Chapter 27 Iris #2
“I’ll call you later,” I interrupt, and hang up.
For a moment, I stand in my silent kitchen, watching the rain streak down the windows.
My reflection stares back at me, pale and unsure.
The TV continues its silent commentary, flashing more images of Collin and me, more speculation.
My phone buzzes with notifications—not just Collin’s calls, but a sudden flood of Instagram alerts.
I swipe open one notification and immediately wish I hadn’t.
I close the app before I can read the rest, but more notifications keep appearing.
Dozens of them. Hundreds. Hockey fans, skating enthusiasts, people I’ve never met weighing in on my life, my choices, my relationships.
I take a deep breath and answer Collin’s call.
“Iris,” his voice is immediately concerned. “Thank God. Are you okay?” The genuine worry laced through my name makes my throat tighten. Even now, with his own world likely collapsing around him, his first thought is for me. A small, traitorous warmth blooms beneath my ribs.
“I’m fine,” I lie. “Just overwhelmed.” The TV continues its silent commentary in my peripheral vision, footage of us looping on mute. Collin’s face frozen in anger as he confronts Owen. My smaller figure behind him, wide-eyed and stunned.
“I know. Me too.” His sigh travels across the miles between us, heavy with regret. “I hoped the rain would’ve made that footage too blurry to confirm it was us. Stupid, I guess.” I sink onto a kitchen chair, suddenly boneless with exhaustion.
“I saw SportsCenter,” I say, my voice small, foreign to my own ears. “It’s everywhere, isn’t it?” A heartbeat of hesitation.
“Yeah. It’s pretty bad. But it’ll blow over, Iris. These things always do.” My free hand finds the edge of the table, anchoring me as the room tilts. Through the phone, I hear the familiar jingle of keys, the sounds of Collin preparing to move, to act—always in motion, always so certain.
“Is it true?” I ask, the question barely audible over the rain drumming against the roof.
“What they’re saying about your career? That you could lose everything?
” The silence that follows stretches between us—three seconds, five, ten.
Each passing moment confirms what words would only make more painful.
I close my eyes, feeling the weight of his unspoken answer settle across my shoulders.
“Where are you?” I ask, though I already know.
“Heading to my car,” he admits. “I’m coming over. We should talk about this in person.”
“No.” The word escapes sharper than I intended, a reflex born of panic.
I soften my tone, though it costs me. “Please, don’t.
” Another silence, this one punctuated by the soft clink of metal against wood—his keys being set down.
I picture him in his apartment, probably standing in that open space between kitchen and living room.
“Iris, what’s going on?” His voice drops lower, cautious now, as if approaching something he knows might bolt.
My phone buzzes with another wave of notifications.
I glance down to see a flood of Instagram tags, Twitter mentions—strangers piling into my previously quiet social media life with venom and judgment.
Career wrecker
She obviously trapped him
I swallow against the tightness in my throat, watching raindrops trace meandering paths down the kitchen window. Panic seizes in my chest, threatening to choke me.
“They’re saying this could cost you your career,” I manage, each word careful, measured.
“They’re exaggerating.”
“Are they, though?” My eyes drift back to the TV.
The panel discussion continues, experts dissecting Collin’s past alongside footage of us skating together.
His arm around my waist, fingers splayed protectively at the small of my back.
Our foreheads nearly touching during our final pose.
“Your sponsors, the morality clauses, your reputation—”
“I don’t care about any of that,” he interrupts, a sudden fire in his voice that makes me flinch.
“Well, you should!” My own voice rises to meet his, breaking at the end “This is your life, Collin. Everything you’ve worked for. And now it’s all in jeopardy because you got involved with me.” The words hang between us, stark and undeniable. I hear him inhale slowly, deliberately.
“That’s not fair,” he says, his voice tight with restraint. “This isn’t on you.”
“Isn’t it?” A laugh escapes me, hollow and foreign.
“If we weren’t... whatever we are, you wouldn’t have been at Owen’s house.
You wouldn’t have confronted him. None of this would be happening.
” The silence that follows is heavy, like a physical thing occupying the space between our phones.
I can almost hear his mind working, searching for the right words to bridge the sudden chasm between us.
“So what are you saying?” he asks, dread threading through each syllable.
My eyes drift to Jamie’s crayon drawing propped against the fruit bowl—those three simple figures standing hand in hand under a yellow sun.
The house behind them has a door with a heart on it.
Jamie’s latest addition, added just yesterday morning before school.
That’s where the love lives, he’d explained with the matter-of-fact wisdom of childhood.
For a moment, I let myself imagine that life.
That house with its heart door. Waking up to Collin’s sleepy smile every morning.
