Chapter 34
thirty-four
MAYA
The apartment is suffocatingly quiet.
It’s the kind of silence that presses against my eardrums, making me hyper-aware of every small sound, like the hum of the refrigerator, the tick of the clock on the wall, various other bumps and creaks.
But all those sounds feel muffled, distant, like I’m underwater and the world above has continued on without me.
I pull the jersey tighter around myself, and the material against my skin sends an unwelcome jolt of recognition through me.
It’s not just any jersey. It’s his jersey.
The one with HAMILTON printed across the back that feels like a brand against my spine, marking me as the fool who fell for the performance.
God, when did I even put this on?
I should take it off. Burn it. Throw it in the trash with all the other lies.
But I don’t.
Instead, I burrow deeper into it like the pathetic, heartbroken idiot I’ve become. Because this is what I’ve been reduced to—wearing my ex-roommate’s jersey because it still carries the ghost of his scent, while I sit in the apartment that his stuff is still in but he isn’t.
The apartment is pristine now. Every surface gleams. The refrigerator is organized with military precision, my almond milk on the top shelf, my meal-prepped containers lined up like soldiers. His beer is gone. His pizza boxes are gone. His presence has been surgically removed.
Except for the memories that refuse to be cleaned away.
The anger that sustained me for the first forty-eight hours has burned itself out, leaving behind this deep, isolating sadness that sits in my chest like a stone. The righteous fury was easier. It gave me purpose, direction, and something to do with my hands.
Now all I have is this endless loop of memories playing in my mind, each one examined and re-examined like evidence in a case I can’t solve, trying to figure out where the performance ended and the real began. The question torments me, because I don’t know what was real and what was the game.
Every tender moment is now suspect. Every laugh we shared, every quiet morning coffee, every shoulder leaned on, every time he looked at me like I was something precious—all of it is contaminated by that single phrase Rook shouted across the bar.
My phone buzzes on the coffee table, and for one pathetic, desperate second, I hope it’s him.
But it’s Sophie, texting that she’s on her way up.
I don’t have the energy to ask her not to come.
I don’t have the energy for much of anything except this endless autopsy of a relationship that was apparently dead on arrival.
The knock is soft, almost hesitant, like the knock itself is respectful of my grief, treating me like something fragile that might shatter if handled too roughly.
“It’s open,” I call out, my voice rough from disuse.
I haven’t spoken to anyone in two days except to call in sick to my clinical placement. My supervisor’s disapproval practically radiated through the phone, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. Because how am I supposed to take care of patients when I can barely get off this couch?
Sophie enters carrying a tea tray like some sort of emotional rescue mission—Earl Grey, from the smell of it—and the simple kindness of it makes my throat tight.
Fuck knows I don’t deserve it after how I treated her at the club or when she’d tried to call me after I stormed out of O’Neil’s, but here she is anyway.
“Hey,” she says softly, setting the tray on the coffee table as her eyes take in the scene.
She doesn’t comment on the jersey at all, which is how I know it’s bad bad. Sophie would normally have thoughts about me wearing the enemy’s colors. Instead, she just pours the tea, adding the single sugar I like, and hands me the mug.
The warmth seeps into my cold fingers, and I realize I’ve been sitting here so long I’ve gone numb. Everything feels numb except for the constant ache in my chest, like something vital has been carved out and I’m slowly bleeding internally, but can’t be bothered doing anything to fix it.
Sophie settles beside me on the couch, close but not touching, giving me the option of contact. For a long moment, we just sit there, the silence between us more comfortable than the oppressive quiet I’ve been drowning in for days now, too proud and hurt and stubborn to ask anyone for help.
“I talked to Mike,” she begins, her voice gentle, testing the waters.
My reaction is immediate and visceral.
I raise my hand, a weak gesture that still manages to convey stop .
“Don’t.” My voice comes out as barely a whisper. “Sophie, please.”
She pauses, and I can feel her watching me, cataloging the damage. I must look like hell. I haven’t showered in two days. Haven’t eaten anything of substance, either. The irony that I’m a nursing student who can’t even take care of herself isn’t lost on me.
“I don’t want to hear that he’s sorry, or that he’s hurting,” I continue, each word feeling deep and raw. “It doesn’t… it doesn’t change anything.”
The words are firm, but there’s no venom in them. Because I’m not angry anymore. I’m just… empty. Hollowed out. Like someone took a spoon and scraped out everything soft and hopeful, everything strong and vibrant, leaving only the shell.
Sophie nods, respecting the boundary even though I can see she wants to push. It’s what makes her such a good nurse and such a good friend. But right now, she’s reading the room, seeing that I’m not ready for whatever information she’s carrying about Maine.
Even thinking his name sends a fresh wave of pain through me.
Instead of pushing, she does something unexpected.
She sets down her tea and shifts closer, wrapping an arm around my shoulders.
The touch is warm, solid, real in a way nothing has felt real since that night at O’Neil’s.
She doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t try to fix it or explain it away or tell me everything will be OK.
She just holds me.
