Chapter 64 I Need Some Air
I Need Some Air
Cohen
“Let’s get out of here, Co.”
Grace’s voice is quiet but steady.
She doesn’t ask where. She doesn’t ask why I look like a man who’s just watched his own execution. She just knows I need to run—and she’s coming with me.
We move away from the cheering crowd, from the cotton-candy-pink bus, from Aunt Tina’s shrill voice interviewing someone.
We walk until we reach a quiet corner of the resort, behind the ski equipment storage buildings. No cameras here. Just the low hum of generators and the cold biting into my skin.
I drop onto an overturned wooden crate, elbows on my knees, and bury my face in my hands.
Darkness presses against my eyelids.
I failed.
It’s the only thought looping through my head.
You failed.
I’ve been trying for days. Days of forcing myself to be a decent person. Of not being the possessive caveman. Of not suffocating her. I swallowed jealousy, turned anger into jokes, gave her space.
And then, at the first real test—at the first ghost of the past—I shattered.
Grace sits beside me without a word. After a moment she leans into my shoulder and threads her arm through mine, warm and sure inside that pale-blue coat.
We used to do this as kids.
Parents screaming downstairs. Me hauling her into my room and shutting the door like it could keep the world out.
Only now I’m the one making everything loud.
“Is this about her?” Grace asks softly. “Sloane.”
Sloane.
Just hearing her name hurts—sharp, physical, right under my sternum—like someone reached in and ripped something out that I didn’t even know I needed until it was gone.
“Yeah,” I admit, my voice rough, muffled by my palms.
“Did she break your heart?”
I lower my hands and stare at the white sky.
“I don’t know, Gracie. To have your heart broken, you kind of need to have a whole one first. And I’m not sure I ever did.”
She lightly punches my arm. “Cut it out. Don’t get dramatic. What happened?”
“She told me the truth,” I say, and the words taste bitter as bile. “She told me why she was there the night we met. It wasn’t fate. It wasn’t attraction. It was… shock therapy. She wanted to forget her ex.”
I rake a hand through my hair, pulling hard until pain sparks—anything to distract me from what’s inside.
“I was the perfect toy. The distraction. The rebound.”
“Co—”
“And now he’s back. And she panicked. And I…”
I stop, feeling the anger rise again. That hot, possessive, irrational anger that almost made me punch a man on national television.
“I’m turning into him, Grace.”
Grace straightens, frowning. “Him who? The ex?”
“No. Dad.”
I spit the word like poison.
She pulls away sharply, eyes wide.
“Don’t ever say that again. Don’t you dare.”
“It’s true!” I snap, jumping to my feet and pacing through the snow.
“I’m jealous. I’m possessive. I felt this black rage, Grace—this urge to destroy everything just because he’s here.
And he’s a complete asshole. I hate him.
I hate what he says, what he does—I can only imagine how badly he made her feel when they were together.
I tried to control myself, but inside… inside I was a monster.
I wanted to punch him. I almost did. You saw how I grabbed him during the tree challenge.
How I shoved him. And I still want to punch him—maybe even more now.
And I’m fucking jealous. I wanted to lock her in a room and not let her out until she swore I was the only one who existed. ”
I stop in front of her, hands shaking.
“I’m like Dad. A selfish manipulator who thinks people are property.”
“Stop.”
Grace’s voice is firm. She stands and plants herself in front of me. She’s small, fragile—but right now, she’s a rock.
She cups my face with her freezing hands and forces me to look at her.
“You are not Dad.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“It’s easy for me to say because I know. Dad is a cheating asshole. Dad manipulates women for his ego, uses them like trophies, then tosses them aside when he’s bored. Dad has never protected anyone in his life except himself. Dad is like Sloane’s ex—and she ran from him. You—”
She squeezes my cheeks, keeping my gaze locked on hers.
“You’re jealous? Of course you’re jealous, idiot. You’re in love. It’s normal to want to punch the guy who hurt the person you love. That doesn’t make you a monster, Cohen. It makes you human.”
