Twenty-four hours ago, everything was different.
My biggest worry yesterday had been football. We had an away game against our rivals in two weeks after our bye this weekend, and it was all we could focus on. If we won, not only would it be a rivalry win, but it would secure a bowl game for us.
Coach had also told me there would be multiple scouts at this game — scouts who had been visiting our campus throughout the season with their eyes on our seniors.
On me.
Yesterday, I was full of hope. I had sped home with nothing but excitement flowing through my veins as I rushed to tell Mary. Yesterday was a whole different world, a completely different universe.
Today, I woke up in hell.
Mary never came home last night, and she ignored every single text and phone call from me. The only solace I found came at almost midnight when Clay texted me and told me she was at his and Giana’s place. I’d sucked in a breath of relief so fierce I’d nearly collapsed.
But even though I knew she was safe, I still couldn’t sleep.
Because safe or not, I’d lost her all the same.
Every time I thought the words, my stomach would roll so violently I nearly puked. Then, I’d immediately shove the thought down, suffocating it before it had the chance to invade my brain again.
I didn’t lose her.
I couldn’t lose her.
My chest was on fire all night and well into the morning, even as I got myself ready for the day. All I could see was Mary’s eyes when I realized what I’d done, the way she looked at me like I’d just proven every doubt she had about me correct.
And I guessed I had.
I didn’t think about it from her perspective until it was too late. Hell, I didn’t think about it at all. It was disrespectful to step in like some big bad motherfucker when she’d already told me she’d handled it. It didn’t make anything better when I clocked that stupid bicho in the mouth. It didn’t even make me feel better. All it did was piss me off more because he stood right back up, and then, he hurt Mary even more.
Because of me.
And to add more shit to the pile, Nero had me by the balls, too. If he went to the police, if he pressed charges… my career would be snuffed out before the flame had the chance to catch.
There was a bottomless pit of doom in my stomach with so much uncertainty. I didn’t know if Nero really wouldn’t press charges or if I’d walk into a media shit storm at the stadium. I didn’t know if Mary meant leave me alone as in for the night or forever.
It couldn’t be forever.
I convinced myself that somehow it would all be okay as I dragged my ass to practice. Despite how dead I felt inside, how hard it was to breathe not knowing where I stood with Mary, I managed to put it all away and show up for my team. I balled out at practice, and to everyone on that field, I was just fine. I was better than fine. I was on fire.
Everyone, that was, except for Clay, Zeke, Riley, and my roommates.
They all watched me like a bomb that would detonate with one wrong step.
When practice was wrapped and we were in the locker room, they cornered me.
“What the hell happened?” Riley demanded in a hushed voice. “Why are your knuckles scabbing and why did Mary sleep on Clay’s couch last night?”
I filled them in as emotionlessly as I could, locking everything down because otherwise I knew I’d fall apart right then and there. And as a leader, as their captain — I couldn’t do that in front of my team.
By the time I finished, they were all silent, their brows pinched together.
“Shit,” Zeke said.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
No one had time to offer a word of advice before Coach Lee’s voice boomed through the room.
“Hernandez,” he said, and all eyes whipped to where he was standing in the doorway of his office. He tilted his head toward it with his lips pressed into a hard line.
Fuck.
I closed the door behind me once I dipped into his office, and when I sat down across from him, we both sat there silent. Coach finally let out a frustrated breath and said, “We both know why we’re here, so let’s not fuck around.”
I nodded solemnly. “How bad is it?”
“Fortunately for you, it should stay out of the press. The guy came here threatening to press charges or go to the news, but we had… help,” he said carefully. “From some alumni who were eager to rectify the situation and keep you on the team.”
I squeezed my eyes closed, cramping at even the thought of someone handing over their hard-earned money to save my ass. I also wasn’t an idiot. I knew that probably wasn’t exactly illegal, but was also likely very frowned upon.
“Giana did a quick scrub this morning. She said there’s not even a whisper of it, so we should be fine. We had him sign an NDA once both parties were satisfied.”
“And my parents?”
“You get the honor of telling them.”
The way he said it, I knew there wasn’t a choice to not tell them. Either I could, or he would if I took too long. I swallowed at the thought of telling my father, who would no doubt scold my ass for risking my career. But Mom?
She’d be heartbroken.
That was worse than any screaming Dad could do.
Coach let out another long breath, and then he shook his head, looking at me with such disappointment I wanted to curl into a ball and cry like a little boy. “What were you thinking, son?”
