Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Cassidy
“If you ask me anything I don’t know, I’m not going to answer.”
Yogi Berra
The hospital hallway smelled like lemon cleaner and quiet, the kind that hums under fluorescent lights and settles in your bones if you stay too long. Angie flipped through the intake folder, humming as she moved post-its and a neon pen from page to page.
“Three rooms open for you,” she said. “Two teens and one little guy who’s obsessed with the team. He’s got a Nate O’Brien poster above his bed and refuses to let us take it down.”
I smiled. That part didn’t hurt. Not yet.
We spent the next hour visiting rooms, handing out blankets and stress balls with the Gila Monsters logo stitched in the corner. I filmed a few short clips for the charity reel, but most of the time, I left my phone in my bag. It wasn’t about content anymore.
Afterward, Angie squeezed my arm and told me I was doing good work. I nodded, thanked her, and smiled like I meant it. But my stomach stayed twisted. No matter how much this part of my life came together, something else—something I’d let matter too much—was falling apart.
Cass Cares had gone from a scribbled idea to signed contracts and a launch event in three weeks. The team pledged support. Amanda built a pitch deck so stunning it made me cry. I should’ve felt proud, but none of it filled the space opening between Nate and me.
At first, I told myself it was the season—normal, I thought, for someone under that kind of pressure.
But trade rumors got louder every day, and after he told me the truth, I watched him spiral quietly.
The man who used to stand tall without trying started second-guessing everything.
He snapped a pencil during Amanda’s nursery build, kissed me like it was the only thing keeping him tethered, then stared at nothing for ten minutes straight.
I realized I’d become part of the noise he didn’t know how to navigate.
He had one week left to decide—one week before the team would expect an answer. And in those six days, I saw him unravel. Torn between home and legacy, between what he loved and what he’d chased his whole life.
He didn’t want to let me go. But he couldn’t choose both.
Despite the fact he was pretending it wasn’t happening, I started choosing for him.
I stopped texting first. Stayed later at meetings that didn’t need me. Changed the subject when he talked about stats. I kissed him slower, not for more, but to make the memory last. I was banking touches, memorizing sighs, already letting go while he was still trying to hold on.
Because if I didn’t pull back, he’d stay for me. And I couldn’t let that happen. If he gave up the dream he’d built and even a piece of him resented me, we’d break anyway, and this time, there’d be no kindness left in it.
So I said goodbye the only way I knew how: quietly, in the spaces between us, in the way I waited for him to reach for me.
I had six days to make peace with it. It was the right choice. I wasn’t a good bet right now—still figuring out who I was without the chaos. I couldn’t leave this place, not with my projects finally giving my life meaning again.
He’d either beg me to come, which I couldn’t, or stay for me, which he shouldn’t. Neither was right. So I chose his happiness over mine.
After the home game, I waited by the players’ exit instead of the media lot. No cameras. No questions.
Simple dress. Hair tied back. Makeup soft. Not armor—clarity.
He spotted me immediately. Slowed. Smiled. Walked toward me like he didn’t have a single doubt in the world.
“Hey,” he said, scanning my face like he already knew something was wrong. “You okay?”
“Can we get coffee?”
He looked surprised, but nodded. “Coffee? Sure, Of course.” He leaned down and kissed me, his fingers digging into my hip when I tried pulling away. He frowned, but didn’t say anything.
We walked two blocks to a quiet, twenty-four-hour place with string lights that felt too warm for how cold I felt inside. He ordered black coffee, no sugar with some hazelnut. I ordered an iced tea I wouldn’t drink. My hands shook when I slid my card across the counter. “My treat.”
“Well, thanks, hon.” He rested his hand on my shoulder, something I noticed more and more. He loved touching me. He always had a reassuring hand, a touch to ground me. “Come on, let’s go sit down here.”
We sat near the window, tucked away from the rest of the world. I stared at the street and pretended I didn’t see the way he kept glancing at me, his face in his infamous frown. “What’s going on? You’re too tense right now.”
“You remember the first night we did the fake dating thing?” I asked.
“Yeah.” He smiled, small and nostalgic. “You wore that jersey with my number and made half the stadium fall in love with you.”
I huffed a laugh that didn’t quite land.
“I thought I could handle it. All of it. The pretending. The feelings. I thought I could keep everything in its own little box and never let it spill over. Then, things got real with us and we agreed casual.” I paused, swallowing the ball of emotion in the back of my throat. I had to do this.
I had to set him free so he could achieve his dreams. I watched him the last week, spiraling, unsure how to say goodbye here, to Phoenix, to me. Amanda pushed him to go to New York, to get the ring he wanted his entire life. “But it’s not casual anymore.”
His smile faltered. His eyes narrowed slightly. “Cass.”
I held up a hand. Not to stop him. Just to finish what I had to say before I lost my nerve.
“I can’t do this with you anymore.”
The silence that followed wasn’t loud. It was worse than that. It was quiet and knowing and heavy enough to crush us both.
“What does that mean?” he asked carefully, though I could already see the answer forming behind his eyes.
“It means I’m pulling back. From us. From this.”
He blinked, his jaw flexing. “Why?”
There were a hundred answers. Because I loved him.
Because he wouldn’t choose himself if I stayed in this.
Because I’d go with him if he asked and I owed it to myself to stay here and figure my own life out, not chase another man’s.
Because I knew the only thing standing between him and the ring he’d dreamed of since he was a kid was me.
Because he wouldn’t walk away from me if I didn’t force his hand.
Because I knew how this story ended if I didn’t take the pen and write it myself.
But all I said was: “Because I’m not ready for more.”
He flinched like I’d hit him. It nearly made me take it back. Nearly. But I had months of pretending I was fine when I wasn’t. I masked the perfect face of indifference.