“I don’t want to be like this,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “I don’t want to make her feel trapped. I don’t want to be the reason she hurts.”
“She’s not hurting because of that, idiot. And don’t use the ‘I’m like Dad’ excuse to run away just because you’re scared you’re not enough for her.”
I freeze.
My breath catches in my throat.
Grace hit the target—burying the knife exactly where it hurts most.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” she continues, her tone softening. “You’ve always thought she was too much for you.”
I sink back onto the crate, defeated.
“I’ve had this damn voice in my head,” I admit, staring at the dirty snow. “From the very beginning. She’s perfect. A dream. She’s smart, classy, she’s… luminous. She walks like the world owes her something—and it does. And me?”
I spread my arms, gesturing at myself, at my mess.
“I’m the Becker problem child. The bad boy. The broken one. The guy who only knows how to kick a ball and screw things up.”
I close my eyes, and Sloane hits me all at once. Not the composed, untouchable Sloane—but the one from that night. Unreal. Like an angel.
“It was different with her, Grace.” I murmur. “That night at the club—I didn’t even know her name. I didn’t know who she was. I just looked at her and thought—holy shit. This isn’t real.”
I press a hand to my chest.
Something clicked in my chest. Something I’d never felt before.
And realizing that, for her, I might’ve started out as nothing more than a way not to think about another man—
it guts me.
Grace sits back down beside me and takes my hand, squeezing it tight.
“Okay,” she says gently. “Yeah. That hurts. I get it. But think for a second, thick skull.”
She leans in, eyes serious.
“If you were just a distraction… why would she tell you?”
I look at her, thrown. “What?”
“If she only wanted to use you, she could’ve kept lying,” Grace says. “She could’ve played happy couple, won the show, taken the money, and walked away clean. Why blow everything up now? Why risk losing you?”
I think about it.
About the moment behind the chalet.
The way Sloane couldn’t stop shaking.
The way she wouldn’t look at me.
Like saying it out loud might break her in half.
She was terrified.
“Because she couldn’t keep pretending,” I murmur.
Grace nods. “Exactly. Because she cares. Because she doesn’t want something real built on a lie.”
She squeezes my hand again.
“She told you the truth because she respects you, Cohen. And because she’s probably just as scared as you are.”
She tilts her head, studying me.
“She might’ve gone out that night to numb the pain. Fine. But then what? Bringing us to Dominic’s. Helping me. The way she looks at you like you’re the only person in the room?”
Grace snorts softly.
“That’s not fake, Co.”
Something in my chest loosens. Not much—but enough to breathe.
“Listen to me,” she says. “You’re broken? Fine. Welcome to the club. Pick up the pieces. But don’t you dare walk away now.”
She nudges my boot with hers.
“Don’t leave her alone just because you’re scared you’re not enough.”
I look at my sister.
She’s grown. Strong. And somehow a hell of a lot wiser than me.
I stand slowly. The cold has locked my muscles stiff, but there’s warmth under it now—quiet, stubborn.
The jealousy’s still there.
The hurt too.
But there’s something else now.
Not certainty.
Possibility.
Sloane told me the truth knowing it could cost her everything.
And if it’s real—if this is real—
then it’s worth fighting for.
“You’re a pain in the ass,” I tell Grace, pulling her into a tight hug.
She laughs into my shoulder. “And you’re a mess. But you’re my mess.”
I pull back and glance toward the parking lot, where the crowd is starting to thin.
Julian Heart and Sloane have to be somewhere out there.
I picture her leaning into him, small, shaken.
I can’t leave her like that.
I can’t let her believe I disappeared—that I walked away when things got har.
“Go,” Grace says, giving me a push. “I’m hunting for free food. You go get your girl.”
I nod.
I draw a breath, square my shoulders, and start walking.
I won’t be my father.
I’ll be better.
And I’ll prove it—even if it takes everything I’ve got.