Chapter Fifty-Five
Declan
His confession ricochets through my skull.
“In over your head?” Each word is slow, calculated, the anger in my blood damn near volatile. “If you were struggling, you should’ve come to me. I might not have been able to help, but I would’ve been there for you.”
“How could I come to you to tell you the dream I always wanted was slowly sucking the life from me? It was my dream, Declan. The thing you never got to—”
“Don’t.” I step closer, hands fisting by my sides. “Don’t you dare use my injury as the excuse that lets you off the hook.”
He flinches, and movement flickers at the corner of my eye.
Lockie shifts, weight steady like he’s ready if needed.
Cooper shakes his head, the barest of movements, and it pisses me off how fast my instincts betray me.
How fast I want to step back, soften, fix it. Make it seem like I’m not a threat.
As if I fucking could be.
“Losing hockey fucking gutted me. That accident ripped my whole damn life out from under my feet. Everything I worked for? Gone. In one hit. But I was ready to be jealous as hell and proud as fuck if it meant I got to stand beside you while you lived your dream.
“I wanted to be there for all of it, Cooper. The late-night calls after your first show. The ridiculous virtual tour of your tour bus. The frantic texts before you went onstage and nearly threw up from nerves. I wanted every second. The good. The bad. All of it. Because it was you.”
Cold air claws down my throat, but it’s nothing compared to the sight of him, the broken, hollowed-out version of the boy I loved standing in front of me.
“But you decided I couldn’t handle it. Not me,” I say, voice dropping into something quiet, lethal. “You took my fucking choice away.”
“I didn’t think—”
My vision blurs at the edges, that sharp, twisting ache stabbing deep under my ribs. I grit my teeth hard enough to taste metal. He doesn’t get to see me break. Not for this.
“I don’t give a fuck what you thought,” I snap, my control finally fracturing. “You don’t get to disappear, and then show up years later, acting like you’re the only one who’s been hurting.”
He stumbles, boot catching on a clump of overgrown grass. His shadow doesn’t ask permission this time—the giant, silent guy trailing him—steps forward like he’s ready to intervene.
“No,” Cooper chokes out, throwing an arm out blindly. “It’s okay. I’m fine. We’re fine.”
I bark a harsh laugh and move away from Cooper. “We’re really not.”
The guy freezes, eyes flicking between us, but doesn’t move again. Just lingers like this is all fucking normal.
Dragging a hand over my jaw, my beard scrapes my fingertips, grounding me enough to keep talking instead of yelling. “I would’ve gotten over it. The jealousy. The bitterness. Because it was you, Cooper.”
He breaks. I see it happen—the collapse in his shoulders, the way his dark, sunken eyes squeeze shut.
“I thought I was doing the right thing,” he whispers, and even though I’m so angry with him right now, I hate how small it sounds.
“Yeah? Well, congratulations,” I deadpan. “You didn’t just lose yourself, Cooper. You lost me too.”
Turning, I head toward the trail, the wind snapping at my jacket.
“Declan, please.” His voice breaks, pain and vulnerability bleeding from the cracks. “I’m sorry.”
I tell myself to keep going, get in my truck like I should have done the first time, and leave. But I look back. Just once. He looks gutted, wrecked, so raw it feels like looking into my own reflection. And some sick, traitorous part of me hates how much that still hits.
“You know what really hurts the most?” I say, voice steady, but my throat burns. “I never wanted you as Reign.” Jaw tight, I shake my head. “I only ever wanted Cooper.”
Forcing myself to walk, even though everything in me screams to stay, to turn around, grab him, ask why it couldn’t have been different. Branches whip past, boots crunching over sticks, the echo of his voice aching like the scar that still burns.
I hate him for what he did.
I hate him for standing there looking so ruined.
But I hate him most because there’s still a part of me that wants to go back—a part that’s never stopped loving him, no matter how hard I tried.
But wanting him doesn’t undo the years of silence, so I keep walking. I don’t go back. I can’t.