And that simple, unconditional physical comfort is what finally breaks through the wall I’ve built around my heart. And, a few moments later, the tears come quietly, sliding down my cheeks in hot tracks that drip onto the jersey I shouldn’t be wearing.
I collapse against her, my body folding into hers like I’m trying to disappear.
She adjusts, pulling me closer, her hand rubbing slow circles on my back.
The maternal gesture undoes me further. When was the last time someone just held me without wanting something?
Without conditions or expectations or agendas?
Maine did. On the kitchen floor.
The thought comes unbidden, and I push it away with extreme vengeance, but it keeps coming back. That night after my patient died, when I was nothing but a mess of grief and professional doubt, he sat with me, held me, and asked for nothing in return.
But he was playing a game.
Was he?
The internal argument is exhausting.
Everything is exhausting.
I don’t know what was real and what was fake.
And that’s the hardest pain of all.
We stay like that for a long time, my silent tears soaking into Sophie’s sweater while she murmurs nonsense comfort sounds.
Eventually, the tears slow, leaving me feeling wrung out and hollow.
The shame surfaces then—shame at how I’ve acted, how I’ve pushed her away, how I’ve been such a terrible friend.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper against her shoulder. “For how I acted. I’ve been a shitty friend.”
Sophie pulls back just enough to look at me, her hands on my shoulders. “You’re allowed to be a mess,” she says firmly. “That’s what I’m here for.”
The simple acceptance makes my eyes burn again, and as we settle back into the couch, I can feel Sophie gathering herself for something. She’s got that look—the one that means she’s about to say something I don’t want to hear but need to—and, this time, I figure she’s earned it.
“What he did with that bet?” she starts, her voice careful but steady. “It was unforgivable, and you have every right to be furious.”
I nod, waiting for the but that I know is coming.
“But…” There it is. “Chloe’s really sick, Maya. The doctors are talking about last-ditch experimental treatments, and his family can’t afford it.”
The words cut through my grief.
Chloe. That pale, fragile girl who could barely breathe but who had a bright smile and looked at Maine like he was Superman. The girl he was so gentle with, who he’s sacrificed so much for, who managed to strip away the Maine Show and show the real man beneath. The girl whose blanket?—
My eyes drop to the quilt sitting over my legs. The patchwork of faded florals that he draped over me that night when I fell asleep studying. The sacred thing from his most authentic self, which he hadn’t managed to pick up yet and take to Mike’s apartment.
Hadn’t managed? Or hadn’t wanted to?
“How sick?” I hear myself ask, even though knowing will make everything harder.
“ICU sick,” Sophie says quietly. “When he’s not sleeping on our couch, he’s been in the hospital room.”
The image forms in my mind before I can stop it: Maine, folded into one of those uncomfortable hospital chairs, still wearing yesterday’s clothes, dark circles under his eyes.
The performer, the loudmouth, the charmer, the player—all of it stripped away, leaving just a terrified brother keeping vigil.
“Was it the night of the fight?” I ask, recalling his distraction at O’Neil’s and the way he’d looked hollowed out even before Rook’s announcement shattered everything. “He told me she was sick when we were… having our discussion… but I didn’t give him time to give me specifics.”
“Two days before,” Sophie confirms. “He’d just gotten back from the hospital when…”
Her voice trails off, and we sit in silence for a moment. I don’t have the energy to lead off the next phase of conversation, so overwhelmed by grief and now an added sadness for Chloe, but I can feel Sophie building up to something. She’s choosing her words carefully, like she’s defusing a bomb.
“Yes, he fucked up monumentally,” she finally says. “But Maya… you saw him with his sister. You saw him on the floor of your kitchen.” She pauses, and her next words are gentle but devastating. “So I want you to ask yourself a question: was that man a fake?”
The question hangs in the air between us.
Impossible to answer and impossible to ignore.
I want to say yes. It would be easier if I could paint him entirely in black, make him the villain of this story.
But I can’t. Because I saw him. Not the performer, not the player, but him.
The exhausted man counting pennies. The terrified brother.
The guy who couldn’t say he needed me but whose eyes begged for it anyway.
“I don’t know,” I whisper, and it’s the most honest thing I’ve said in days. “I don’t know what was real.”
Sophie squeezes my hand. “Maybe it all was. Maybe he started playing a game and ended up playing himself. Maybe the bet became meaningless the second he actually got to know you, but he was in so deep he couldn’t get out, and was too proud to admit it or ask for help.”
“Or maybe he’s just that good of an actor.”
“Do you really believe that?”
I want to.
God, I want to believe he’s just a master manipulator.
Because then I could hate him cleanly, purely, without all these complications.
But I keep coming back to moments that felt too raw to be performed. All the moments we’d cared for each other, in ways big and small. And the way he looked at me that last night we were together, when I told him I needed him, like I was something precious he didn’t deserve.
“I don’t know what I believe anymore,” I admit.
Sophie doesn’t push further than that, which I’m glad about. She just holds my hand while I sit there in his jersey, under his sister’s blanket, surrounded by the ghost of something that might have been real or might have been the cruelest illusion of my life.
And now I’m just lost, holding onto fragments of Maine Hamilton and trying to figure out if any of them were true.