Chapter 18
Her phone buzzed against the gym's rubber floor, the screen lighting up with Lou's name. Camille's heart jumped the way it always did when Lou reached out—that particular flutter of anticipation that had become as familiar as her own heartbeat over the past weeks.
She finished her set, wiped her hands on her towel, and picked up the phone.
I can't do this anymore. It's messing with my head and Mara's right—we need to focus on the team. I'm sorry.
Camille read the words three times. Four. Five.
They didn't change.
The leg press machine felt suddenly cold beneath her, the padded seat that had been comfortable seconds ago now hard and unforgiving.
The gym's fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, too bright, casting everything in harsh clinical white.
Her knee throbbed beneath the brace—a dull reminder of everything that had already gone wrong this week.
I can't do this anymore.
The words blurred as tears pricked at her eyes.
She blinked them back, forced herself to breathe, but her chest had gone tight in ways that had nothing to do with the workout.
Around her, the gym hummed with the usual sounds of morning training—weights clanking, machines whirring, the distant thud of someone running on a treadmill—but it all felt muffled now, like she was hearing it through water.
Elise was two machines over, working through her own rehab routine. She glanced up, her dark eyes sharp with concern.
"Camille? You okay?"
"Fine." The word came out rough, unconvincing. Camille shoved the phone into her hoodie pocket and took a deep breath ready for another light rehab set on her bad leg. "Just tired."
She pushed through another set, her injured knee screaming in protest, but the physical pain was almost welcome. It gave her something to focus on besides the way her heart felt like it was cracking open. The way Lou's words kept playing through her mind on an endless loop: I can't do this anymore.
The gym smelled like rubber and sweat and the particular chemical tang of cleaning products.
Someone had left the windows cracked, and a hot breeze drifted in from outside, carrying with it the distant sound of traffic and the bright Phoenix Ridge morning.
Camille tried to anchor herself in these details—the texture of the padded handles beneath her palms, the rhythm of her breathing, the steady beep of the heart rate monitor on the machine beside her.
Anything to keep from drowning in the text message burning a hole in her pocket.
Three days ago they'd been tangled together on her couch, Lou's mouth between her thighs, pleasure so intense it had blocked out everything else. Three days ago Lou had held her like she mattered, like they mattered, like whatever was growing between them was worth protecting.
And now this. A text. Not even a phone call.
Camille finished her set and sat there, breathing hard, staring at the ceiling while tears tracked silently down her cheeks. She wiped them away before Elise could notice, but her hands were shaking. Her whole body was shaking.
Elise appeared at her shoulder, a water bottle in hand. "Hey." Her voice was gentle in ways that made Camille's throat tighten. "Whatever's going on, you don't have to pretend with me."
"I'm not—" Camille's voice cracked. She cleared her throat, tried again. "I'm fine. Really."
Elise didn't push. Just handed her the water bottle and sat down on the bench of the adjacent machine, her presence solid and patient. The silence between them wasn't uncomfortable—it was the silence of someone who understood that sometimes you needed a witness more than you needed advice.
Camille wondered how much Elise knew. She and Lou had been friends for years—had Elise noticed the way Lou looked at Camille across the locker room?
Had she guessed at what was happening between them, the stolen moments and secret touches and the relationship that had grown in the shadows?
The possibility that others had seen what they'd tried so hard to hide made Camille's stomach churn.
Camille drank the cold water without tasting it. Her phone burned in her pocket like a brand.
"I need some air," she said finally. "Going to grab coffee at Lavender's. Clear my head."
Elise nodded. "Want company?"
"No. I—no. Thank you."
The walk to Lavender's on her crutches was supposed to help.
The morning air was crisp despite the Phoenix Ridge sunshine, the kind of weather that usually lifted Camille's spirits.
Palm trees swayed gently along the sidewalk, casting shifting shadows on the concrete, and somewhere nearby a sprinkler system hissed as it watered a manicured lawn.
