CAMERON
Chapter Fourteen
I barged into the house to toss my backpack and laptop bag into my room. As I headed across the common area, Caden Jones was leaning against the kitchen island opening up a bottle of water. He looked at me for a moment, then lifted his chin in greeting.
“Congrats, man,” he said.
“On what?” My voice was so sour that I was sure he could half taste it.
“Er…the agent. And that West Coast team.” He stretched his lips into a smile. “I know nothing’s sure yet, but that’s really good news.”
My mind raced as I stared at this guy. “You…” I blinked once and Caden froze. I dropped my backpack on the floor. “You told him about my meeting. You heard me talk to Jason Manning. You fucking rat.”
Caden’s horror was genuine, but my torment was much worse so I didn’t have time for pity. “Wh-what did I do? Oh God, what happened?”
“You ruined everything,” I hissed and dropped my laptop bag next to my backpack, then ran out of the house.
I ran after him along the usual route he took in the mornings.
Not nearly often enough, I had joined Riley for his morning jogs.
In the mornings, you could at least see where your feet were landing.
I had always been far better at skating than running, but I did it anyway. “Riley,” I called into the dark. The lamp post shed some light over the paved street, but not nearly enough for me to see much into the distance. “Riley!”
Cold air filled my lungs as I breathed deeper and deeper, burning me from the inside as my body worked to retain its temperature. I raced like lightning and finally spotted him down the lane.
“Riley, wait!” My voice was hoarse after breathing in too much cold air through my open mouth. Dammit, running was way harder than sliding along smooth ice. “Please.”
Riley stopped and spun furiously enough that I regretted coming after him. Would it have been better if I’d waited for him to cool down? Probably, but I needed to make him understand. “What do you want? A goodbye kiss?”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded, my own temper rising.
“Spare me,” he said darkly. “If you’re gonna pretend you don’t know what this is about, you can just fuck back off to California right now.”
“Jesus.” Anger filled me and I stepped up closer to him. “It’s not like that. I just met with the guy. You met with him, too.”
Riley shook his head. “It’s not the same.”
“How so? I just took his fucking card. What did you do that’s so different? Say no? It’s fucking unfair that you’re this angry with me.” I stopped and waited for him to say something, but his lips curved down and he shook his head some more.
“I’m not angry, Cam,” he said softly and I could hear the door to his heart shut and lock.
“I’m being stupid. We both know where we’re headed.
I’m getting worked up over nothing, because I knew this would happen, Cam.
” He chewed his lower lip for a moment, then shrugged. “We were doomed from the start.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked, louder than I had wished to. “Riley, we’ve been doing this for months. Are you just…dropping it? Because I met with an agent? I didn’t even know there was a meeting.”
“Nah,” Riley said, voice breaking. “I’m saying we’ve been making a mistake for months. Don’t tell me you imagined a bright future where we just lived happily ever after.” The bitterness in his tone bruised me more than I had expected.
“I…don’t know. I don’t know what I imagined.” It wasn’t exactly your usual happy ending that I saw for us. I knew, deep down, where life was taking us. “I just wanted to enjoy the time we had.”
He narrowed his eyes at that and I knew I’d said the worst possible thing ever. “Time we had? Jesus, Cam. We could have had years. Literal years. No. I’m done with this. It’s time to grow the fuck up.”
“Riley, please don’t do this,” I said, desperation mixing with my temper. “You know what we’re like. We should…be together when we can. You know? We should…”
“Just because we have the same kink, it doesn’t mean we should be risking the rest of our lives for it, Cam.
I’m done.” Tears not only welled in his eyes, but in mine, too.
“You should pursue the West Coast or East Coast or whichever fucking coast you prefer. And I’ll see whatever’s the best offer on the table for me.
We were gonna do this all along, right? Why fucking pretend?
Why live in false hope when this was always going to be the endgame?
” He wagged his finger between us at the last question and I stepped closer to him.
“Because it’s good,” I snapped. “It feels fucking good to have you while we’re still here.
I don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow.
I don’t know where we’re gonna end up. All I know is this, seeing you makes me feel better when I’m down.
” Tears rolled down my cheeks and I wiped them away furiously.
Riley’s lips contorted until he forced some calm back into his face. “And to go through this again in a month or two…nah. It’s not worth it, Cam. Better just move on. Sign on with Manning and I’ll make sure to choose another one so we can go as far apart as we can.”
If we don’t I’ll never get over you, I thought.
Much like he had never gotten over me in all the years. “Jesus, Riley,” I whispered.
“Don’t,” he said and stepped back. “Just move on, Cam. Of all people, you should have the easiest time doing that.”
As he stepped back, anger flared in me at that jab. “Don’t be an asshole.”
