Chapter 49
HAILEY
The silence had persisted throughout the very short, very fast drive from the practice rink back to his off-campus apartment. I'd been too nervous to pay attention to the surroundings; my hands twisted together in my lap like they were trying to hold my composure in place.
The familiar landmarks of campus blurred past the passenger window—streetlights bleeding into orange streaks, students walking in clusters I couldn't quite focus on.
I was only present enough to count the minutes as we'd taken the elevator going up, watching the numbers climb while my stomach dropped with each ascending floor.
When we'd stepped into the apartment, I barely registered the space around me—sports gear tucked in corners like afterthoughts, a gaming console with controllers haphazardly arranged on the coffee table, protein powder on the kitchen counter next to a stack of washed dishes.
Now I stood in his bedroom, heart hammering against my ribs like it was trying to break free. The space felt intensely personal in a way that made my skin prickle with awareness: textbooks stacked on his desk, a hockey stick propped against the wall, sheets rumpled from restless sleep.
Lively sat on the edge of his bed, just a few feet away, but the distance felt impossibly vast—an ocean of unspoken words and missed chances stretching between us.
I was the one who’d demanded we talk, and now that we were here, every planned word had vanished like smoke. My throat felt raw, scraped clean of all the speeches I'd rehearsed last night, when sleep refused to come.
The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating, pressing against my eardrums until Lively let out a groan, his head dropping into his hands. "Fuck. This isn't how it's supposed to go."
"What?" I blurted. My voice came out smaller than I intended, almost lost in the space between us.
He didn't look up, his fingers threading through his hair like he was trying to hold himself together.
"I…I didn't mean for it to go that far. I thought you'd be disgusted with me and leave.
I didn't think that you would…" he trailed off, and a humorless laugh escaped him, bitter and self-deprecating.
"I guess I should've known better than to provoke you.
I didn't want to give you more reason to hate me—"
The words made my breath catch. "I don't hate you," I said quickly, the confession tumbling out before I could stop it.
Another bitter laugh, and this one cut deeper. "Oh, yeah. I guess pitying me kinda cancels that out, huh?"
"What are you talking about—?" But even as I started to ask, I could see the way his shoulders had curved inward, protective and wounded. The way he wouldn't meet my eyes.
He wasn't listening, caught up in his own spiral of self-recrimination.
"I wanted to look cool for you. Always did.
You weren't supposed to see... that .” No, I wasn't quite sure what he was talking about, but I had a good guess.
“But I guess I can't fake it forever. I had a plan, you know?
A real plan to confess my feelings. But now everything's fucked sideways—"
Each word was like watching him tear himself apart, and I couldn't stand it. Couldn't stand the way he was destroying himself over something that was as much my fault as his.
"So... you don't... hate me ?" My question stopped him mid-sentence, cutting through his self-destruction like a blade.
Tension pulled through his frame, every muscle going taut. When he finally spoke, his voice was so quiet I almost missed it. "I could never hate you, Hailey."
The admission hung in the air between us, fragile and devastating. My chest tightened, emotion threatening to spill over.
"Even after everything I said that day?" The question was small…tentative. I didn’t know if I could handle hearing what came after it.
He huffed, a sound that might have been a laugh if it wasn't so broken. "You could carve me hollow, slow as hell, and I'd still call it grace, because it came from you ."
Something in me cracked. My throat tightened, tears pricking at the corners of my eyes. The way he could make even his destruction sound beautiful—it was so quintessentially him that it made my heart ache.
I'm really the worst, aren't I?
"I'm so sorry, Lively." The words felt inadequate, too small for the weight of what I'd done. "I didn't mean it when I called you a lovesick puppy and told you to leave me alone. I was... scared. Angry, yeah, but mostly scared."
"Angry?" The question came out hoarse, confused.
I looked down at my hands, shame burning through my veins. "I thought you rejected me. That time. I thought you were messing with me and I—"
He looked up sharply, and for the first time since we'd entered the room, his eyes met mine. They were wide with shock, pupils dilated. "Rejected you? What?!"
"I know how it sounds," I said, forcing the words past the tightness in my throat. Each syllable felt like broken glass. "But everything in my head was spiraling. And... I guess if I'm being really honest, it wasn't just about that night. It's never been just about that night."
I took a breath, steadying myself for what came next. The truth I'd been running from for years.
"Last night, you said I push people away. And you were right. I push everything—everyone—away because it's the only way I've ever known how to survive."
The confession felt like stripping myself bare, exposing every tender, protected part of myself to his scrutiny. But I couldn't stop now. He deserved this much.
"Mallory and I... we lost our parents when I was seventeen.
Car crash." The words came out flat, clinical, because that was the only way I could say them without breaking apart completely.
"We didn't know if there was any other family, and they weren't exactly soft people to begin with.
I know it makes me sound horrible, but part of me was relieved.
That was before I realized no one was coming.
And suddenly, I had to take care of Mallory for a year while the system figured itself out. "
I could feel his eyes on me, watching every micro-expression, every tell. But I couldn't look at him. Not yet.
"Then the Hartleys came. They wanted to adopt Mallory.
She was ten, already showing signs of FND.
I was eighteen. Legally an adult. Not part of the deal.
" I couldn't move, the gulf between us still serving as a barrier between him and these feelings bubbling over from me.
It was messy, and I figured he didn't deserve to be tainted by any of it.
"But I said yes. Because I couldn't give her what she needed.
And I thought…if I made myself completely independent, if I didn't become another burden, then they might not regret taking us both in. "
I laughed weakly, the sound cracking in the middle.
"So I worked. I performed. I stayed out of their way.
I let them be Mallory's parents, because she needed them.
And I swore I'd pay them back someday. That's why hockey matters to me.
Why I've been clinging to it like it's my whole identity.