Normal sounds. Normal sights. A normal morning in Phoenix Ridge, while Camille's entire world was collapsing.
But her crutches made the journey awkward and slow, and every step sent fresh jolts of pain through her knee that mixed with the ache in her chest until she couldn't tell which hurt more.
She pushed through the coffee shop door, the familiar bell chiming overhead with cheerful indifference to her misery.
And walked straight into a wall of cameras.
"Camille! Camille, over here!"
"Is it true you're dating Lou Calder?"
"Sources say you've been seen together multiple times—care to comment?"
The reporters were everywhere—four, five, six of them crowded into the small coffee shop, phones and cameras thrust toward her face like weapons.
Lavender behind the counter looked horrified, frozen mid-pour with a latte she'd never finish.
The other customers had scattered to the edges of the room, watching the spectacle unfold with the particular fascination of bystanders at a car crash.
Camille's stomach dropped.
"No comment." She tried to back toward the door, but her crutches made her clumsy, her injured leg refusing to cooperate. "I'm just here for coffee."
"Is Lou Calder your girlfriend?"
"Are you a lesbian, Camille?"
"Does Mario know?"
The questions came rapid-fire, each one landing like a blow.
Camille's vision tunneled, the faces of the reporters blurring into an indistinct mass of hungry eyes and flashing lights.
Her pulse thundered so loud she could hear it in her ears, drowning out everything else.
The coffee shop suddenly felt too small, the walls pressing in, the smell of espresso and pastries turning her stomach.
Someone's phone camera clicked rapid-fire, the sound like a machine gun.
This was her nightmare. This was the exact scenario she'd been afraid of since the moment she'd kissed Lou in that shower—the exposure, the questions, the public dissection of something private and precious.
She wasn't ready for this. Wasn't ready to answer questions she hadn't even fully answered for herself. The relationship with Lou—whatever it had been, whatever it might have become—was supposed to be private. Protected. Theirs.
And now it was being dissected in a coffee shop by strangers who didn't care about her pain, only her story.
"I have no comment on my personal life." Camille's voice came out steadier than she expected, years of media training kicking in despite the panic clawing at her throat. "Please respect my privacy."
"But the photos—"
"There are no photos." Even as she said it, Camille wondered if that was true. Someone had talked. Someone had seen something. How else would they know?
"Our sources are very reliable, Camille. Multiple witnesses have confirmed—"
"I said no comment."
She pushed past them, her crutches catching on someone's foot, nearly sending her sprawling. A hand reached out to steady her—one of the reporters, the recognition hitting her with a jolt of revulsion—and she jerked away so violently that she almost fell anyway.
The door. She needed to get to the door.
Camille burst out onto the sidewalk, the morning sun assaulting her eyes after the dim interior of the coffee shop.
A cab was idling at the corner, dropping off a passenger, and she lurched toward it with the desperate energy of someone fleeing a burning building.
Her crutches caught on the uneven sidewalk and she stumbled, nearly going down, but adrenaline kept her upright.
She couldn't fall. Not here. Not in front of them.
"Just drive," she told the driver as she collapsed into the back seat, her crutches clattering against the door. "Please. Anywhere. Just drive."
The cab pulled away from the curb, and Camille watched Lavender's shrink in the rear window—the reporters spilling out onto the sidewalk, still shouting questions, their voices fading as distance swallowed them.
One of them was already on the phone, probably calling an editor, probably already crafting the headline that would follow Camille for the rest of her career.
Hockey Star Flees Questions About Secret Lesbian Affair.
Camille Laurent-Dubois and Lou Calder: The Love Story Phoenix Ridge Didn't See Coming.
From Mario King to Mystery Woman: Inside Camille's Shocking New Romance.
The headlines wrote themselves in her mind, each one worse than the last.
Then the tears came.
Not the quiet, dignified tears of the gym, but ugly, body-shaking sobs that ripped from her chest like something being torn loose.
She pressed her hand over her mouth, trying to muffle the sounds, but the driver had already noticed.
