Chapter Seventy
Declan
I don’t know where I’m going. All I know is I needed to get out of there.
One second, I’m pushing out of the bar, and the next, I’m pulling up to the rink parking lot. My hands stay wrapped around the wheel long after the engine cuts off, knuckles white, the cool air from outside seeping in.
I’ve imagined Cooper saying those words the way I’ve always wished he would more times than I can count. In the dark. Drunk. Sober. When we were eighteen and dumb, when he left, when I pretended to move on.
And tonight, he just said them like they were easy. Like those words weren’t eating away at me for years, wanting desperately to come out.
The windows start to fog, the floodlights outside the rink distorted through the panes.
Cooper loves me.
A huff leaves me, broken and alone. Because it’s not enough.
Cooper is a rock star. A name on billboards, a face on the front of magazines, a life in cities I’ve only ever seen in movies. He can’t stay here. And I can’t follow him.
Pressing my forehead to the steering wheel, I shut my eyes.
Cooper loves me.
After all these years, he fucking loves me.
And it still doesn’t change a thing.
Because he’s going to leave. Again. And I can’t lose him all over again.
Turning on the engine, I pull back out onto the street and make the slow drive to the one place I wish I didn't have to.