Chapter 22
~Riley~
It would be hard to miss Trevor when I walk into the restaurant.
Perfectly-styled black hair sits above a classically handsome face.
His full lips show off a set of straight white teeth when he smiles, and his casually expensive clothes make him look like he stepped off the pages of a magazine.
Girls across the United States have pictures of him hanging on their walls and it’s not hard to see why.
I can still remember the way my stomach flipped the first time he gave me his full attention.
Stay strong, Riley. Remember the game plan.
Despite all my preparation for this moment, my heart pounds painfully hard as I make my way over to the table.
Immediately, I see that he’s already ordered for us.
A black coffee sits on the table across from him, waiting for me, but just the thought of it turns my stomach.
Hannah and Hudson both drink tea instead, and I’ve found I prefer it too. I haven’t had coffee in over a month.
More has changed about me than he realizes.
Maybe the same is true for him too. Usually, confidence drips off him, but today, he looks almost nervous as he taps the side of his mug, staring off into the distance.
He spots me when I’m still a few feet away and scrambles to his feet. “Riley. Hi.”
His eyes scan my face, looking for any clues about what I might be thinking and why I agreed to see him after all this time, but I keep my expression as neutral as possible, speaking louder than usual so that my voice doesn’t tremble. “Hi. How was your trip?”
I slide into my chair before he can come any closer, and after a second’s pause, he sinks back down into his, his gaze never leaving my face. “It was fine. You look great.”
My lips press together to stop the return compliment that instinctively tries to come out. I didn’t come for small talk. It would be better to get right to the point.
“I finally read your texts a couple of weeks ago. All of them. I hadn’t been looking at them before then.”
He nods, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. “I guessed as much after you replied to me only that one time. I know how you can shut down on people. It’s your way of dealing with things.”
The insinuation behind his words is clear: I know you so well. I’ve been there for you through hard times before. You can depend on me.
That subtextual message contains one major flaw, though. “In that case, you should have also guessed how I’d respond to being cheated on.”
He inhales deeply, apparently making as much of an effort to stay calm as I am. “I guess I thought all the time we’d spent together would count for something. I thought you’d at least hear me out.”
“What is there to hear? There’s nothing you can say that would change what happened.”
I wait for the loss to hit me again, the helplessness and hopelessness that had me crying on the hotel room floor at Skate America and more recently in Helsinki, but it doesn’t come.
Maybe I cried it all out that night or maybe talking things through with Hudson helped take away some of its power over me.
Either way, I’m feeling remarkably composed as I look across the table at the man who I would have done anything for just a few short months ago.
“No,” he concedes reluctantly. “I can’t change that, but I want you to know that I never wanted to hurt you. It wasn’t about that.”
Something in the way he phrases that strikes me as odd. “What was it about, then?”
“What?”
“You just said it wasn’t about hurting me. So, what was it about?”
His grimace reinforces my suspicion that the words meant something in particular, but his answer remains vague.
“I just mean that I didn’t hurt you on purpose.
I know you were hurt, and I’m so sorry for that, but it had nothing to do with me being unhappy with our relationship or wanting something different. ”
That doesn’t make any sense to me, so I try to rephrase it in a way that might. “So, you just couldn’t fight the attraction to Evelyn any longer? You wanted us both?”
Trevor blanches, his nose wrinkling as though he’s smelled something unpleasant. “I’m not attracted to Evelyn. I never have been.”
Each answer makes me more confused, not less, but I try to maintain a logical approach. “That’s not what she said. She told me over text that you two had sexual tension the whole time we were together, and that night was the natural culmination of it.”
“Literally none of that is true,” he blusters, and if he’s faking his disgust, it’s very convincing.
“She’s delusional. After you left, she tried to convince me that we might as well start dating since we already drove you away.
She says we’d be the perfect power couple, both of us American champions, but I will never date her. ”
Evelyn’s opportunism doesn’t even surprise me at this point, but Trevor’s vehement denial of any attraction to her does. “Then why would you sleep with her?”
Again, he grimaces, and a shutter falls over the openness I saw in his eyes a moment ago. “Does it make a difference? I fucked up, Riley. I know that, and if I could take it back, I would. But since I can’t, please tell me how to make things right between us. I want you to come home. I miss you.”
His voice cracks on the last word, which hits me harder than anything he’s said. Despite what happened at the end, I did love him, and it hurts to see him hurting.
Desperately, I grasp onto the words I rehearsed earlier.
“Edmonton is my home now. I really like the club and the city and being out of Evelyn’s shadow. Honestly, it’s the right move for me professionally.”
I studiously avoid saying anything about him, but of course he doesn’t let me get away with that. “What about personally? What about us, Riley? Can you just forget everything we’ve shared and leave me behind?”
His hand stretches across the table to cover mine, and the familiar touch nearly brings tears to my eyes. How many times did he comfort me when I had no one? How many times did he stand at my side when no one else did?
Fuck, this is harder than I thought it would be.
He made a mistake. A terrible, awful mistake, but I can’t help thinking about that night at the club in Helsinki, when I was high on my good performance and annoyed with Hudson and didn’t make the best choices.
If Christian hadn’t stepped in, would I have done something equally stupid? Let things get out of hand?
If I had, and Hudson ended our friendship afterwards, he would have had every right, but I would have been devastated. I would have hoped that I’d earned enough goodwill for him to give me another chance.
Does Trevor deserve that? Am I being unreasonable?
Everything seemed so clear this morning, but with Trevor right in front of me, those eyes that used to be my whole world pleading with me from across the table, it would be so much easier to give in.