“Tsk. Just being brutally honest,” he said. “And minding my own business.”
“Fine.” The word tore out of me like the dirtiest curse ever put to sound. I spun away from him and marched back, concealing the further oncoming tears with throaty growls. I didn’t go directly to the house. Instead, I walked around, as far from Riley’s jogging route as I could think of.
Riley had just broken up with me. Ah, but it probably didn’t qualify as a breakup. We’d only been fucking for a few months and we had been public about it for slightly longer than a catnap.
It felt like a breakup.
It felt like shit.
My heart was sinking and sinking and whenever I thought it had crashed at the bottom, it only fell through it and sank further. My stomach was restless, yet it felt hollow and bottomless. My eyes stung with the saltiness of my tears as much as the cold breeze rising over campus.
It wasn’t just heartbreak. It was hardly that when we’d built our entire relationship on running away from serious conversations. But it was the profound sense of loss that ripped my soul right out of my chest.
It was the loneliness that had only ever taken a little nap and was now well rested to resume its job of tormenting me until the end of my days.
I could see it. I could see myself as a washed up hockey player who’d had all this potential and had lost it somewhere along the way when his will to live left him. I could see myself failing at everything all of the time.
I could see myself sitting in some place I called home, feeling nothing, and speaking to no one. I would be alone. Always and forever, I would lick my wounds and wonder what had ever happened with that Riley Brooks who I’d placed in the center of my world for a short while.
But I got exactly what I had coming. I’d done this to him. I’d taught him this trick. It was only fair that he would pull the same card on me when the clock struck midnight.
I made my way back to the house, where I spent the next two days barely leaving my room.
The only time I actually left for any sort of commitment was for drills.
And there, I was as clumsy as a puppy placed on ice for the first time in his life.
I was as useful to the team as a drunk man without a day’s training in hockey. And Riley…
Seeing him made me seethe with rage, but I wasn’t fooling anyone.
Rage was a thin veil covering the abyss of bitter pain that was hard to conceal and even harder to ignore.
We saw very little of one another that night as well as on Friday.
But each day that passed failed to do what the old adage promised. It only hurt more, not less.
It hurt more to live next to him.
It hurt more to eat my food.
It hurt to fail at hockey and I only had myself to blame for all of that.
While I did attend the lectures on Thursday and Friday, I was a ghost who haunted the amphitheaters rather than an attentive student.
My professors droned on and on about things I couldn’t care less about and I wasted all of my energy on pretending I was fine.
And when I did see Riley, I needed to put in twice as much effort in seeming alright.
He, for his part, seemed just fine. He would see me and that was acknowledgment enough.
I hated it.
I hated every goddamn tiny little bit of it. We acted like strangers after all this time. And I wondered if this was what he felt like after I’d left.
Time slowed down at last. It was all I had ever wanted, but not like this.
It seemed to be grinding to a halt every so often.
Nights were endless now that they were lonely and lectures lasted entire semesters.
Even the time spent in the house where Riley was only a staircase and two doors away from me stretched out indefinitely.
Showers after practice and the walks from the rink to our house all doubled or even tripled their lengths.
But I had nothing to enjoy. Nothing for my memory to soak up for those times that would come after. We already were in the after times. This was the rest of my life even if I hadn’t graduated.
It had been deeply stupid of me to imagine we would shake hands and part ways upon graduating. I should have known the pressure in the cooker would become critical far sooner.
But even so, as the week trudged on, I had one thing going for me even if I wasn’t aware of it.
I had the consolation that neither of us had moved on.
And while I ended up calling Jason Manning to reaffirm my eagerness to have him represent me when the time came, I still felt like I had at that moment when Riley had spilled all those words into my face.
I kept my head high and pushed on. Loneliness was going to shroud me either way.
I might as well make something out of the rest of my life.
And if I sounded like a brat, swearing never to play with another toy because the one I wanted was taken away, then so be it.
But I wasn’t going to search for another human being who fit so well next to me.
I wasn’t going to put myself through the insufferable torture of getting to know someone’s prickly sides just to make sure they complemented my prickly parts.
Hell no. I’d had a real shot at it with Riley once before, and I’d thrown it away.
To have had the coda to our old relationship was a blessing enough.
I’d never expected this much at all.
And so my mind went back and forth. I was grateful and hateful.
I was mad and glad. I was hopeful of the future and I detested the thought of it lacking Riley.
And in all that time, I had to put up with courteous nods exchanged between us when we were in a crowd.
I had to suffer through the awkward silences of all these guys who’d been betting on our relationship one day and shrugging at its demise the next.
And the worst of all, I had to suffer through the nights when all I did was stare at the door and expect him to knock one last time.