Chapter 24 – Lena
chapter
twenty-four
Lena
Two weeks without Trace. Fourteen days of pretending I wasn't scanning every room for his face.
Fourteen days of catching myself scanning the quad for a tall frame and dark hair before my brain caught up with my pride.
Fourteen days of my stupid heart doing a full gymnastics routine every time my phone buzzed, only for it to be Kimmy asking if I wanted Chipotle or the campus wellness center reminding me about flu shots.
Pathetic. You are absolutely pathetic, Hartwell.
He'd texted me.
Five times the first day.
Three the second.
Then once a day for a week, short messages that I read and didn't answer.
I'm sorry. Can we talk? Please, Lena. Then the texts stopped, and somehow the silence was worse than the asking.
He was still saved in my phone as Asshole. I hadn't changed it. Hadn't deleted him either. Which was its own special brand of delusional.
Kimmy had clocked the shift in me almost immediately. Three days after the Trevor incident, when I'd chosen to stay in my room color-coding flashcards while she went out, she planted herself on my bed like a tiny redheaded therapist staging a one-woman intervention.
"This is an intervention," she'd said, crossing her legs and fixing me with that look — the one that made her seem thirty instead of twenty-one.
"You know that I love Studious Lena, but you're now verging on Sad Sack Lena, and it's not a good look.
" She'd squeezed my hand, her kind expression completely at odds with her mouth.
"Whatever happened with Jock Boy, just know that I'm on your side.
But maybe give him another chance to explain? "
I'd shaken my head. Because how was I supposed to explain any of it?
That while I'd been falling in love. Actually, stupidly, recklessly falling, he'd been managing a PR crisis.
That I'd watched two grown men throw punches over me on my own doorstep like I was something to be won instead of someone with a pulse and opinions and feelings.
"He lied to me, Kimmy. About something important."
She'd picked at a loose thread on my comforter for a long moment. "Honey, all men lie. The question is whether it was a lie that mattered, or a lie because he was scared of losing you."
I'd stared at the ceiling, textbook abandoned on my chest, and turned that over. Scared of losing me. Was that what it had been? Not some calculated PR move but just a boy who'd finally gotten the girl he wanted and was terrified of the one thing that could take her away?
It didn't matter. Scared or not, he'd still lied. And I'd still found out because his brother showed up and called me a whore on my front steps.
So there's that.
I'd wanted to believe her. God, I'd wanted there to be some explanation that didn't make me feel this stupid.
But every time I replayed it — Trevor's mouth twisting around that word, Trace's fist connecting with his jaw, both of them going at each other while I stood there like a prop in their family drama — my stomach clenched all over again.
Weeks later, and I was still carrying that around.
Trevor, at least, I hadn't had to see. Though he did send flowers. And a note — three paragraphs of careful, lawyer-adjacent language that read like someone else had written it for him, apologizing for calling me a whore.
Typical Trevor.
Grand gesture, zero self-awareness. He'd always been emotionally dysregulated and took things out on the nearest target. I hadn't seen how bad it was until I was out.
If I'd felt his coldness when we were dating, after we broke up it got worse.
Far worse.
The flowers were expensive — some elaborate arrangement of roses and lilies that probably cost more than my textbooks for the semester. They smelled incredible and meant absolutely nothing.
I gave them to Kimmy. The note I tossed.
"You know," Kimmy had said, arranging the bouquet in her pink vase because Kimmy never met a flower she didn't love, "these are gorgeous, but they're also guilt flowers.
Classic fuckboy move." She'd snipped a stem and angled it just so.
"The question is, why is he feeling guilty enough to send them? "
I hadn't answered, but I knew. Trevor felt guilty because he'd blown up whatever fragile truce existed between him and his brother. Not because he'd hurt me. I was just collateral damage in Coulter World.
Right now I was over everything Coulter.
That's not true. You miss him.
I shoved my laptop off my thighs and pulled my knees to my chest, pressing my forehead against them until the ache behind my eyes dulled.
Because yeah. The stupid voice was right.
I missed Trace. I missed his laugh, the way he'd steal fries off my plate and look genuinely offended when I called him on it.
