38 - Avery
Avery
I’m not exactly sure how long I’ve been staring at the spot where Grayson disappeared, but it’s long enough that it’s safe to assume he’s not coming back out.
The game is over now, and the corridor that had been empty is suddenly crowded with movement and noise.
I don’t move.
I don’t think I can.
“Avery.” Harper’s hand lands on my shoulder.
I flinch instinctively as the touch jolts me back to the present. The present where Grayson’s gone, and I might’ve pushed him away hard enough this time that he doesn’t come back.
Harper’s expression softens. “Come on.”
She gently steers me toward the wall before someone barrels into us, and I sit down on the bench lining the walkway.
My brain feels like static.
“It’s okay,” she says quietly.
The words almost make me laugh because nothing about this feels okay. Not the look on Grayson’s face when he walked away from me and definitely not the realization clawing its way through my body.
Wesley crosses her arms in front of me. “What the hell was that?”
Harper shoots her a look, but Wesley doesn’t budge.
I groan. “Wes.”
“No.” She points toward the locker room door. “How long has that been going on?”
Harper touches Wesley’s arm in a silent plea, but Wesley doubles down. “Absolutely not. She needs to explain."
“We’ve just been hooking up,” I start, but stop because that’s a lie. It was never just hooking up, even when we were both pretending it was. “No, well, I thought that’s all it was at first, but it’s different now.”
“Gross. I don’t want to hear about Grayson’s sex life.” Sloane groans, looking to Katie to agree.
Unlike my friends, Katie doesn’t even pretend to be surprised. Her eyes are watching me carefully, a frustrated glare that any protective older sister would have after witnessing the dumpster fire that was my secret relationship going up in flames.
Sloane looks from Katie back to me, and then she does it again. “Wait. Katie, you knew? How did you know?”
Katie shrugs. “He was fighting it, but basically told me when he was in New York.”
My eyes widen, and Wesley’s head snaps back to me.
Yep. She’s too smart not to catch on to the timing of that.
“That long? You’ve been hiding this for that long?”
Well, since the cat is out of the bag, there’s no sense in lying. “Um,” I roll my lips together. “Longer, actually.”
“But why?” Harper asks, her voice filled with hurt.
God. My life is a disaster.
I scrub both hands over my face.
“There wasn’t anything to tell, at first. And then it was more, but I wasn’t sure I wanted it to be more. Not after everything, and–”
“After everything with Damon?” Harper asks.
I nod, chewing on my bottom lip.
“And what exactly happened with Damon?”
Heat crawls up my neck.
“What did Grayson mean when he said ‘after everything he did to you’? What don’t we know?” Wesley sits down next to me while Harper flanks me on the other side. Her voice softens. “We saw the article, Avery. You know that everyone’s seen it.”
I inhale, squeezing my eyes shut.
“Did he do what he did to her, to you?” Harper’s voice is barely audible over my heart roaring in my ears.
I blow out a breath. “No. He never got physical with me like that.”
I contemplate leaving it there; it’s not their business after all. But keeping it all inside is how I ended up here in the first place. Suddenly, anything but the truth feels impossible.
I let out a slow breath. “He was,” I search for the right words, “controlling.”
“Okay...” Harper says carefully.
I rub my palms against my jeans. “It wasn’t physical, but he just…”
I swallow.
Why is this still embarrassing?
“He didn’t like it when I went places without him or wasn’t where I said I’d be.”
Wesley’s face darkens.
“He’d go through my phone sometimes just to look for a reason to fight, I think. And if there was nothing, he’d check my location while I was out until he had a reason.”
Harper mutters, "Jesus."
“He always said if I really loved him, I wouldn’t need anyone else.”
“What the fuck?” Sloane blurts.
I stare at the floor harder. “He took my keys once.”
My stomach twists.
“Okay, it was more than once.”
That earns hard silence.
I’m too terrified to look up and see pity in their eyes, so I add, “But I got out before anything really bad happened, I promise. I knew it was wrong.
Nobody says anything for several seconds.
Then—
“Avery.” Harper’s voice cracks.
I look up to see that, despite my reassurance, everyone looks horrified.
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“Avery.”
“It wasn’t.”
“It was.” Wesley’s voice is flat.
