Chapter 6 #2
I straighten, shoulders back, chin up, because my mother did not spend eighteen years drilling poise into me just for me to let another woman watch me unravel in public.
“Okay,” I say.
My drawl comes softer when I’m furious.
Controlled.
Steel wrapped in satin.
“I’m a straight shooter. I don’t do this back and forth.”
They both look at me.
“Cards on the table.” I lock my eyes on Tristan. “The way I see it, we’re either together… or we’re not.”
I can hear my own pulse.
Can hear somebody typing at the next table.
Can hear the air moving through the vent above us.
“But I need you to hear me.” My voice sharpens under the softness now. “She doesn’t make you happy.”
Stella’s jaw tightens.
I don’t look at her.
I don’t need to.
I’m talking to him.
“She plays games,” I say. “Pulls you in. Pushes you away. Never chooses. Never fully lets you go.”
That part is true too.
Or true enough from where I’m sitting.
My hand lifts, hovering near his, not touching this time because he already took the liberty of removing me once and I won’t beg in front of her.
“I’m here,” I whisper.
A breath.
Then the line that finally rips me open as I say it, “And I’m real.”
Silence.
Heavy.
Humiliating.
Stella exhales slowly.
Then she says, calm as a blade, “Then I guess it’s my turn.”
I look at her.
I should have seen it coming.
What she says next—about unfinished things, about five years, about fairness—I could almost survive.
It’s when she turns fully toward me that the real blood hits the floor.
“And Isa…” Her voice goes soft, almost thoughtful, which somehow makes it worse. “I heard your conversation in the training room. Your debutante mother? The one who advised you ‘to lock down Vale for her six-three NBA grandbabies and everything that comes with the Vale’s money vault?’”
The world stops.
No.
No no no.
My whole body goes ice cold.
Tristan’s face drains.
Stella doesn’t stop.
“Does he know?” she asks lightly. “That you targeted him? Went after him like a desperate WAG wannabe?”
My throat closes.
Every sound in the library sharpens and blurs at the same time.
I can feel people noticing now.
I shake my head.
“It’s not like that,” I hear myself say. The words crack coming out. “Not anymore.”
My eyes fly to Tristan’s.
He’s staring at me like I’ve become somebody else.
“No,” I say again, faster now, panicked enough to hate myself for it. “Maybe maybe it started—I don’t know—maybe my mother said things, but it’s not like that now, Tristan, I swear—”
His expression is unreadable.
That’s worse than anger.
Because anger I could fight.
Unreadable just leaves you falling.
Tears spring hot and immediate to my eyes.
I hate Stella.
I hate myself.
I hate the room.
I hate the fact that some stupid ugly part of what she said isn’t even totally false.
And because humiliation is a violent little thing, it yanks the truth straight out of me before pride can stop it.
“I’m in love with you,” I sob.
The words hang there.
Hideous.
Naked.
Final.
The entire table goes silent.
The world does too.
Tristan exhales slowly and drags a hand down his face.
Then he goes still. His eyes move to me.
Not angry.
Not soft.
Assessing.
“Is that true?”
The question should offend me.
Instead it wrecks me further.
Because he’s not asking whether I’m in love with him.
He’s asking whether what Stella said is true.
Whether I came to him first as strategy.
Whether my mother’s ugly little voice poisoned the beginning.
I shake my head so hard it hurts.
“I—” My mouth won’t work right. “It didn’t start like—okay maybe she said things, maybe I noticed you because—because of what you were, but it’s not like that anymore, Tristan, I swear—”
He lifts one hand.
Not harsh.
Not cruel.
But enough to stop me.
“Isa.”
Just my name.
Firm.
Grounding.
Not mine.
My chest caves in around it.
“You don’t get to build something real on something that started like that,” he says.
There’s no room left in me.
No dignity.
No posture.
No beautiful-pageant-girl composure.
Just pain.
“But I chose you,” I whisper, crying now in earnest, too far gone to stop it. “After. I stayed because I wanted you.”
That one hits him.
I see it.
For one aching second I think maybe—maybe that matters enough to tip something.
Then his gaze shifts.
To Stella.
And I know I’ve already lost.
It happens before he says it.
Before he breathes it.
Before he chooses himself in that cold, brutal way that somehow still isn’t the clean choice I need it to be.
He looks at her like there’s still an entire war sitting under his skin where she’s concerned.
She looks back like she knows it.
And suddenly I’m not a girl at a table anymore.
I’m collateral.
He says something to her about not flipping a switch.
About her walking away and coming back like he still belongs to her.
About choosing himself.
It hurts.
All of it hurts.
