Chapter 3
Chapter Three
DECLAN
I've been awake since four.
Not the productive kind of awake where you get things done, like a hard workout or studying. Nope, my early morning was the staring-at-the-ceiling kind.
I’ve been back two days and have heard nothing from her. I quit calling and texting. She ghosted me. I’m not going to grovel. I don’t know what the hell happened, but I know I did nothing wrong.
By six, I give up trying to sleep and decide to be productive.
I go for a run. It is dark and cold—a dreary January morning.
Snow is piled up in little mounds that will be there for at least a month.
My breath comes out in white puffs. I push until my lungs burn enough to drown out everything else. It works for about forty-five minutes.
I go back to the house and head for the shower. I don’t want to think about her, but it’s impossible. She’s everywhere. She left her shampoo in the shower. And like a freak, I used it. I inhaled the scent, and it just made me even more miserable.
I dress without a care. I don’t care what I look like.
It’s the first day of classes. New semester.
Last semester. I’m so ready to be done. I walk to campus, hands shoved in my pockets, the cold working its way through my jacket because I grabbed the wrong one on the way out.
I noticed when I was halfway down the block and kept walking anyway. The cold felt good.
I’ll see her today. I’m certain of it.
I don't even know what I'm hoping for.
That's not true. I know exactly what I'm hoping for.
I've known since I walked into her empty room and stood there like an idiot trying to figure out why her bed was stripped.
I'm hoping she sees me and that something on her face explains everything.
Some version of events where this makes sense.
A problem I can fix. I'm good at problems that have solutions.
The campus is already busy. People are streaming in from the parking lots and the residential streets, most of them carrying coffee and showing that particular first-day energy that's half optimism and half dread.
I walk the main path toward the science building because my first class is in Harmon Hall, and that's the most direct route. My phone vibrates in my hand.
It’s a text from Crew in the group chat that I noticed Sutton is no longer a part of. She removed herself. Crew’s bitching about a drop of milk left in the carton. I ignore it.
When I look up, she's there.
My heart skips a beat. I feel like I haven’t seen her in a year, not in weeks.
She’s walking fast, coffee in hand, backpack on one shoulder. Her hair is down. She's looking at something on her phone. She hasn't seen me yet, and I have approximately three seconds before she does.
My body stops moving.
It's not a conscious decision. My feet just stop, as if every muscle decided simultaneously that forward motion was no longer an option. I stand there in the middle of the path. I watch her cross the quad, and then she looks up, the way you do when you feel something. That sixth sense that says you’re being watched.
She sees me.
She doesn't run.
That's what I register first. She sees me, and she stops walking, but she doesn't turn around or reroute. She doesn't do the thing she used to do during our first year after our breakup. She'd spot me coming and find a sudden, urgent need to be somewhere in the opposite direction.
This time, she just stops. Holds my gaze from twenty feet away. Waits.
Okay.
I can work with that. It’s something. It’s an opening.
I cross the quad.
She watches me come the whole way. Her face is blank. I've spent years learning to read Sutton Webb, and the fact that I can't place this one right now makes the back of my neck prickle. It's not cold. It's not angry. It's indifference, and that is the worst possible expression.
I stop two feet in front of her.
"Hey," I say.
"Hey."
We both have places to be. I’m not going to drag this out. If she’s only giving me a minute of her time, I’m going to use it wisely.
"You want to tell me what's going on?" I blurt out.
"Declan." She says my name on a sigh.
"No." I keep my voice down because we're in the middle of campus, and I have enough sense not to make this a spectacle. "I came home to an empty room and two days of no response. You owe me more than hey."
She looks around like she’s nervous someone will see us talking. "I know. I'm sorry I didn't call."
"Are you going to tell me why you didn't?"
"Because I knew if I heard your voice, I'd explain it badly." She looks at me, her eyes reflecting the same pain I’ve been carrying around since I got home. "And I didn't want to explain it badly."
"So explain it well. Right now. I've got time."
Her eyes glisten, whether it’s tears or the cold, I can’t say, but she looks sad. "Okay." She takes a breath. "Take the Seattle placement, Declan."
I stare at her.
"Ashton told Crew, and Crew told Keira, and Keira told me.
" Her voice is even. Almost careful. "You were incredible at camp.
The kind of incredible that gets you a contract, not just a callback.
" She pauses. "You deserve this. You've worked your whole life for it. Go. Follow the dream. It’s the NHL. "
"And us?”
"There is no version of long distance that works for us.
" She says it like it's physics. Like she's done all the research and come to a conclusion.
"I know us, Declan. I know how much I'd miss you.
I know how hard I'd try to hold things together from thousands of miles away.
And I know that at some point, one of us would stop being able to pretend it was enough.
" She looks down at her coffee. "I'd rather do it cleanly. "
"You'd rather dump my ass than give me a chance." I stop. Start again. "That's your solution. Just end it. No conversation. No explanation. Zero chance."
"We are having a conversation."
"After moving out while I was gone."
She doesn't flinch. "I know how it looks."
"It looks like you made a decision for both of us and didn't bother asking the other person."
"Because the other person would have talked me out of it." She looks up at me then, and for just a second, I see the regret. She’s not indifferent. She’s hurting and trying to shield herself. "I need to do this, Declan. I need to. So I couldn't give you the chance to tell me not to."
"So you just—" I gesture, a useless motion that conveys nothing. "You're allowed to make this call alone. That's how that works."
"You would have stayed."
"Maybe I want to stay."
"For me?" Her voice is quiet. "You'd stay in Massachusetts for me when Seattle is offering you everything you've trained for?
And then what? You coach high school hockey for thirty years, wondering what would have happened if you'd just gone when they asked? You and I know how the sports world works. This is your last chance. You’re aging out. "
"You don't know that."
"I know you." She holds my gaze. "And I know me. And I know I couldn't live with being the reason."
I want to argue with her. I have the argument right there. I have a version of this conversation where I say the right things, and her face changes, and we find our way back to the same side of this.
I practiced it.
But she's so calm. That's what's gutting me. She's so calm. Her mask of indifference is back in place. Like she's already done the hard part, and I'm just catching up.
"You said we'd figure it out together," I say. It comes out quieter than I mean it to. "That was what you said. Before I left."
"I know what I said."
"Then what happened?"
"I changed my mind." She looks at me. "I'm allowed to change my mind."
A cold thought snakes through my mind. “Did you take my father’s offer?”
“No. I would never.”
I believe her, but there has to be more.
"Take the placement," she says again gently, like that's supposed to help. "Do what you went to Seattle to do. You know it's what you want." She shifts her bag on her shoulder. "I already made my decision. You should go make yours."
She walks away.
I watch her go. It’s her walking out of my life in the very literal sense.
She’s gone. I don’t know how to process that.
I walk to class without even realizing I’m moving.
The professor starts talking. I write down two words before I realize I don't recognize anything he's saying. I cannot focus. I feel adrift. Everything I thought I knew and wanted is just gone.
I sit there for twenty minutes and hope whatever is being said isn’t important because I’m retaining none of it.
I think about what she said about me already having made my decision.
Not angry. Not sorry. Just done. Like I’m a pair of worn-out shoes. Last year’s style, and now she’s getting new shoes. There’s no need for me in her life anymore.