36 - Avery
Avery
I don’t remember leaving my seat.
One second, I’m watching officials drag Grayson across the ice, and the next, I’m moving through the tunnel.
The crowd is roaring around me, but it sounds distant and muted as if someone stuffed cotton into my ears. Grayson’s name echoes through the concourse as he gets ejected from the game. The only reason I hear it is because his name was already repeating in my head.
It started when he slammed Damon to the ice.
“Avery.”
Someone grabs my arm, but I shake them off.
I need air.
Space.
I don’t even know what I need, but my feet keep moving anyway.
The concourse blurs around me as I push through people waiting in line while the final minutes of the game play out on the screens around us. The bright lights overhead make my head hurt.
“Avery, slow down,” Harper calls out behind me.
I think.
But maybe it’s Wesley.
I can’t focus long enough to tell.
All I can see is Grayson and the look on his face right before he completely lost it.
I swallow hard, unable to process any of it.
Hockey players fight. I don’t care about the fight.
I care that he promised.
He’d stood in my kitchen and promised me that he wouldn’t let Damon get to him.
The memory hits me so hard because I’d believed him with my entire being. My whole body had relaxed when he guaranteed me that it’d be fine. I could come watch him, and it’d be fine.
Because Grayson is controlled. He is reliable.
He promised, and I believed him.
And now, I can’t stop wondering if any of his promises hold the kind of weight I’d come to rely on.
If he could be wrong about this, what else could he be wrong about? And once that thought enters my head, it spreads like a crack through glass.
He promised we’d take things slow. He promised he’d wait for me. That he was in this. That he wanted a real future.
A future I never believed in until he promised it could be real.
Be ours.
And now.
What if I was wrong about all of it?
“Avery, where are you going?” A chorus of voices and questions rings out behind me as my friends try to keep up.
My feet carry me faster down the stairs, toward the locker room, because it’s where we parked.
I try to steady my breathing. Time and space will help.
It has to help.
“Avery.” Harper steps in front of me.
I side-step her, but she does it again. I nearly run into her.
“Avery, stop and just talk to us.” She looks panicked, as if none of this makes sense.
It doesn’t make sense to me either.
“What’s going on?” Sloane asks, brows furrowed. “Why do we care about that fight?”
My eyes dart to Katie, who’s standing toward the back while she watches me carefully.
“Damon Woods is Avery’s ex,” Harper says as if that explains all of it.
That hardly scratches the surface.
“The guy Grayson just pummeled?” Sloane glances back at Katie. “Have you ever seen him lose it like that?”
Katie just shakes her head, her eyes glinting with the new knowledge as she pieces together what must’ve happened out there.
“Avery,” Wesley starts, moving beside Harper. “You’ve said he’s an asshole for months. Why do you care if he gets knocked around?”
Horror crosses Harper’s face. “Please don’t tell us you got back together with him.”
My stomach turns over at just the thought. “Fuck no.” But when I search for more to say, I come up empty.
My hands twitch at my side, my entire body thrumming with energy that I’m desperate to expel.
To run. To scream. To do anything to get everything to fucking quiet down.
“If you’re not back together with him, then why are you acting like this?” Harper’s voice takes on the soft, soothing tone she always manages to bring out when I’m losing it.
“I, um, I–” My eyes dart to Katie, and I freeze again.
I’m not ready to explain to them. I’m not ready to tell them about Grayson.
I had been. Sitting with Katie in the stands while she called me out for being scared, I found myself feeling ready, but now, I can’t see past this.
My hand combs through my hair. “It’s not a big deal.”
Lie.
Because it feels like a huge deal.
Because somewhere along the way, I’d started believing that if Grayson Shaw promised me something, I could trust it.
And now I don’t know what to do with the fact that maybe I can’t.
I barely survived Damon; there’s no way I could survive things not working out with Grayson if we commit to it.
“God, Avery, just talk to us. Please.” Wesley’s eyes are searching my face for answers I don’t have.
The locker room door slams open before I can respond, the sound echoing through the hallway.
Every head turns, including mine.
Grayson storms out, still wearing half his uniform.
