Chapter 35
Five days.
Five days since she walked out of my flat wearing my shirt and breaking my heart with every quiet step toward the elevator. Five days since her scent clung to my pillows. Five days since her laugh curled around my ribs and made a home there.
Five fucking days since I touched her, since she looked at me like I was worth believing in, worth loving.
Now I’m pacing sidewalks like a feral thing, haunted by memories instead of hunger. There’s a clock inside my chest stuck on the moment she slipped away.
I haven’t slept, not really. I close my eyes and she’s there—blonde hair across my pillow like sunlight I don’t deserve, her leg hooked over mine, her breaths warming my throat—like I was home and safety, not the storm that tore everything apart.
Then I wake up, and she’s gone again.
Every morning this week, I’ve stood outside her office door long before dawn, hood up, head down, pretending I’m not waiting for her like a lovesick fool.
Every morning, I hope and every morning, she doesn’t come.
I walk the boardwalk she loves, where the air smells of salt and mornings and hope.
I pass the little coffee shop she goes to every morning, the one she brought me to, back when days felt easy and the world made sense.
I haunt the places she loves, like some fool praying the universe will put her in my path again.
I am a grown man, a professional athlete, a man who’s stood under floodlights with thousands of eyes on him and never flinched, yet the only thing that terrifies me in this world is losing her. Truly losing her.
Cormac called last night, and the night before, and the one before that.
Give her time, lad.
Women don’t heal on a clock.
Patience isn’t weakness. It’s love.
I heard him. I respect him. I don’t have it in me.
Not now. Not after finding her. Whatever I was before her? That man is a stranger. A life that doesn’t fit anymore. I used to know how to exist alone—clean, neat, controlled. That’s all shattered now. She touched me and now solitude feels like starvation.
What am I supposed to do with that?
I can’t go back to being half alive. Not after breathing her in and tasting a future in her mouth.
Cormac says to wait, but time is a luxury I don’t have. Now that I know what it feels like to wake up with her body warm against mine, I don’t know how to fucking wake up without her.
Now that I’ve seen the way she looks at me, like I’m something good, something worth choosing, every second she’s gone feels like punishment.
She hasn’t answered my calls or texts. Not a damn word. And God help me, I deserve her silence, but it’s killing me anyway.
I press a hand to my chest over the ache that never lets up.
I had her. I ruined it. And life without her tastes wrong now. Empty. Sharp around the edges.
So I stand outside her world another morning, heart in my hands, waiting like a fool for a woman who might never come back, because somehow … she became where I go to breathe.
I don’t know how to live in a world where she doesn’t love me anymore.
Not now. Not after that night. Not after I made her my forever in one stolen sunrise.
I can only hope she lets me earn her back. Because I swear on every scar on my body, I will not lose her without fighting like hell first.
It’s travel day.
Portland, Oregon. The Strikers have never beaten them on their own pitch, and the lads have been buzzing all week about changing that. One more record to break. One more page in club history.
Yesterday at training, Brooks gave one of his speeches. The kind that gets clipped for documentaries one day. Fire in his voice, pride in his chest. He clapped my shoulder, told the boys he trusted I’d guard the net with my life, so it was on the rest of them to put balls in theirs.
If only he knew. My body is here, but the rest of me is elsewhere, tangled in blonde hair on a pillow that isn’t mine anymore. My nights are sleepless, my chest hollow, my thoughts a loop of her voice, her laugh, her hurt.
Turns out, without her, I’m no longer the man I was. Turns out, finding your person ruins you for solitude.
Smith drops me at the airport. I walk through the private entrance the club arranged, force a smile for fans waiting with shirts and phones, pretending my world isn’t in pieces. Chat with TSA, nod like a man whose heart isn’t bleeding into his shoes, then head straight for the jet bridge.
She has to be here. She wouldn’t let June travel alone, would she?
But she’s let five days go by without me.
I step onto the plane. The captain shakes my hand; I barely register it. A flight attendant greets me; I nod, impatient, heart smashing against my ribs like it’s trying to escape.
