Chapter 32
thirty-two
MORGAN
The slap of my running shoes against frozen pavement creates a brutal metronome, each impact sending shockwaves up my shins that I welcome like penance. The November air cuts into my lungs, cold enough to make my teeth ache, and sharp enough that each inhale feels like a knife to the chest.
That feels somehow fitting.
But it's not enough.
Not nearly enough to overcome the pain of three hundred pairs of eyes watching my humiliation, each of them looking at me with pity after witnessing one of my lowest moments on the big screen. All thanks to him weaponizing my team's poverty—and my one moment of weakness—for applause.
My quadriceps are already burning at mile seven, lactic acid building like poison in my muscle fibers, but I push harder. My pace ratchets up from punishing to destructive, fast enough that my Garmin starts beeping warnings about heart rate zones I’m choosing to ignore. 170. 175. 180.
You were right to run from him.
The thought loops through my head in time with my footfalls.
It's like a fuel source that sits in my brain and supplies the rest of my body with enough rage to power a small city.
Because at every fucking opportunity, James proves to me that he's the least reliable, most chaotic, and most selfish man on the planet.
You were right to ghost him.
For weeks since I fled that library study room—since he’d fucked me against a desk and momentarily made me forget every carefully constructed defense I’d ever built—I’ve been second-guessing myself. Because what if he has changed, and what if we could have a future?
The muscle memory still wakes me up at night. The feel of his calloused hands roaming over my body, the taste of his mouth, and the way he’d looked at me like I was something worth studying, worth understanding, and worth keeping forever despite our past.
I’d started to doubt my instincts, like maybe I’d overreacted when I stormed out and then doubled down each time I deleted his texts. But last night proved my instincts were dead on and that my brain does know better than my body when it comes to what's good for me.
I round the corner onto the north campus path, my favorite stretch because it’s all uphill and hurts like hell. My hamstrings are screaming now, joining the symphony of protest from every major muscle group, because this isn’t training, it’s punishment.
He’s still the same boy who breaks beautiful things for applause.
The words pulse through me with each stride, nailing shut any crack in my armor where hope might have tried to crawl through.
Those glimpses I’d caught—the quiet focus during our study sessions, the way he’d stood up to Galloway like my honor was worth risking his eligibility—were just part of the show.
They had to be.
Because the real James is the one who stood on that stage last night, beaming under the spotlights while he turned my team’s struggle into inspiration porn for donors. While he made us their charity case of the month, taking my dignity and auctioning it off for tax-write-offs.
A second set of footsteps falls into rhythm beside me, and I don’t need to look to know who it is. Mills has this particular stride—shorter than mine but twice as determined, like she’s personally negotiating with gravity for every inch of forward motion.
“I don't want to talk.” I grit the words out between breaths, not breaking pace, and not daring to stop even though sweat is already freezing in my hair.
“Copy that.” Mills matches my speed without visible effort. “I’m coming with you anyway.”
We pound through three blocks of campus in loaded silence, our synchronized breathing the only sound in the pre-dawn darkness. The streetlights cast long shadows that we chase and abandon in steady rhythm. I can feel her building up to say something, and I brace for her analysis.
“James' speech last night was a fail of epic proportions,” she finally says, her words clipped between footfalls. “Acknowledge that first.”
“No shit.”
“But here’s where it doesn’t make sense.” She doesn’t even sound winded. “Explain the supplies and the fact he confronted Galloway…"
I can't, so I deflect. “He put me in a fucking zoo, Mills.
Did you see their faces? The way they looked at us after?
" I scoff. "Professor Wellington actually asked if we needed her to organize a clothing drive, like we're the campus charity cases rather than elite athletes who just want to be funded like the others…”
“I’m not saying the execution wasn’t fucked—”
“It wasn’t fucked, it was calculated.” The words come out in angry bursts between increasingly ragged breaths.
“It was him doing what he always does—making himself the hero of someone else’s story.
Because he doesn’t give a shit about our program, he gives a shit about being the guy who saved our program. ”
My legs are approaching failure now, that telltale wobble that means my fast-twitch fibers are shot.
My form is deteriorating—heel-striking instead of midfoot, shoulders climbing toward my ears.
But I push harder, fast enough that Mills has to actually work to keep up, her breathing finally showing effort.
Mills lets me simmer in my anger for a few minutes.
As we run, the trees around us are starting to emerge from the darkness, that grey pre-dawn light that makes everything look like a photocopy of itself.
Then her voice drops into that analytical tone she uses when she’s about to deliver a crushing check.
“Let’s accept your hypothesis," she says. "He’s a selfish bastard who only cares about personal glory and getting laughs from the crowd.”
“He is.” My voice cracks on the assessment, throat raw from the cold air and something else I won’t name.
“He's not.” She forces me to slow at the next intersection, her hand shooting out to grab my elbow when I try to blow through the red light. Her fingers are surprisingly warm against my ice-cold skin, and I realize I can’t feel my fingertips. “He's not, Morgan…"
I scoff and shake my head. "Bullshit."