Because if I can get into the PWHL—get a good contract—I can finally take care of her on my own. Take the weight off their backs."
My palms were sweating against my jeans, and I rubbed them absently, trying to ground myself. "But I didn't think about what that distance did to them. Or to her. Or to you."
Finally, I looked up again, meeting his gaze. His expression was unreadable, but I could see the wheels turning behind his eyes, processing everything I'd just laid bare.
"No—that's not true. I did think about you. I just didn't trust it. I didn't trust that what you felt for me was real. I thought you were messing with me, or playing some long joke. And that night, when you didn't kiss me, it felt like proof."
His face flushed with disbelief, color rising in his cheeks. "Because you were having a mental breakdown , Hailey."
"I… I know that now ," I rushed, the words tumbling over each other. "But I wasn't thinking clearly then. I…I mean…it was embarrassing. Terrifying. I was…terrified of what it meant to need someone—to want someone—and not have your feelings reciprocated."
Lively went still as fucking stone, barely daring to hold my gaze. The air between us crackled with tension, with all the things we'd never said.
"What feelings?" That question was a dare, thrown down like a gauntlet.
My heart slammed against my ribs. This was it. The moment of truth I'd been running from for the past few weeks.
But when I opened my mouth, only stupid shit came out:
“I’m sorry I pushed you away. I told myself I wanted you gone, and when you actually listened... I thought I'd be fine.” Oh God, what the hell was I doing right now? I just had to say the words. That I had feelings for him.
“But by day three, I couldn't keep lying.
I missed you. I missed your stupid, goofy smiles, your terrible jokes, the way you crowd my personal space, and the way your eyes lit up whenever you saw me.
I missed you ." I was saying instead, and I hoped he could hear the longing in my voice, hoped he could hear all the words I was still struggling to say.
His expression shifted—shock melting into wonder, disbelief warring with hope. It was like watching the sun struggle to rise after the longest night. It was excruciating to witness.
"And I… I just wanted to say I'm sorry," I whispered, the words barely audible.
The moment the words left my mouth, I felt their weight—and how small they sounded, how unfinished. My mouth opened again, grasping for more, for better words, but all that came out was a dry, stammering noise.
"I—It's not just that, I mean—" Get the damn words out!
I glanced down at my shoes, suddenly fascinated by the worn leather. Shifted my weight from foot to foot. Took a breath. Failed to follow through. "I just… I needed to say—" SAY IT! But my throat closed the hell up on me, betraying me at the crucial moment.
The pause must have stretched too long. I heard the faint rustle of him moving... saw him let out a shaky breath, and run a hand through his hair, before pressing the heel of his palm into one eye.
He looked tired .
Not just physically, but in that bone-deep way that spoke of disappointment he'd already prepared himself to feel. The resignation in his posture sent chills down my spine.
"Oh. I—I see. That's... all... you wanted to say." His tone was low, defeated, like he'd already written the ending to this story and it wasn't a happy one.
I blinked, panic flaring in my chest. Oh. Oh . I opened my mouth to counter him, to tell him that I wasn't done talking when he beat me to it:
"I guess I should apologize, too." Those words stilled my chest, freezing the air in my lungs.
"What?" I blinked, staring at the top of his bowed head, at the way his hair fell across his forehead.
"I—I'm sorry... about the kiss…yesterday...and…” his voice grew smaller as the words left his mouth, shoulders hunching in on themselves, “and for making you...jerk me off in the locker room. I didn't mean to put you in that kind of questionable situation—"
My pulse skittered across my nerve endings, the memory of his kiss from last night overlapping with the very recent one of his warmth in my palm, his strained breathing, the way his voice had broken on my name as he came—it all came rushing back in vivid, devastating detail.
"No, it's okay! I should be the one apologizing for that—" I started, that persistent heat reigniting in my lower belly, thrumming in my core like a heartbeat, but he was already shaking his head, a stubborn set to his jaw.
"It's not." The words scraped out of his throat, tortured and raw. "It's not okay, Hailey. I just—" he gestured helplessly between us, the movement jerky and uncoordinated. "You deserve better than... whatever the fuck any of that was. Even if it's not with me—"
He wasn't listening to me because I wasn't saying the right words. Because I was still hiding, still protecting myself when he was laying himself bare. I was breaking him .
No .
I closed the distance between us in a heartbeat, moving before my brain even caught up to the action. I fell to my knees in front of him, the carpet rough against my skin, and cupped his cheeks with trembling hands. My pulse throbbed in my damn throat, making it hard to swallow, hard to breathe.
"Lively." His name was a living thing dancing on my tongue, and I forced his chin up so he could meet my gaze. But he wouldn't look at me, his eyes squeezed shut like a child afraid of facing the truth.
"Look at me," I demanded, my voice stronger than I felt, but he only squeezed them tighter, as if bracing for impact.
But there was only one truth I believed now, and I knew it was the only one he wouldn't want to run from. I just had to say it .
So, I did.
"I love you." He went completely still under my hands, his eyes fluttering behind closed lids. The world seemed to hold its breath with us, suspended in this moment. "I'm saying that I love you, fuckface ."
His eyes snapped open, pupils constricted to pinpricks as he stared at every inch of my face, searching for something—a lie, a joke, any sign that I didn't mean what I'd said.
But I wasn't joking. And neither was I lying. My pulse was literally beating with the truth of those words, drumming them through my entire body like a war song.
"What?" It was one word, escaping like a breath, barely audible even in the silence of the room, but I didn’t back down, or take my words back. No.
I doubled the fuck down.
"I'm done running, Lively. From you. From...from us ." My cheeks burned, my fingers trembled against his skin, but my voice remained steady. I poured every ounce of certainty I could muster into my words, willing him to believe me. "I love you."