Move, for fuck’s sake. Let me see if she’s here.
I scan the cabin. Bags overhead, headphones on necks, lads joking, staff settling in. I look straight to row twenty-three, to the window seat, her seat, and find it empty. My stomach drops straight through me.
I swallow hard and move down the aisle. The lads give me space, quiet nods, sympathy in their eyes. Thiago pats my arm as I pass. He doesn’t know the details, but he knows heartbreak when he sees it.
Two rows back, June sits beside Luca. They’re mid-laugh until they spot me. Her smile falters.
“Is she coming?” I manage, trying not to sound like a man begging for oxygen.
“I don’t know,” June whispers, guilt on her face. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, lass,” I murmur, though it isn’t.
I keep walking. Stow my bag, drop into my seat, lean back, and close my eyes. The cabin is quieter than usual—lads talking low, staff glancing over like they’re watching a funeral procession. I suppose they are.
Then—
It hits me before I see her. A scent. Vanilla and clean skin and something soft and sweet that has burrowed into my lungs and refused to leave. My pulse jerks, my breath stumbles. My soul recognizes her before my eyes see her.
I open them.
She stands in the aisle. Oversized sweater. Black tights. Runners. Messy blonde hair. Glasses. Eyes red and tired.
She looks breakable, and I might drop to my knees in front of the whole team.
Our eyes lock. Time stops.
“I’m not ready to talk,” she says quietly, voice steady but edged with hurt. “I’m here for the team, for June. I’m sitting here because I won’t be the reason the Strikers lose, but this doesn’t mean anything. Okay?”
I nod. God help me, I’d nod to whatever terms she gave me if it meant she stayed within reach. I stand, stepping aside so she can take the window seat.
She lifts her bag to stow it. My hand is on it before I think.
“May I?” My voice isn’t steady. Christ.
She hesitates, then nods. I take it from her gently, like it’s fragile, like she is, and slide it overhead. She hands me her backpack next. I store it too.
She sits. Buckles in. Opens her laptop. Headphones on. Walls up.
And I sit there beside her. Close enough to touch, to breathe her in, but she feels miles away.
Still, it’s the first breath I’ve taken in five days that doesn’t hurt.
Because she’s here. And for now? That’s enough to keep my heart beating.
I wake as the wheels hit the runway.
At some point mid-flight, the exhaustion finally dragged me under. I remember leaning back, watching her profile. The curve of her cheek, the way her lashes brush her skin when she blinks. I force myself not to touch her, not to reach across inches that suddenly feel like miles.
Then my eyes grew heavy. She was beside me, I could breathe, and for the first time in five nights, I slept.
Six hours with her body inches from mine, and every minute felt like mercy.
The plane taxis. She stares out the window, headphones still on, walls still up, like she’s carved herself out of reach. The captain calls release on seatbelts and the cabin stirs, bags shifting, teammates murmuring, the world waking back up around us.
I unclip my belt, stand, and slide open the overhead. Her bags are the first I pull down, muscle memory now. I set them gently in the seat I’d held like a vigil all flight. She murmurs a quiet “Thank you,” barely audible, and tucks her laptop away.
Then she stands, steps into the aisle, and turns to leave.
It’s now or never.
Stop being a coward.
My hand slips into my pocket, fingers closing around the fold of paper I’ve carried like a lifeline these last few days. I unfold it, then fold it smaller and then I hold it out to her.
“I know you don’t want to talk to me,” I say, voice low, rough. “And maybe I don’t deserve it. But I’d … I’d be grateful if you read this.”
She looks at me. Really looks. Those eyes I’ve memorized and missed like oxygen.
For a second, nothing exists but the soft hum of the cabin and my heart beating like it’s trying to earn its way back to her.
Then she reaches out and takes the paper from my hand.
My heart drops, like gravity just doubled. Every ounce of hope I have sinks to my feet, terrified and alive all at once.
She nods once, barely there, then turns away with the letter held tight in her fingers.
And all I can do is stand there, hoping she’ll read the words I bled into that page and someday, God, someday, choose me again.