practices, and school has ceased to hold any importance.
I don’t remember the last time I took a shower. I’ve become an unfortunate cautionary tale as I hug my bed, letting my body fossilize against the unwashed sheets, wading through a phantasmagorical wasteland where time loses all meaning and the shadows play tricks in hypnagogia.
My whole life, it’s as if there’s been a blade to my throat, pressing, one nick away from drawing blood, yet nobody—not my mother, not my father, not my sister—cared enough to confiscate it.
Staten, however, cared. So deeply.
I hear her cries in the hulls of my ears, worming themselves into my skull to fester and rot until mind-numbing medication isn’t potent enough to bury her voice.
I can’t stop thinking about that night—about how cruel I was to her.
I didn’t mean the things I said. I just—I needed her to get as far away from me as possible.
To save herself.
Fuck, the look on her face—I took the coward’s way out. I practically dressed up the usual “It’s not you, it’s me” speech with fancy wrapping paper and a pretty bow to defer from the fact that I didn’t have the guts to tell her the truth.
And I’m going to die with my guilt.
Limbs in torpor and mouth dry, I don’t even get up to silence the unrelenting growls from my belly. Maybe it’s because I’m too mentally exhausted to imagine doing anything that requires energy, or maybe it’s because a part of me believes I don’t deserve grace.
I thought I’d experienced pain in all its seasons, you know? The thaw after a minor scratch, the consistent simmer of an ingrown infection, the boil over of a wound that refuses to close, and the freezing point of a scar that still carries trauma in sutured flesh.
But this time, the pain is different. Lasting. There is no physical manifestation. Everything operates inside my psyche, subjecting me to the harsh rejection that cycles on repeat—a peephole into my true self, one that I terrifyingly realize resembles my father’s worst qualities.
It makes me sick to my goddamn stomach.
My vision gyroscopes in the darkness; my eyes burn from a lack of sleep. Ironic, given that I’ve been in the prime position to turn off every pesky voice taking residence in my head.
I broke the only girl who showed me what it felt like to be loved. I hurt her. I can’t come back from this. I can’t make things better.
My heart kicks weakly against my sternum—a cry for help that’s immediately drowned out by the thunder that still rules over the tenebrous sky. Webs of lightning crack in unspoken support, briefly illuminating the room that will serve as my sarcophagus for the foreseeable future.
Piles of laundry tower in the corner, the meager rations of midnight cravings gummed to wrappers and disposable paper plates, and there’s a pollution-like ring of body odor that infects the atmosphere.
Thankfully, I don’t have any roommates who are going to be pestering me.
It’s just me, my nihilistic thoughts, and the rabbit hole that looks increasingly more inviting to spiral into.
“Please don’t do this. Please don’t leave me.”
“You’re breaking my heart.”
You could’ve been honest with her about your talk with Leif. Instead, she’s going to be blaming herself for your mistake. Since you shoulder-checked your way into her life, all she’s ever known is pain. Physical, emotional. You ruined that girl the moment you hit her with your car.
It was an accident. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to get attached. I—
Try telling someone who actually cares. You’re all alone. You’re always going to be alone. You don’t matter.
Nausea sticks to the walls of my stomach, and my throat puckers in a single warning before bile floods my mouth.
I scramble blindly for the trash can beside my bed—unused since I’m apt to repurpose my floor into a littering zone—and I white-knuckle the rim just in time for a yellow-tinted stream of vomit to expel from my lips.
It singes my esophagus on the way out, but there’s barely any substance thanks to my hunger strike.
Tears spring to my eyes, the putrid stench of stomach acid hitting me in the face like a brick.
I feel another retch coming just as there’s a knock on my door, and Crew’s voice permeates through the partition, plied with concern.
“Knox? Are you in there?” he asks, the hallway light peeking beneath the partition and casting a shadow over his shuffling feet.
I have no idea how he got into my house, but my tears of exertion almost transmute into tears of relief. My vocal cords are unoiled, and it couldn’t be clearer when I call out to him. Hoarse, rubbed raw, arguably representative of how terrible I feel.
“Don’t come in here.”
Apparently, I forgot who I was talking to. Crew is one of my best friends—my goddamn captain. He’s as stubborn as I am. Maybe more so, and that’s saying something.
“What’s going on? Are you okay? You’ve been MIA for days.”
A stint of despair crystallizes in my bones, and my nerves bristle like the frayed endings of rope. I need him to leave. He can’t—he can’t see me like this.
The darkness and disorientation make it hard to construct a comprehensive sentence. Not to mention that I have a migraine actively curb-stomping my brain in. I know Crew isn’t above busting my door down to get to the bottom of everything.
I set the trash can down next to my bed, praying that my gut doesn’t revolt again. “I’m…I’m fine. Just sick. Yeah, must’ve caught a bug or something,” I lie, my sprinting mind desperately clawing for excuses.
Crew makes a prusten sound. “If that was really the case, you would’ve told Coach, and he knows jack shit about your disappearance.”
Fuck me.
“Don’t worry about me.”
“Kind of impossible not to when you’re one of the strongest players on the team. Are you going to open the door, or is it coming off the hinges?”
Ugh. I don’t really feel like replacing it any time soon.
Dragging myself out of bed just long enough to flux my embarrassment, I lumber over to the partition, deciding that the only way to get him to leave is to feed him small crumbs of information to hold over his seemingly insatiable curiosity.
Once the door swings open, shock is written all over his face.
“Staten and I broke up,” I tell him, staring into the supermassive black hole that is my bedroom, a presentiment of lifelong loneliness hovering, unspoken, in my mind.