Because even in his anger, even in his refusal, there’s too much feeling in the way he speaks to her.
More than he ever gave me.
More than I wanted to admit while he was kissing me and walking me to class and building T&T out of routine and almosts.
Then he says it, that he’s choosing himself.
Taking a page from her book.
‘Thank you for showing me how.’
And then he leaves.
Just like that.
No one stops him.
No one would be stupid enough to try.
The silence after he goes is monstrous.
I can’t breathe right.
Can’t see right.
The whole library feels too bright and too aware.
Stella is still sitting there.
Calm.
Collected.
All in.
I hate her with a force so clean it almost steadies me.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I laugh once through my tears.
“No, you’re not.”
“Maybe I’m not,” she says quietly. “But I did save you from a wrecked, broken heart. He would never go all in on you—and you know it.”
That one lands so hard I nearly fold in half.
Because yes.
I do know it now.
I knew it every time he paused.
Every time another girl’s name changed his face.
Every time he gave me almost and I called it enough.
I grab my books too fast and one nearly slides off the table because I’m trying to leave before I actually collapse.
“I just needed more time,” I whisper, and I hate how small my voice sounds. “Now we both lost him.”
That gets her.
I can see it.
Good.
She looks almost stricken for one second.
I don’t care.
“Just go, Stella,” I say. “Leave me alone, okay?”
She stands.
I’m still crying.
Quietly.
Shakily.
Furiously.
“You’re a real bitch,” I say, because if I don’t say something sharp I might break open entirely. “I never suspected you to come at us so hard. I expected more cloak-and-dagger from you.”
My throat burns.
“But no. You took a rifle and made the kill shot.”
That one lands.
She doesn’t answer.
Just turns and walks away, ponytail swinging, shoulders straight, every step controlled even now.
And I hate that too.
I hate how intact she still looks.
By the time she reaches the doors, Kane appears outside them like he’s been waiting for the smoke to clear before assessing the damage.
He looks at Stella.
Then at me.
Then at the whole ugly wreckage of the table.
“Damn, Stella,” he says low enough that I barely catch it. “That was a bloodbath.”
She says something to him—something about making sure I get home, helping with my bag—and then she’s gone.
Gone.
Just like Tristan.
And I’m left sitting there in a boot, crying in the library, with my books half-falling out of my arms and the absolute certainty that Drew Travers is somewhere on this campus about to be unbearably, infuriatingly right.
And somehow, impossibly, that might be the part I hate most.
By the time I make it out of the library, the sky has split open.
Rain slams down in silver sheets, hard enough to bounce off the stone paths and turn the lamps along the quad into blurred halos. The whole campus looks smeared—gold light, dark branches, wet brick, the kind of storm that makes everything feel farther away than it is.
Kane is standing under the arch just outside the doors, hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket, shoulders hunched against the weather. He takes one look at my face and whatever he was about to say dies in his throat.
Good.
I don’t think I could survive sympathy from another one of Tristan’s people right now.
“I’ll walk you back,” he says.
The words are low.
Careful.
Nothing like his usual tone.
It almost undoes me again.
I grip the strap of my backpack tighter against my shoulder and keep my chin high because the alternative is dropping to the wet stone and never getting back up.
“No.”
His brow furrows.
“Isa.”
“I said no.”
The boot throws off my balance when I pivot, and I hate that too, hate the ugly awkward drag of it, hate that even my body is betraying my pride tonight.
Rain lashes sideways under the arch and catches the side of my face. Cold. Sharp. Mean.
Kane steps forward once.
Not touching.
Not crowding.
“You shouldn’t be out there alone in that.”
I laugh.
It comes out wrong.
Broken around the edges.
“Trust me,” I say. “Alone is kind of the theme tonight.”
His mouth tightens.
“Isa, let me just—”
“No.”
I don’t raise my voice.
I don’t need to.
All the steel in me is already doing its best just to keep me standing.
Because I can’t go back to the dorm yet.
I can’t.
I can’t face my teammates.
Can’t limp into my room in the boot and let them look at me with big soft eyes and awful gentle voices.
Can’t let anyone ask if I’m okay when my whole body is one split-open answer.
I didn’t just lose the guy.
That would be clean, almost.
I lost the rhythm of him.
The texts.
The lunches.
The late-night study sessions.
The coffee runs.
The Sunday morning breakfast he’d bring when he knew rehab had wrecked me.
The easy way he fit into the shape of my days until I stopped noticing where I ended and habit began.
He was my steady companion.
My almost-lover.
My best friend disguised as a maybe.
And then all at once, none of it was mine.
I step out into the rain before Kane can say anything else.
The cold hits instantly.
My hoodie soaks through in seconds.