Chapter 48
Rhys
It's Monday morning and Jamie has been silent.
We spent the whole day in my room. He slept over.
I fell asleep with his arm around me thinking — for the first time in a long time — that maybe I'd gotten this right.
And then I woke up and he was gone. No note.
No text. Just the cold side of the bed and his smell still on my pillow and the front door closed behind him like he was never there.
I texted him.
He said nothing.
I called him twice.
He said nothing.
I sent one word.
Because what else do you say. I am not going to beg. I did that once — in a different room, with a different captain — and I know how it ends and I am not doing it again. I am not going to beg someone to be there for me. I am not going to beg for attention.
I’m not going to beg for love.
I just wish someone would choose me.
I can't go through that pain again.
But God, I want him to choose me.
Not accidentally.
Not halfway.
Not only when it’s easy or dark outside or nobody’s looking.
Fully.
There’s something deeply humiliating about how badly I want that from him.
Like some pathetic part of me still believes if I can just be good enough — easy enough, lovable enough, worth enough — maybe one day he’ll look at me and it won’t feel like a decision anymore.
Maybe loving me won’t cost him anything.
Maybe it’ll be natural. Immediate. Easy.
I put my phone face down on the bed before I can do something embarrassing like text him again. Then I lie there staring at the ceiling, waiting for the feeling to loosen its grip around my ribs.
It doesn’t.
It just sits there.
Heavy and ugly and alive.
I stay in my room until I can’t stand being inside my own head anymore. Then I get up and go to the kitchen and Blake is there, coffee already made, laptop closed, sitting in a way that says he heard me not sleeping through the wall all morning and has been waiting.
He looks at me.
I sit down across from him.
He pushes a mug toward me.
Neither of us says anything for a minute.
"He left," I say.
"I know. I heard the door. Tried to talk to him."
"He didn’t say anything."
"I know."
"I called him twice." I look at the table. "He didn't pick up. Didn't text back. I sent him one word and got nothing and I—" I stop. Press my thumb into the ceramic. "I know what this is. I know it."
"Rhys—"
"I know what it feels like when someone decides you're too much and starts looking for the exit. I've felt it before. I fucking know it."
Blake is quiet. "He's not Marcus," he says.
"I know he's not Marcus." I look up at him.
"I've been telling myself that for months.
He's not Marcus. He's different. He means whatever he says. He’s so closed off I had to break him open to even get a piece of him.
" I put the mug down. "And then he did the exact same thing Marcus did. I think Jamie would rather bleed out than admit he wants something. That he wants me.”
"One morning—"
"It's not just one morning." I shake my head.
"It's what one morning means. It means that the second this got real he ran.
That's always the pattern. Everything's fine until it gets too real and then I'm the problem. I knew. I knew going in. I made the rule for a reason. And he kept showing me how scared he was and I kept letting it happen.”
"But you did it anyway," Blake says.
"Yeah," I say. "I did."
"Because you trust him."
I look at my hands. "Because I was stupid."
"Because you were brave." He leans forward. "There's a difference and you know it."
I don't say anything.
"Rhys." He waits until I look at him. "I was there when you got here, all broken and torn up.
You built everything back. From nothing.
By yourself. And then Jamie Nash made you want to try again and you did it scared and that is not being stupid.
That's you still being you after everything and everyone tried to take that away. "
My eyes burn.
"What if he doesn't choose me?" I ask. “Blake, I wish for fucking once, someone would just love me enough.”
There it is, the whole truth. Raw.
"Then you survive it," he says. "The way you survived before. And I’ll be here for you, always.
But I don't think that's what this is." He pauses.
"I think he's drowning in something and it has nothing to do with whether he wants you.
" Another pause. "Has he ever told you anything? About his life. His family."
"Pieces," I say. "His dad was hard on him. Bad childhood." I pause. "That's about it. He gives you these windows and then closes them so fast you think you imagined them being open."
"And you?" Blake says. "Have you told him everything?"
"No." I close my eyes. "I can't. It hurts too much to say out loud. The parts I've said have already cost me so much—" I stop. "I can't keep bleeding and tearing myself open for people who might not stay."
Blake nods slowly. "I hear that," he says. He gets up. Picks up his jacket off the back of the chair.
"Blake," I plead.
"I'm just going for a walk."
"You're going to his dorm."
"He needs someone to push him," he says. "And you won't do it because you're protecting yourself. So."
"Blake, you don't have to—"
"I know I don't have to." He picks up his keys. "I want to." He looks at me from the doorway. "You still being willing to try after everything you've been through — that really means something. Someone should tell him that."
He leaves. I put my head down on the table and stay there for a while.