It always felt like there was a fault line running through me, on the verge of cracking, but this is the first time I heed the warning with a modified breed of fear.
Staten doesn’t realize how many pieces of me she still carries—how many pieces she’ll always carry.
I’ll never be whole without her, and Leif made sure of that.
Crew’s eyes enlarge. “Wait, what? Are you serious?”
I point to my temple with unfettered lunacy. “Leif Kennedy, he—he got into my fucking head. Kept feeding me lines that would turn me against her, and I was the goddamn idiot that let them work.”
“What did he say to you, Knox?” Crew’s voice is low enough to emulate a growl, but he has far more control.
If I was in any state to preserve my insecurities, I wouldn’t answer. But I simply don’t care anymore. I don’t care about putting on a face for my friends. I’m going to bare myself like a stone fruit, and maybe someone will have the decency to de-pit the root of all my baggage.
My teeth saw at my bottom lip until I uproot a bloody flake of skin. “He told me I wasn’t compatible with her—that we were from two different worlds. He said she’d be better off with someone like him.”
“What a fucking asshole.”
I think I’ve exhausted all my tears. “It’s true, though. We barely have anything in common. She’s intelligent and hardworking and has a great future ahead of her,” I explain, plodding back over to my bed.
Crew has been nice enough not to comment on my noticeable weight loss, nor the heavy bruises beneath my eyes.
He follows after me, undue anger flaming a trail behind him.
“You don’t have to be exact copies of each other.
It’s normal in relationships to have differing interests.
And this whole pity party shit isn’t going to fly with me.
You’re just as intelligent and hardworking as her, okay?
You have the fucking chops to make it to the NHL, and I don’t say that lightly.
Leif doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.
He’s trying to come between the two of you. ”
“He made some good points—”
Crew shuts me down instantly. “No. Don’t do that. I don’t want to hear it. He doesn’t speak for you, okay? And he certainly shouldn’t dictate who’s allowed in your life.”
Clemently, I bow my head, and my apparently poor response dies a swift death in my throat. “I just want her to be happy.”
It’s a lame excuse, I know. I’m not trying to offload the blame onto anyone else. I ended things on my own accord. I let Leif ruin months of hard work and emotional buildup.
The sight of Crew’s open palm accosts me before he gently whacks me over the head. “She was happy with you, dumbass!”
All of this feels so surreal. Am I even having a real conversation right now? Is Crew some hallucinatory coping mechanism that I’ve conjured up to keep me company in my blacked-out prison cell? I mean, clearly not seeing as that hit definitely rattled some brain cells awake.
“You don’t know that.”
“Oh, please. Anyone with two working eyes could see that that girl was head over heels for you. I don’t care if you’re looking for absolution. You won’t find it from me. You messed up, and now you need to work ten times harder to get her back.”
I knew my moral plight was never going to last long. Though, the revelation doesn’t offer instant relief. No, there’s a dumbbell weighing down my chest, and it takes my breath as currency for the wrongs I’ve committed.
“I was trying to protect her. From my father, from me. She deserves to be surrounded by people who grew up in a happy, healthy family. She deserves stability.”
Crew’s expression softens, and I don’t think I’m in the line of his rampage anymore. “That’s not your choice to make.”
“But how could I live with myself if she chose me? Slumming it in Minnesota with her school-mandated job and unlivable salary and boyfriend that never ends up amounting to anything?” My voice is raw, but not from a long stretch of crying.
Everything is just—I feel like a walking, open wound.
Was I always looking for an exit ticket?
Was Staten’s love not enough to fill the holes that my father left in his absence?
I’m honestly expecting another smack to the head, but a sigh billows out of Crew’s lips instead.
He stares at me from behind the trajectory of the hallway light, eyes reflective, akin to a creature captured on a trail camera late into the night.
“I once thought that about myself—that I’d never amount to anything.
Merit had this great future ahead of her, and I had nothing. ”
I never knew this about him. He always seemed like he had his whole life planned out.
“She didn’t care about any of that. When you’re in love with a person, the future becomes something you share with one another. It’s no longer your burden to carry alone. Did you ever stop to think about Staten’s feelings through all of this?” he inquires, and my silence is answer enough.
“I never thought about it like that,” I admit quietly.
“You don’t have to push her away, Knox. I know you’re just trying to protect her, but you’re hurting her in the process.”
A sob nearly hits the back of my throat, and my sentence collapses a little. “What about Leif? He asked to be her boyfriend.”
“That bastard is lucky if the team and I don’t have a strongly worded talk with him. If Staten didn’t readily accept his proposal, then she’s made her choice. Her opinion is the only one that matters.”
For the first time ever, I can happily say that I’m grateful Crew Calloway broke into my house and gave me a piece of his mind.
I ran at the first sign of trouble, just like Staten’s dad did.
I abandoned her when she needed me the most. I thought I knew what was best for her, and instead of having an adult conversation about the future of our relationship, I shot myself in the foot.
She’s always believed in me. She’s always been there to lift me up.
I need to get her back. I need her to know that I won’t let my insecurities control me anymore. I never should’ve listened to Leif in the first place.
I was in rigor mortis before I met Staten. She’s the one responsible for bringing me back to life when the world was so intent on letting me wither away. I love her. I love her so fucking much that it hurts.
Hope hardens in my chest like creosote. I don’t want it to be a false alarm. “What am I supposed to do now? How do I win her back?”
A grin furls Crew’s lips, and he gives me a sympathetic pat on the back. “With a lot of groveling, my friend. And maybe some monetary compensation for her suffering.”