“I wasn’t,” I answered immediately, honestly.
Coach nodded, and then something in him softened a bit the longer he watched me. “You okay?”
“No,” I said on a laugh, nose stinging. I sniffed it away. “I messed up. I’m sorry, Coach,” I said, meeting his gaze. I hoped he felt how much I meant that. “I really am.”
Coach Lee looked like he didn’t know if he wanted to scream at me, make me run laps, or give me a hug. In the end, he settled on another nod. “Whatever is going on, figure it out. We need you for the game next weekend. And those scouts won’t think twice before turning their backs on you if you’re not performing at the level they want to see.”
I nodded, and at this point, the souring of my stomach felt like it would be a new permanent state of being.
“You’re on probation,” he added.
I wasn’t surprised. “Meaning?”
“Meaning if you fuck up again, there won’t be a conversation. There won’t be help. There won’t be a way out of it.” He leveled his gaze with me. “Focus, son. The rest of your life is at stake here.”
After that, the day dragged by and happened in a flash all at once. I didn’t know how I managed to stay alive long enough to ride home with the roommates at the end of it, all of us quiet and exhausted in the car.
No one said a word, but Kyle’s eyes caught mine in the rearview mirror from where he was driving. He nodded, wordlessly telling me he was there, and Braden squeezed my shoulder from where he sat beside me. Blake glanced back at me with concern, but then offered me a pitiful smile, trying to give me hope that I didn’t think could ever exist in me again.
That was, until we pulled up and saw Mary’s car across the street.
Kyle barely put the car in park before I was rushing out of it and in the house and up the stairs. I burst through my door and felt the most relieving exhale leave me at the sight of Mary sitting on the bed.
Her hair was a wild nest piled into a bun on top of her head, and one look at her face told me she’d slept as shitty as me last night. Palico was laying beside her, flicking her tail at me like even she knew what a moron I’d been.
But Mary still wore one of my hoodies, and that sight along with the possible implication it held had me moving toward her.
The second I noticed all the bags and boxes packed up around the room, I froze again.
My eyes flicked from one box to the next, bouncing into my closet that was much less crowded now before sneaking a glance at the bathroom that was far too clean to have any trace of Mary left. Panic gripped my throat in a fist, and when my gaze met Mary’s, I had no choice.
I fell to my knees.
I fell hard, with a crack of bone to wood that made Mary’s eyes well with tears. She looked up to try to keep them from falling, but they seared down her cheeks, anyway.
“Don’t go.”
They were the only words I could say, the only ones that made sense in my scrambled brain. I could say I was sorry a million times, I could promise her the whole world — but the one thing I needed her to hear above anything else was that I wanted her to stay.
I needed her to stay.
“I’m going to live with my parents,” she said, her voice a cracked whisper.
I closed my eyes, shaking my head, willing myself to wake up from this nightmare.
“I’ve overstayed my welcome here as it is.”
I opened my eyes again. “You know that’s not true.”
“I don’t know what’s true anymore.”
My jaw ached with how hard I clenched it.
“Look, this was a bad idea from the start,” she said, not looking at me as she said it. But she stood, pulling Palico into her arms, and that made it feel so final that I could barely breathe. “Let’s just… go back to pretending we left each other back in high school, okay?”
“I don’t want to pretend,” I said, climbing to my feet. My chest heaved as I stared at her. “I don’t want to pretend I left you in high school because I didn’t. I don’t want to pretend like I didn’t want you the second you moved across the street, even before I knew who you were. And I refuse to pretend that I don’t want you now, more than ever, because I do know who you are.”
Mary’s face didn’t show an ounce of emotion, but another tear slid down her cheek, landing silently on her shoulder. She clutched Palico closer.
I took the fact that she wasn’t leaving yet as my last shot to make her stay.
“Can I hold you?” I asked on a desperate whisper. “Please?”
Her lip wobbled, but she nodded, and as soon as she carefully sat the cat back on the bed, I swept her into my arms before she could take another breath.
She clung to me just as fiercely as I held her, and I closed my eyes against the emotion strangling me as I crushed her to me — one hand in her hair, the other wrapped completely around her. I inhaled her, telling my poor fucking heart that this wasn’t over even as I felt her slipping away.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I shouldn’t have gone last night. I was an idiot. I should have stayed with you, should have been here with you.” I shook my head, still holding onto her. “I didn’t think. I fucked up. But I swear I will do everything to make it up to you. Please,” I begged. “Stay.”