Every single thought in my head disappears.
He sees me, and his eyes shift from panic to relief. His feet shift direction, bringing him straight for me.
“Avery.” His voice is laced with an apology he doesn’t even have to speak for me to hear.
Sloane cuts in. “Gray, it’s not really a good time.”
She may as well not have even spoken because Grayson ignores her entirely, and my eyes stay focused on him.
“Avery, baby, are you okay?”
My heart pounds harder as I take him in.
Grayson Shaw, the man who makes me breakfast and falls asleep holding me, looks completely wrecked. It makes me want to run to him and wrap my arms around his neck, pretending none of this happened.
But then I really look at him. There’s a bruise already blooming across his jaw and an angry red scrape across his cheek. And my head twists it until he doesn’t look like my Grayson at all.
He looks like a version of himself that I hadn’t realized existed.
It’s in the half-second that I step back, right as he tries reaching for me. The movement happens on autopilot, my body making the decision for me. My heart cracks wide open as his face crumbles.
Regret.
Devastation.
I know my face mirrors his.
The girls all go silent, their eyes burning into me, while my body becomes hyperaware of the fact that we are not alone and this is not private.
Grayson doesn’t seem to notice at all, the color draining from his face in response to my hesitancy.
Seeing him like this feels like being run over by a truck.
God.
I almost tell him it’s okay, but my brain feels like it’s moving through mud.
Everything is too loud and too much.
And I can’t tell him everything’s okay when a tiny, terrified part of me is now wondering if I’ve been wrong about how steady he is.
“Avery,” he says again, softer this time. “I’m sorry.”
The words crack something open inside me.
“You promised.” My voice breaks. “You promised me you wouldn’t do that.”
His jaw tightens. “Baby, you have no idea what he said.”
“What he said doesn’t matter.”
“Why does he keep calling her baby?” Wesley whispers to someone behind me.
It sends nerves skittering up my spine because this isn’t how I wanted people to find out.
His voice doesn’t waver this time. “It absolutely does matter.”
“No.” My voice cracks again. “It doesn’t. I don’t give a fuck about Damon Woods. I give a fuck about you. And you promised me he couldn’t get to us.”
We stand watching each other, only a few feet apart, somehow feeling like miles.
“What did you expect? After everything he did to you?"
My chest tightens, my heartbeat roaring in my ears.
Behind me, Wesley’s voice gets louder. “What the hell is he talking about?”
Then Harper says, “What did Damon do?”
Sloane adds to the voices, “Wait, are you guys like together?”
A few more questions ring out, and I close my eyes, tuning them and focusing only on breathing.
“Can everyone just shut up? Just stop talking. Please,” I snap, not bothering to look at my friends, too terrified to see pity from whatever they now think they know about Damon, or hurt from me hiding what I have with Grayson.
Everyone falls silent.
Grayson is still staring at me, and he doesn’t even look sorry anymore. He looks like he’s already lost, as if somewhere between the ice and right here, he’s convinced himself he knows exactly how this conversation ends.
And every time I open my fucking mouth, I manage to make it worse.
“It doesn’t matter what Damon did. That was a year ago.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “He was fucking waving at you tonight like it was still some sick game.”
I nod. “Yeah. He was. He’s an awful person, but I don’t need you saving me, Grayson.”
His expression hardens instantly. “Of course you don’t.”
“I don’t understand why you’d break your promise–”
“Because what the hell did you expect me to do?” His voice rises, not quite yelling, but close. “You think I don’t know you can handle yourself?”
I open my mouth, but he keeps going.
“You think I punched him because I think you’re weak?
Or because you need me to? No, I fucking did it because he doesn’t deserve to fucking wave at you.
To do what he did to you. He doesn’t deserve to skate around the ice acting like he’s above it.
To say what he said about you. And I just fucking lost it. Okay, I lost it.”
I get it. In my heart, I understand completely, and I might even like him more for it, but that doesn’t stop my head from spinning trying to make sense of it.
“If I can’t trust your word on something that mattered this much to me, then what am I supposed to do with that?”
He drops his head back in defeat. “That’s what this is, huh?”