His eyes met hers in the rearview mirror—sympathetic but uncomfortable, the look of someone who'd signed up to transport passengers, not witness breakdowns.
"Anywhere in particular, miss?"
Camille shook her head. She had nowhere to go.
Her apartment felt contaminated now—memories of Lou everywhere, the couch where they'd made love, the bed where they'd whispered secrets in the dark.
She couldn't face the arena, couldn't face her teammates with their questions and their concern. She couldn't face anyone.
Lou had ended things via text.
The media had found out about them somehow.
And Camille was alone in the back of a cab, crying so hard she couldn't breathe, with her knee throbbing and her heart in pieces and no idea how to put any of it back together.
She fumbled for her phone, thought about calling Lou—demanding an explanation, begging her to reconsider, screaming at her for the cowardice of a breakup text.
Her thumb hovered over Lou's contact, the picture there one from weeks ago, Lou smiling in a rare unguarded moment.
But what would be the point? Lou had made her choice.
The words were clear: I can't do this anymore.
Maybe Lou was right. Maybe this had been a mistake from the beginning—two people from different worlds trying to build something in the shadows, thinking the darkness would protect them.
Maybe love always cost something, and Camille had been foolish to think she could have this without paying the price.
But God, she hadn't expected the price to be this high.
"Miss?" The driver's voice cut through her spiral. "You okay back there?"
"No." The word escaped before she could stop it—raw and honest in ways she never was with strangers. "No, I'm really not."
The driver nodded slowly, his eyes kind in the mirror. "There's a park up ahead. Nice and quiet this time of morning. Sometimes it helps to just... sit for a while."
Camille wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "That sounds good. Thank you."
He dropped her at a small park she'd never noticed before—a patch of green tucked between office buildings, with wooden benches shaded by olive trees and a fountain burbling in the center. Camille paid him double the fare and hobbled to the nearest bench, her crutches leaving divots in the grass.
She sat there for a long time, watching the fountain and letting the tears dry on her cheeks. A pigeon landed near her feet, pecking at invisible crumbs in the grass. A businessman walked past without looking at her, absorbed in his phone. The world kept turning, indifferent to her devastation.
The sun climbed higher, the shadows shifting around her, and slowly the panic receded into something duller.
More manageable. The hollow ache of loss settling into her bones like it planned to stay.
Her knee throbbed in time with her heartbeat, a constant reminder of all the ways her body had failed her this week.
She kept thinking about the last time she'd seen Lou—the way Lou had kissed her goodbye at the door, the careful distance in her eyes that Camille had tried to ignore. Had Lou already been planning this? Had the words of that text been forming in her mind even as they'd made love?
The thought made her sick.
Lou was gone.
The secret was out—or close enough to out that it hardly mattered.
And Camille had to figure out what came next.
Her phone buzzed. Another text, this one from Elise: Heard what happened at Lavender's. Are you okay? Call me if you need anything.
Camille stared at the message for a long moment. Then she typed back: Not okay. But I will be.
She wasn't sure if that was true. But it felt like the kind of thing you said when the alternative was admitting that everything had fallen apart and you had no idea how to pick up the pieces.
The fountain kept burbling. The sun kept shining. Somewhere across town, Lou was probably at the arena, going through the motions of practice, pretending that everything was fine. Pretending that she hadn't just shattered Camille's heart with twelve words on a phone screen.
Camille sat alone on a bench in a park she'd never seen before, wondering if love was always this devastating, or if she'd just been unlucky enough to find someone worth losing.
Wondering if coming to Phoenix Ridge had been the worst decision of her life, or if meeting Lou—despite everything—had been exactly what she needed.
She didn't have answers. All she had was an injured knee, a broken heart, and the knowledge that when she finally left this bench, she would have to face whatever came next.
For now, she stayed. Let the fountain burble and the sun shine and the world keep spinning without her. Let the park hold her grief while she figured out how to carry it herself.
For now, it was enough just to breathe.