Chapter 56
fifty-six
. . .
CONNOR
I want to throw up.
The walk to Whitney’s room should take maybe a minute but it feels way longer.
The video keeps replaying in my head, ugly and impossible to shut off.
If I really wanted to mess with him, I’d fuck his sister.
My jaw locks so hard it hurts.
I move through the lobby with my phone in one hand, ignoring the way it keeps buzzing. Leo. Vivi. Some unknown number. Probably more texts I don’t care enough to read.
Somebody says my name behind me, but I don’t stop.
If Rory sees that video and thinks I’m a piece of shit, fine. I was.
But the only person I care about right now is Whitney.
I hit the elevator button, curse when it takes too long, then turn and take the stairs instead. The whole way up, the same thought keeps hammering at me.
You said it.
Drunk, younger, uglier in every way that counts, but the guy in the video is still me. Still my face. Still my voice. Still my mouth saying something foul enough to reach years into the future and hit the one person I’d give anything not to hurt.
A few hours ago, I was coming down off the relay, adrenaline still pumping through my veins, and I looked for her before I even fully realized that’s what I was doing.
I found her in the crowd, touched the sailboat on my ribs, and the way she looked back at me settled something in my chest so fast it almost freaked me out.
Now it feels like I handed the worst version of myself a knife and sent him straight to her door.
By the time I get to her floor, I’m breathing too hard. I don’t even know if that’s the stairs or panic.
Probably both.
I round the corner and see her room.
Then I stop for half a second, because this is the part I can’t prep for.
I know what I have to do. Own it, no excuses, or asking her to make it easier on me than she should.
What I don’t know is what she’s going to need when she opens the door.
An apology. Space. Silence.
All of it, I can do.
But my worst fear is that she won’t want anything from me. That this will be done and there’s nothing I can do to fix it.
I knock. Three quick raps.
“Whitney.” I say her name through the door.
My voice sounds rough enough to throw me off, and for a few seconds I hear nothing.
Then the lock clicks and the door opens.
She’s still holding her phone.
That’s the first thing I see.
The second is her face.
Too still. Too controlled. Like the only thing keeping her together right now is the fact that she’s refusing to move too much.
And Christ, that’s worse than if she were screaming.
I don’t step into the room right away. Don’t touch her. Don’t close the distance like I’ve got any right to.
“I saw it,” I say.
Her grip tightens around the phone, but she doesn’t answer.
The video is still frozen on the screen, younger-me caught mid-smirk, drunk and cocky and stupid in a way that makes me want to put my fist through the wall.
I drag a hand over the back of my neck and make myself look at it. At her. At all of it.
“That was me,” I say. “I said it. I remember that night. I didn’t remember saying that until now, but I said it.”
Whitney’s eyes lift to mine.
“It was fucked up,” I say. “Ugly. And it was mine. I’m not going to stand here and act like being drunk makes it less awful, because it doesn’t.”
She swallows, but still doesn’t say anything.
The silence stretches, and I let it. She’s earned every second of it.
“You don’t have to make this easier on me,” I say. “You don’t have to tell me that’s not who I am. You definitely don’t have to make me feel better about it. I said it. And that’s on me.”
My chest feels too tight, because I know exactly how the video makes Whitney feel. It’s not just that it’s humiliating or me saying something disgusting. It’s that I treated her like she was a point to make, something to use against Rory when she had nothing to do with our issues.
“You aren’t collateral to me,” I say, before I can stop myself. “You’re not just some extension of Rory. You’re Whitney. And what’s between us has never been about him.”
That hits. I see it in the quick flicker across her face before she locks it down again.
I keep going because if I stop now, I’m done.
“I know what it sounds like,” I say. “Like you were never just you to me, but Rory’s sister and something I could us. I know exactly why that feels unforgivable.”
Her phone buzzes again in her hand, but she doesn’t even look down.
“If you want me gone, I’ll go,” I say. “If you want to yell at me, do that. If you want me to stay here and shut up, I can do that, too.”
For the first time since I got here, she speaks.
“You really said it.”
The quietness of it almost guts me.
“Yeah,” I say with nothing to hide behind. “Yeah. I did.”
She looks away for a second, and somehow that feels worse.
Because a few hours ago she was looking at me across the deck like she knew exactly what I meant when I touched the sailboat. A few hours ago, it felt like we were speaking in something that belonged just to us.
Now I’m standing here with all of that ripped wide open, trying to explain why the ugliest thing I ever said doesn’t get to be the truest thing about how I see her now.
I hate the whiplash of it. Hate that the same day I’m finally feeling like maybe we’re getting somewhere is the day this shows up and drags the worst version of me back into the room.
“I don’t know what you need from me right now,” I admit. “But I’m here. I’m not going to disappear and hope this blows over.”
Her eyes come back to mine.
“And I know saying anything right now probably sounds convenient as hell,” I add, because it does, because timing has never once done me a favor. “But what’s between us is real. Today was real. Tour was real. You are real to me.”
My throat tightens so hard the next words almost don’t come out.
“God, Whit, I—”
I try to stop, because I already know what’s coming.
I laugh once, short and wrecked and not funny at all, then drag a hand down my face. Then I look at her and say the thing I absolutely didn’t plan to say right now.
“I love you.”
The room goes dead still.
Even the buzzing phone in her hand feels farther away for a second.
I can hear my own pulse. My own breathing. Can feel exactly how badly I just blew up the last controlled version of this conversation.
I didn’t come here to say that.
I came here to own what I did. To apologize. To let her hate me if she needed to.
But it’s out now.
True whether the timing is a disaster or not.
My mouth goes dry.
“I didn’t mean to say it like that,” I admit. “But it’s true.”
I shake my head once because there’s no point trying to take it back now.
“It’s true, and that video doesn’t get to be the thing you measure me by more than the way I’ve loved you.”
The second it’s out, I know I’ve said too much and maybe not enough and maybe the whole thing came out wrong.
But I’m past pretending I’m not standing here scared out of my mind that I just ruined the one thing that’s felt real in a way I didn’t know I could still have.
“So, yell at me,” I say quietly. “Tell me to get out. Tell me I’m too late. But don’t stand there thinking that video is the truest thing about how I see you. It’s not.”
Then all I can do is stand there and let her decide what I deserve.