Mary choked on a sob, clutching me tighter, and I held her to me until she pressed her hands against my chest asking for space. When she looked up at me, I wanted to die.
She was in so much pain.
And it was because of me.
“I need some time, Leo,” she said, and her eyes didn’t cower from my own. “This dream that I’ve worked for for… years… is just… gone.”
She stuttered, and I wanted to hurl myself off the roof.
“I’m jobless. Homeless. Broke.” She shrugged. “I have no idea where to go from here.”
“Let me go through it with you.”
Something hardened her then, and she stepped even farther away, out of my grasp.
My heart shattered at the thought that that might have been the last time I ever got to hold her.
“I don’t trust you.”
The words slid through me like a hot knife, slicing me right in half like I was just a stick of butter.
“Mary,” I tried.
“You have the game,” she said, crossing her arms. “You need to focus on yourself, and I need to focus on me. All of this happened so fast. One day I was full swing in the life I’d created for myself, the one where I was living despite the hell you put me through. The next, I was in a heaven I never knew existed, wrapped up in everything that you are, that we are, together.”
I wanted her to stop there. I wanted that to be the end. But she sniffed and continued.
“And now, I’m in hell again. Deeper, this time, because now I’ve lost the one thing that has always been mine despite what happened to me. I worked my ass off for this, Leo,” she said.
“I know,” I told her. I bit back the urge to remind her that it wasn’t me who took it away from her. It was Nero.
But then I remembered that I’d made matters worse. She’d had a plan, she’d said — and I didn’t doubt it. Mary was strong. She was smart. She could handle herself.
It was me who fucked everything up.
“We just… we need to take a break,” she said with finality, picking up a duffle bag and tossing it over her shoulder. “My parents will be here in twenty minutes. Could you…” She swallowed. “Can you please not be here when they are?”
That gutted me.
Just a few weeks ago at our old high school football field, she’d told me she wanted me to meet them.
Now, I felt like a shameful secret being locked away in a closet never to be found.
“I’ll do whatever you need me to do,” I promised. “I’ll leave. I’ll give you space.” I closed the distance between us, tentatively reaching out. When she didn’t flinch, I slid my hands into her hair, framing her face, holding her gaze to mine. “But I will not give up on us.”
She closed her eyes. “What if I need you to?”
“Then I’ll leave you disappointed.” I paused. “Again. Because I can’t do that, Stig. I… can’t.” That last word left me like a guttural declaration of truth, one pulled from me against my will.
I didn’t know if it was a laugh or a sob that came from her next, but I pressed my lips to her forehead, closing my eyes and praying harder than I had in my entire life that this wasn’t the end for us.
“I love you, Mary,” I breathed.
She stilled in my grasp, and I pulled back until I was looking down at her again.
“I love you,” I repeated. “I may be a colossal fuck up. I may make mistakes. I may disappoint you and fall short in more ways than I measure up. But I love you, and that will never not be true.”
Mary covered my hands with her own, closing her eyes again and leaning into my palm. She let out a slow exhale.
Then, she peeled my hands off her and stepped away.
“Right now, I have to love myself,” she said softly.
My heart was a bloody, bruised, barely living thing — but I let her go.
I nodded. I held her gaze until I couldn’t anymore. I turned and walked numbly down the stairs and right out the door without a plan of where I’d go next. I just walked and walked and walked until my body refused to walk any longer. I’d ended up somewhere in the North End, staring at people laughing and eating and drinking and enjoying their lives, all of them oblivious to the zombie among them.
Eventually, I texted Braden, and he came to pick me up.
We were quiet on the drive back, Braden driving my car because I knew I couldn’t. When we pulled into the driveway, I looked at the door with a pit in my stomach.
“Did I lose her?” I asked.
Braden sighed, looking at the house and then at me. “She’s gone, man.”
And all the strength I’d been using to hold it together left me.
I didn’t care that Braden was still there, that Kyle and Blake were now coming out of the house, too. It didn’t matter if I did care. I was powerless against the emotional dam that split wide open inside me.
I somehow managed to push the car door open and stand up.
Then, I broke.
My roommates rushed to me. They weren’t my friends in that moment. They weren’t my teammates. They were my brothers. My family. And they held me while I fell apart.
“It’ll be okay, man. She’ll come back,” Kyle said.
The air pulsed, because every single one of us knew that was a promise that wasn’t his to make.