I wince.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
Wesley doesn’t sound angry anymore, just defeated, as if her not knowing the situation somehow let me down.
The question hits hard because the answer feels pathetic now.
“At first, I was embarrassed because I let it happen”
“You didn’t let it happen.”
“I stayed for a year.” My voice comes out sharp. “I made excuses for him. I thought he’d change. I kept thinking that if I just stopped fighting with him, everything would be fine.”
Shame burns through me.
“So yeah. I was embarrassed.” My throat tightens. “But then so much time went by, and everyone assumed I was fine. And I wanted to be fine. I just thought if I could pretend long enough, eventually I would be. I’d forget about it. Forget about him.”
“Aves.” Sloane studies me for a long moment. “If you've spent months refusing to trust Grayson because of what he did, then you never really forgot about it at all.”
Damn it.
I hate when she’s right.
“I know.”
Sloane scrunches her face. “Might’ve helped if you figured it out just a tad sooner, you know?”
Harper giggles, and Wesley loses the battle and grins.
For a moment, just a moment, the noise in my head quiets.
Then, Katie’s eyes find mine, and her smile disappears.
“Are you okay?”
The concern in her voice makes my stomach twist because out of everyone standing here, Katie should be furious. She should hate me for hurting Grayson with my indecision. Instead, she’s looking at me like she’s worried.
“No.” The word cracks apart on the way out, and my eyes burn. “Not even a little.”
Harper reaches for my hand as the hallway blurs.
“I don’t want to end things. I never did. I just never wanted any of this. I never wanted to love anyone again. I wanted my freedom and my time and my life to be all mine. I didn’t think I could ever let anyone in again.”
I lean my head back against the wall.
“And then Grayson started showing up. At the grocery store, at the field, in the alley behind the bar. He was always there with his annoying concern and unbearable hero tendencies, wearing his stupid glasses and cooking for me. Then, I wasn’t noticing all the times he showed up anymore; I was noticing all the times he didn’t, wishing he had. ”
Nobody rushes to fill the silence, letting me sit in it while I hear my own thoughts. The truth that’s been sitting inside me for weeks, that I’ve been too scared to touch.
A tear slips down my cheek, and I wipe it away angrily.
“I love him. I don’t even know when it happened. It just did. I spent so much time looking for reasons to run that I never noticed he’d already become what I wanted to run to.”
The confession leaves my lips in a rush, the words settling over all of us.
And every reaction I’ve had tonight starts making sense.
It’s why watching him walk away felt like my heart was being shredded.
Because somewhere along the way, the future I’ve been so terrified of started looking exactly like him.
And now he’s sitting on the other side of that locker room door, convinced I don’t want him.
“Oh my God.”
Harper squeezes my hand. “Aves.”
I shake my head. “No, he thinks I don’t want him.” Fresh tears blur my vision. “He thinks I was looking for a way out. And what if I’m figuring this all out too late?”
“It’s not too late,” Sloane says with full confidence.
“He shouldn’t want me anyway, not after everything I’ve put him through.”
Katie finally steps forward with her expression gentle but firm. “Maybe you should let Grayson decide who he wants.”
The image of Grayson taking a step toward me, choosing me after everything, right before I backed away, replays in my head.
I’ve spent months thinking about what Grayson deserves and the kind of person he should have. Even when he’s spent that same time showing me exactly who he wants.
Me.
Shame curls low in my gut.
The locker room doors swing open, and we all turn, but it’s just Nathan and Liam.
Liam spots me and stops walking, placing a hand over his heart. His eyes glint, and even I can resist grinning as he sighs dramatically.
“You didn’t tell me. My soul sister lied to me.”
I wipe the lingering tear from my cheek and shove him.
“I’m sorry.”
“The betrayal. The disrespect.”
A laugh escapes Harper, and even Nathan looks amused.
“I had to find out from Wyatt that you're sleeping with Grayson? You could’ve warned me.”
“I’m literally apologizing.”
Liam points at me and whines. “What does he have that I don’t?”
I smirk, eyebrow quirking. “You really want me to answer that?”
A chorus of ‘no’s’ rings out around me, louder from Sloane and Katie as expected.
The smile falls from my face as the mood sobers.
“How is he?”
“Not great,” Nathan says. “Probably best to give him a minute.”