“I don’t believe you,” he said, his voice low. “You’re lying.”
“I’m being kind.”
“No. You’re protecting me. I can see what you’re doing and I disagree. Don’t do this.” His voice came out hard, gruff. The muscle in his cheek twitched and he took a deep breath. “You don’t mean this.”
I looked down at the condensation on my glass. “Maybe. Or maybe I’m giving you the space to make the decision you need to make without worrying about who you’re leaving behind.”
His voice cracked. “You’re not behind me. You’re beside me, Cassidy.”
I wanted to cry. Instead, I nodded. “Not if you stay.”
His jaw tightened. He looked away, toward the door, emotion brewing on the face I knew so well. I knew he cared for me, but he had to pick himself first.
“You told me once that the team was your life. That winning a ring was what you’d worked for since you were six.” I swallowed, forcing the next words out like they weighed a thousand pounds. “Don’t let me be the reason you don’t get it.”
“And if I don’t want it without you?”
His voice cracked on the last word. I felt it. Like it split the space between us wide open.
I looked at him then. Fully. Not just at his face, but into it.
At the fight happening behind his eyes, the storm rising in his chest. He was barely holding it together.
I saw the anger forming, the heartbreak creeping up behind it like a shadow.
His jaw flexed. His hands curled against the edge of the table like he needed something solid to keep him from falling apart.
“Then prove that,” I said, my voice softer but no less steady. “It’d feel like you were throwing the ring away, just because you’re in lust with me.”
God it hurt saying the words, but I had to set him free.
He stared at me for a long time, breathing hard, like he was waiting for me to take it back. Like if he stayed quiet long enough, I’d change my mind and tell him I needed him more than he needed the game.
“You don’t get it,” he said finally, voice low, bitter. “You think you’re being noble, but you’re ripping this out of my hands like I can’t handle it. You think I don’t know how to want something that scares the shit out of me? You think I haven’t already made the choice?”
“I think,” I said, throat burning, “that you’re not in a place to know what you want with me standing in front of you.”
His hands flexed once more, then released.
He stood too fast. Pushed the chair in like it had betrayed him. He didn’t yell. Didn’t beg. But his body vibrated with everything he didn’t say.
“You keep saying I have to choose the dream,” he said, shaking his head. “But you are the dream. You’re the part I didn’t see coming, and it’s the only thing that’s felt real in a long time.”
My heart stuttered, but I held my ground. “Then love me enough to let me go.”
He winced like I’d struck him. I nearly reached for him. Nearly ruined all of it.
“I don’t want to wake up in a new city without you,” he said, the words scraping out like they cost him everything.
His voice was low, rough-edged, like it physically hurt to speak.
“I don’t want to pitch for a team that doesn’t know my name.
I don’t want to walk into a new locker room and pretend it means something when you’re not there waiting after the game. ”
His eyes burned into mine. Green and glassy and tired.
“I don’t want to win something and not have you there to see it,” he went on, his voice fraying more with each word. “I don’t want the biggest moment of my life to feel like a fucking echo.”
He swallowed hard and stepped forward. Just one inch. His hand twitched at his side like he wanted to reach for me but didn’t trust himself to do it. “You’ve been in my head since day one. You’ve wrecked every plan I had. And the worst part is … I don’t even care.”
He exhaled, short and sharp, like he hated himself for saying any of it out loud. “I don’t care about the ring if you’re not part of it. I don’t care about the city or the bonus or the press. None of it means anything if I don’t get to come home to you.”
The tears pressed hard behind my eyes, but I blinked them back. My heart was pounding so loud it drowned out the rest of the world. I could barely breathe, let alone speak. These words were things he felt, words I’d never imagined hearing.
It made me hesitate. Could we make this work …
somehow? I chewed my lip a million scenarios racing through my mind.
No. We were still early in this, and we had to choose ourselves.
He wasn’t throwing his shot at a ring for me, someone figuring out my life, and I couldn’t leave this city when I finally had a future and plan here.
“I can’t be the reason you never try,” I whispered, my voice unsteady but firm.
“I can’t be the thing that keeps you from finding out what you’re capable of.
I won’t let you turn down something that might change your life just because you’re scared to lose me when we are what.
… A fake dating PR scheme who slept together? ”
He flinched, sharp and involuntary, like my words sliced right through him. I needed them to. I needed him to choose himself, even if it was killing me.
This was the first thing I’d done that was the right choice, even if it hurt me. I was done being selfish.
I took a shaky breath and forced the next line out even though it felt like pulling glass through my throat. “Because if you stay for me, you’ll start to resent me for it. Maybe not now. Maybe not for a year. But eventually. And I know what that looks like. I’ve lived that.”
He opened his mouth like he was about to say something—maybe the thing, maybe everything—but nothing came out. Just a deep, shuddering breath that sounded like surrender.
He stepped back like the space between us had teeth, and God, maybe it did. Because it hurt like it was trying to tear us both apart.
“If I walk away from this,” he said, voice breaking around the edges, “just know—it was never because I didn’t want you or us.”
I swallowed, every muscle in my throat fighting against the words I had to give back. “And if you stay, I need to know it’s because it’s what you want. Not because you’re afraid to lose me.”
He looked at me then like he’d never wanted anything more than to stay, and never been more sure he couldn’t.
A beat passed. Then another. His hands curled into fists at his sides before he forced them open again. He nodded once, hollow and slow, like he was agreeing to something he’d never forgive himself for.
“I’m going to fucking regret this,” he said, so quietly I almost missed it. “Walking away. Letting you go like this.”
And then he turned. Walked to the door with his shoulders tense and his steps uneven.
And he left—like it physically hurt to do it.
I didn’t stop him. Because I loved him enough to let him go. Even if it broke me clean in half.