“What?”
“A way out.”
My stomach drops.
“Avery, was there ever a chance that you’d want to be with me for real? Or have you been just waiting for an excuse?”
It’s the same thing Liam said to me. I’d been so certain then that that’s not what I was doing, but is it?
Is that what I’ve been waiting for?
I don’t need to turn around to know every single one of my friends is staring, the weight of their attention settling onto my shoulders.
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
“This is real.” The words are quiet off my lips, but his eyes search my face like he doesn’t entirely believe me.
“It was one mistake. One. I’ve shown you for months that you can count on me.”
The hurt in his voice causes guilt to settle like a stone in my stomach.
I don’t know what to say.
There are twenty people standing around us, my heart is trying to beat its way out of my chest, and everything inside me feels twisted.
I want him.
I’m angry.
I don’t trust whatever the hell just happened.
I still want him to stay.
I need space.
And I don’t know how to explain any of that to him right now, so I settle for the exact wrong thing.
“I trusted you with the truth about what happened. This mattered to me. I just don’t know. Okay?”
The realization seems to hit him all at once. I watch all fight and hope disappear from his face. For the first time, Grayson looks tired of fighting for me.
“So, this is it?” The words are a breath off his lips.
The very idea of never holding him again feels unbearable. But leaning on him now, when he suddenly seems less solid than he did two hours ago, feels a hell of a lot riskier than anything I was prepared for.
My throat tightens.
“No. Grayson, that’s not what I said.” The words come out too fast, tripping over each other. “That’s not…”
But I watch them hit a wall he’s already started building between us.
“I just need a fucking minute.” My pulse jumps.
“I just need space to think. To breathe. To process.” I motion helplessly toward my friends, who are standing behind me like witnesses to a train wreck.
“You weren’t supposed to do that. They weren’t supposed to hear this.
I was supposed to have time to figure out what I want. ”
As soon as the words leave my mouth, I hate them.
Because what I want isn’t the problem.
I know what I want.
I want Grayson.
I want his stupid smile and the way he always reaches for my hand without thinking. I want the future he keeps talking about that I never believed in. I want the version of myself that exists when I’m with him.
The problem is that for the first time since starting this, we’re on shaky ground, and there’s no time to wait for it to stabilize.
Grayson is staring at the floor when all I want is for him to look at me.
Tell me everything is okay.
Tell me this doesn’t change anything.
And then make me believe it.
I want this to be better.
God, I want this to be better.
An assistant coach pokes their head out of the locker room, calling Grayson’s name. He doesn’t look, but his body shifts toward it.
It feels like the beginning of him leaving, and suddenly, I can’t breathe.
“I thought I could wait. That I could do this, but I can’t take this.”
The fight drains out of him so completely that it scares me more than the anger did.
“Do you even know how much more time you need? Can you give me anything?”
Something cold slides into my stomach.
“Grayson.”
“I might’ve fucked over my entire team tonight.” His eyes finally lift to mine, and it just makes everything worse. “For someone who’s still not ready to choose me.”
The words cut into me because I can see the certainty behind them. He’s already decided what this means.
“Pretty fucking pathetic.”
“No.” My voice comes out strangled. “No, that’s not–”
But he’s already shaking his head and pulling away.
“I’ve got to go.”
Panic explodes through me, cutting through the anxiety and confusion already there. Because for weeks, I’ve been too afraid to trust him enough to believe he’d stay. The fear of being hurt again has ruled every single decision I’ve made with him.
But now, standing here watching him walk away, a new fear crashes into all the others.
What if I spent so much time protecting myself from losing him that I end up losing him anyway?
Suddenly, the stupid promise doesn’t feel like my biggest problem anymore. Tomorrow, I’ll probably still be angry, but that doesn’t feel nearly as terrifying as watching him walk away.
I can be pissed at him and love him all the same.
The realization hits so hard I almost double over.
I love him.
I love him, and I think I might’ve realized it too late.
Despite every instinct screaming at me to go after him, to grab his hand, to stop him before he disappears through that door, I stay frozen exactly where I am.
I let him walk away.
And I hate myself for it.