I stare at the locker room doors, knowing that Grayson is right on the other side.
My mind flashes through every single time he refused to let me run.
Every time he waited for me or came after me when I tried to push him away.
If he hadn’t done any of it, we would’ve never made it past a grocery store run-in.
So, maybe he does need space. And he can have it right now, but when he walks through those doors, I’m going to be right here.
“You guys should go.” I motion to the door.
“You’re not coming?” Wesley asks.
I shake my head. “He waited for me. So, I’m waiting for him.”
Harper smiles, but something about it seems heavy.
A line of hugs later, and I’m left sitting alone on the bench. The hallway gets quieter until even the arena staff disappear. The TVs mounted overhead stop showing post-game coverage. The cleaning crews begin making their rounds.
And still, I sit.
The locker room door finally opens again, nearly an hour later.
My heart jumps into my throat, but then plummets to the ground.
Wyatt’s suit jacket is slung over one shoulder, tie loosened around his neck as he walks out of the locker room. His eyes land on me right away, and aside from looking more irritated than usual, he doesn’t seem surprised to find me here.
I push to my feet. “Is he okay?”
Wyatt lets out a laugh that contains absolutely zero humor.
“What do you think?”
I wince. “Right.”
He stares at me. “If you’re planning on giving him a harder time tonight, can you not? He’s being hard enough on himself.”
I stare back, annoyed that Wyatt always seems to assume the worst about my intentions with Grayson.
“He shouldn’t have hit him.”
Wyatt’s jaw works. “Correct.”
Some of the tension leaves my shoulders.
“He promised me he wouldn’t.”
“I know.” Then Wyatt crosses his arms. “But while he might seem like a saint most of the time, he’s only human. Are you planning on holding one mistake over his head forever?”
The question catches me off guard, but the answer is easy.
“No.”
His eyebrows lift. “No?”
“No. I’m still angry, but I’m not here to talk about any of that.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because I need to see him.”
He slides onto the bench next to me.
“What are you doing?”
“Waiting.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s midnight.” He gestures around the empty hallway. “And this place is creepy as shit.”
I smirk. “You’re worried about me.”
“Am not.”
“You know, Sloane said you’re secretly really overprotective.” I bump his shoulder with my own. “I see it now.”
“Fuck off.” He scowls. “I’m just making sure you don’t chicken out of telling Grayson you love him.”
I cough. “I never said that.”
“Didn’t have to.”
A tiny laugh escapes me. “Okay.”
“He’s stubborn and annoying, but impossible not to love.”
I’ve never quite understood how Grayson and Wyatt were such good friends when they seem so different, but there’s no mistaking the fondness in Wyatt’s words.
“You forgot overbearing.” I purse my lips. “Grayson’s overbearing, too.”
He chuckles.
We sit in silence after that, too emotionally exhausted to keep talking. After a while, I can’t stand it anymore.
“How’d you know I love him?”
He gestures vaguely toward me. “Look at yourself.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re prepared to sit here all night.” His face gets more closed off. “And because when it comes to relationships, you're not that different from me.”
That surprises me enough to pause.
“Really?”
Wyatt stares down the hallway. “Yes, and if I were in your shoes, I’d be long gone by now unless there was a damn good reason to be sitting here.”
I study him, noticing the distant look in his eyes and the way his jaw tightens. It doesn’t take more than that glance for me to understand that I’ve barely scratched the surface when it comes to understanding Wyatt.
His groan echoes down the hallway. “Stop looking at me.”
I do, but not because he asked.
I stop looking because the locker room doors open, taking every ounce of my attention.
Grayson steps into the hallway carrying a duffel bag over one shoulder. His head is down, and he’s halfway toward the exit before he looks up.
He freezes when he sees me.
The bruise on his jaw has darkened, and his hair is still damp from the shower. He blinks rapidly as if I’m some illusion that he’s trying to wipe away. As if he’s convinced there’s no way I’m actually here.
Wyatt takes that as his cue. “Well, I’m going to go now.”
Neither of us looks at him.
Then, on his way out the door, he mutters, “Good luck, idiots.”
Now Grayson and I are alone, standing twenty feet apart.
He might’ve just spent the past two hours convincing himself I’d left, but I’m still here.
And this time, I’m not going anywhere.