Jamie’s laughter filling the rooms. But then reality intrudes—the headlines that would follow us, the whispers, the constant scrutiny.
The weight of knowing I’d cost him everything he’d worked for.
The inevitable moment when he’d realize what he’d given up for a woman with too much baggage and a child who wasn’t his.
“Maybe everyone’s right.” Each word feels like pulling out a stitch holding me together. “Maybe we shouldn’t be together. Maybe this is all just too difficult, and we’ve been kidding ourselves thinking this could actually be something.”
“Iris, don’t do this.” The raw pain in his voice slices through me, sharp and immediate. “Please. Please don’t do this.” I press my fingers against my trembling lips, eyes closed, trying to dam the tears freely spilling down my cheeks.
“I won’t be the reason you lose everything you’ve worked for,” I say, pushing past the knot in my throat. “I know what that feels like, and I can’t do that to you.” My voice is watery, weak.
“Shouldn’t that be my choice?” There’s an edge to his question, frustration cutting through the hurt.
“You’re not thinking clearly.” I stand, needing to move, to release some of the tension winding through me.
“You’re caught up in... in this.” I gesture vaguely around my empty kitchen, as if he could see the tangled mess of emotions I’m drowning in.
“When the dust settles and you realize what you’ve given up. ..”
“That’s not fair,” he says again, voice tight with restraint. “You don’t get to decide how I feel or what I want.” Outside, the rain pours, drumming against the roof in a crescendo that matches the pounding of my heart.
"I know what you want now," I say softly, each word careful.
"But what about six months from now? A year?
When the newness fades and you're stuck with a woman who comes with more baggage than most airlines.
I've seen the tabloids, Collin. I know you're known for sleeping around.
" I hear his sharp intake of breath, the sound so vivid I can almost feel it against my skin.
The memory of his breathing against my neck as we laid tangled together on my couch just yesterday surfaces unbidden, a ghost of intimacy that makes this distance all the more painful.
“Is that really what you think of me?” The hurt in his voice is palpable, a living thing transmitted through the miles between us. “That I’m just... what? Passing time with you? That this is some phase I’ll grow out of?” I bite my cheek hard enough to draw blood.
“I think you believe you want this now,” I say carefully. “But I also think neither of us understood what we were getting into. The public scrutiny, the effect on your career, on Jamie... it’s too much, Collin.” For a moment there is only the sound of rain and our breathing, slightly out of sync.
“Let me come over,” he begs, a new desperation threading through his voice. “We need to talk about this face-to-face, not over the phone. This is different Iris, you are different.”
“No.” I fight to steady my voice. “I need space. We both do. To think, to be sure.”
“Iris—”
“I’ll see you Friday for the finale.” I cut him off, unable to bear hearing whatever plea was forming on his lips. My voice sounds distant, hollow, like it belongs to someone else entirely. “We need to focus on that now, not... this.”
“Please don’t hang up,” he says, and the raw vulnerability in his voice makes my chest physically ache, a dull throb that steals my breath.
“Goodbye, Collin.” I end the call before he can say anything else, before my resolve can crumble completely.
My phone immediately lights up with his name again.
More calls from Diane, Max, and my mother.
This time, I silence it and place it face down on the table, unable to look at the evidence of what I’ve just done.
On the TV, they’ve moved on to discussing our chances to win the finale, speculating on whether this “personal drama” will affect our performance.
I finally find the strength to reach for the remote and turn it off.
The sudden silence in the kitchen feels absolute.
Rain continues its relentless rhythm against the roof and windows, somehow louder now in the absence of his voice.
My once cozy house is too big, too empty.
I press my palms against my eyes, feeling the wet heat of tears against my skin.
This is the right decision. The only decision.
Protecting Collin from himself, from the consequences of getting involved with me.
From losing his dream. Protecting Jamie from more upheaval and inevitable disappointment.
Protecting myself from the heartbreak that seems inevitable when measured against my past. So why does doing the right thing feel like carving out my own heart with a dull spoon?
I lower my hands and stare out at the rain-soaked yard.
At the ordinary Tuesday morning that somehow became the day I walked away from the first man I’ve truly trusted since Owen.
The first man who made me feel seen, whole, worthy of something real.
The rain falls harder, the sound both soothing and accusatory.
It reminds me of standing on Owen’s porch, watching Collin defend me with a fierceness that still takes my breath away when I think about it.
The same fierceness that’s now costing him everything.
Better to end it now, I tell myself, before we’re in too deep.
Before the fallout gets worse. Before Jamie gets even more attached to a man who might not stay.
But as I sit alone in my kitchen, watching raindrops race down the window like tears, I know it’s already too late for that.
We’ve been in too deep from the moment he first took my hand on the ice and something inside me recognized that touch as home.