The weight of his hand in mine. The way he looked at me sometimes, mid-conversation, like he'd forgotten what he was saying because he was too busy just — looking.
Stop. You're making it worse.
I missed how my body felt next to his. Like something clicked into place that I hadn't even known was out of alignment. And that was the part I couldn't think about without my chest doing something embarrassing, so I mostly didn't.
The hickey on my collarbone had faded to nothing by day four.
I'd checked for it in the mirror every morning like an unhinged person, watching the purple go yellow go skin-colored, pressing my fingers to the spot each time like I could will it to stay.
When it was finally gone, I stood there in the bathroom with two fingers on bare skin and felt the loss of it in a way that made me want to slap myself.
You're mourning a bruise. A bruise, Hartwell. Get professional help.
The loneliness was the worst part. I'd gone from having just Kimmy and a handful of department friends to having — people.
People who said hi in the quad. People who stopped to chat in the student center.
Trace's social gravity had just pulled me into orbit, and for three weeks I'd been part of something bigger.
His teammates and their girlfriends, parties and events and group texts and a social life that extended beyond the library walls.
And then, gone. Back to invisible.
Well, not entirely. Marli had texted twice asking if I wanted to grab coffee. I'd said I was busy both times. One of the hockey guys' girlfriends had waved at me in the dining hall and I'd suddenly become very interested in my phone screen.
But there was one person who didn’t take the hint.
Waylon had started leaving things at my dorm — no notes, no explanations.
A protein bar tucked under the doormat on Monday.
A to-go cup of my coffee order on Wednesday, still warm, with a Post-it that just said eat.
A bag of the fancy granola from that place on Main Street on Friday.
I knew it was him because nobody else would bother, and because the Post-it handwriting was the same chicken scratch from the tutoring sign-up sheets he ran for the team.
He never texted. Never asked to talk. Just kept showing up with food, like a six-foot-three stray cat who’d decided I was his responsibility now.
I was ripping out every connection I'd built in three weeks, and I knew exactly what I was doing. Easier to tear it down myself than sit around waiting for the inevitable.
And joy of joys there was the damn video.
God, the video. Some freshman's shaky phone footage of the Coulter brothers beating the shit out of each other on my dorm steps.
It had bounced through every group chat on campus for two days.
Two days of whispers in the dining hall.
Two days of people I didn't know saying my name.
Two days of walking into rooms and watching conversations stop like someone had hit pause on a remote.
"You're doing that thing again," Kimmy had said just yesterday, watching me push a yogurt around with a spoon instead of eating it — the same sad lunch Trace would have side-eyed and then quietly replaced with actual food.
"The thing where you make yourself smaller so it won't hurt as much when people disappoint you. "
"I'm not making myself smaller."
"Babe, you've attended exactly zero social events in two weeks.
You turned down three study groups because you didn't want to 'impose.
' You're literally shrinking before my eyes.
" She'd reached across the table and flicked my forehead hard enough to sting.
"Stop it. You're allowed to take up space in the world, with or without Trace Coulter. "
But that was the thing. For three weeks, I'd actually believed that.
That I deserved to take up space, that people wanted me around for me and not just because I was next to him.
Without Trace, I was back to Friday nights in the library and lunch at the table by the emergency exit that nobody fought me for.
The girl who'd gotten so good at being invisible she'd forgotten she had a choice. Who was so scared of taking up space she'd volunteered to be swallowed by the walls.
Which was why I kept walking when someone called my name outside the student center. Backpack hiked up, eyes on the pavement, earbuds in even though nothing was playing. I did not want to have some inane conversation about a party I would not be attending.
But whoever it was didn't give up. "Lena Hartwell."
I stopped. Turned. A student wouldn't full-name me like that.
The woman walking toward me was in her late forties, maybe early fifties, with close-cropped silver hair and the kind of lean, muscular build that screamed athlete even in slacks and a cashmere sweater.
Tall — nearly my height. She was smiling, and something about the way she moved — economical, balanced, weight centered — triggered a memory I couldn't quite grab.
Then she got closer and my brain caught up.
Holy fucking shit.
Tammy Coulter.
Tammy freaking Coulter!