“Process the information, Morgan,” Mills says, and then she’s peeling off.
Her footsteps fade down the path toward the east campus dorms, leaving me alone with logic that’s dismantling my entire defensive system. But I don't want to process everything she's trying to tell me, so I just push myself harder, running fast enough that cognitive processing becomes impossible.
The familiar landmarks of campus blur past—the science building where I hid from him and spied on his friendships, the library where everything went sideways, the rink where I’ve built my entire identity around being untouchable, invulnerable, and safe.
But I can’t outrun the truth, and each footfall brings another memory.
The way his hands shook—actually shook—when he showed me his final paper, like my approval mattered more than the grade itself, even though the grade determines his hockey future. The way he looked at me in that library study room, right before he kissed me and fucked me like a lover.
No. I push harder. Those were manipulation.
Except… except effective manipulation requires strategic planning. Calculation and consistent execution. And James Fitzgerald, for all his other flaws, has never demonstrated strategic thinking. He’s chaos in human form, a wrecking ball without a demolition plan.
Every stupid joke, every deflection, every moment of unbearable noise…
The realization hits with the force of a hip check at full speed.
They’re not weapons. They’re armor.
My legs give out without warning. One moment I’m running, the next I’m stumbling, barely catching myself before I face-plant on the asphalt. My quadriceps are seizing, hamstrings locked in full cramp. I make it to the stone bench at the overlook near the astronomy building through sheer will.
As I collapse onto the bench gracelessly, the stone is ice against my overheated skin, shocking enough to make me gasp. My heart rate is still redlining—probably 190-plus—and I can feel my pulse in my temples, my throat, and my fingertips.
My heart.
The horizon is bleeding pink now, that moment before dawn when the world recalibrates. I’m completely depleted—no energy reserves, no defensive structures, no carefully maintained firewalls—with nothing but raw nerve endings and a cardiovascular system pushed too far.
My hands are shaking violently as I try to check my pulse, and I give up when I can’t count fast enough. My sports bra is soaked through, the wet fabric like ice against my ribs. And in that depletion, the truth assembles itself with the ruthless efficiency of a system diagnostic I can’t abort.
Initial hypothesis: Trust is a strategic error. James Fitzgerald will always choose the performance over authentic connection.
Evidence supporting: the summer camp betrayal and a documented pattern of deflection.
Defensive action taken: complete emotional withdrawal post-library incident to prevent inevitable betrayal.
Result: The subject performed exactly as predicted last night. Public humiliation achieved. Hypothesis confirmed.
Except.
Except.
New data requiring integration: the look on his face when he realized he'd hurt me.
Supporting evidence: The genuine, visceral recognition of someone watching their best intentions detonate. And the past he revealed about his family.
My chest constricts with something that has nothing to do with oxygen debt.
Wait.
No.
No.
Final conclusion: James Fitzgerald doesn’t betray trust. He panics in its presence.
He doesn’t break beautiful things for entertainment, he breaks them accidentally while attempting to do the right thing.
He doesn't act like the loudest guy in the room to get attention, he does it to deflect from anything serious.
Which means…
Which means I didn’t run from a predator.
I ran from a partner.
A deeply flawed, chronically terrified partner who handles emotional intimacy like a rookie handles their first playoff game, but a partner nonetheless. Someone who was trying, in his catastrophically incompetent way, to help fix what he thought was broken.
To be the hero I never requested because he doesn’t know how to just… exist.
The sunrise creeps across the campus, painting everything in shades of warmth that feel obscene against the wreckage of my body and mind and emotional state. My sweat is cooling now, every muscle aching with that deep, bone-level exhaustion that comes from trying to outrun something inevitable.
But nothing hurts as much as the realization that my fortress—my perfect, impenetrable fortress—isn’t protecting me.
It’s suffocating me.
All those walls I built after my high school betrayal and James’s dismissal, all that carefully maintained distance… they didn’t keep me safe. They kept me isolated. They turned every gesture of kindness into a threat assessment, and every moment of vulnerability into a tactical error.
The stone bench is warming slightly under my body heat, but I can’t move. Can’t process next steps. Because if my entire approach to the world… to life… is corrupted—if trust isn’t actually an error but a calculated risk—then what the fuck do I do now?
The answer sits in my chest like a stone, heavy and undeniable.
Complete system rebuild.
Every firewall.
Every defensive protocol.
Every carefully constructed barrier between me and the world.
I have to stand in the wreckage and figure out who Morgan Riley is when she’s not the “Morgue.” And maybe I have to consider the possibility that James Fitzgerald, human disaster and accidental destroyer, might be worth the risk of something real.
The thought is terrifying, but I sit with it, on the cold bench as the sun rises over Pine Barren. My fortress is ruins around me, and for the first time in three years, I let myself feel exactly how exhausted I am of running solo, keeping everyone and everything at a distance.
Turns out not wanting to be hurt ends up hurting just as much.