Page 81 of Blindside Love

Yeah, those injuries hurt, and in the moment, they sucked, but it’s always been skin-deep, a type of pain that you could manage. This is a soul-deep, all-consuming pain that makes me feel like I can’t breathe. It feels like my heart is going a million miles an hour, yet so weak it could stop at any moment, and the only person that can give me relief is the same person who caused the pain in the first place.

It’s been four days. Four days of unimaginable pain and I’m not sure how much longer I can hold myself together.

The first day was hard. I laid in bed all night waiting for her to text me and tell me she was wrong. Every noise I heard in my place made me wonder if she was knocking on my door, coming to tell me she couldn’t live without me either, but she never came.

We had a game that next day, and I was able to put on a front long enough that no one on the team questioned anything, but I definitely racked up some time in the sin bin from my short temper on the ice.

My team may not have said anything, but my friends definitely did afterward. They’ve been texting and calling since that game, but I haven’t had the energy to answer. I haven’t had the energy to answer anyone’s calls.

My parents have both tried calling and texting. They immediately knew something was off after the second fight that I initiated that night, but I didn’t want to talk. My agent, Liam, has called me every day too, but I’ve sent them all to voicemail.

We have to be back on the ice tomorrow night, and I know I need to put in some work to not look like a total train wreck in my second to last game, but I’m struggling to find it in me to care.

It was different getting on the ice, knowing I had someone watching me besides just my family and friends. Ellie and Addy weren’t watching because they loved the sport, they were watching for me. Because they cared about me, and that made me look forward to my time on the ice.

But now it just feels empty, like me as I lay on my couch for the fourth day in a row watching the Disney channel because these songs are catchy, and it makes me feel like my girls are with me, even if I know they’re less than two hundred feet from me in an apartment they shouldn’t be at.

They should be here. With me.

Knock, knock.

I get up begrudgingly, not truly caring who’s on the other side of the door but knowing anyone who has taken the time to come here won’t stop until I answer.

When I look through the hole, though, I see the only face I kind of want to see right now. Rex.

Opening the door, I let him in, watching as he surveys the place before turning to assess me.

“You look like shit, dude,” Rex says as he makes his way to my fridge, grabbing two waters and passing me one. “I’m guessing you look just about as great as you feel, am I right?”

I just nod, taking a swig of my water as he waits.

“I think that much is obvious, but if you need me to spell it out for you, just tell me,” I grumble, annoyed that I’m even standing, that I’m talking to anyone because all I want is to talk to her.

“I think I do,” Rex says, a smug look on his face as he looks around. “You’re obviously unhappy. My guess is it’s because of your lady, based on the state of you and your apartment.”

“Yep. We’re through,” I tell him with a shrug.

“Care to tell me why, or are we just going to pretend this is a conversation when, in actuality, you’re just going to be grunting and nodding for 95% of my questions.”

I roll my eyes, but decide it’ll be easier if I just explain.

“You’ve been spending way too much time with Sawyer and the girls, you’re turning into gossip girls just like them,” I say, hopping up on my counter.

“Oh well, it keeps me young,” he grumbles. “Plus, I just know it’s going to come again when Rory gets older, so I guess I might as well get used to it now.”

It hits me that Addy was going to bring that to my life. That I was going to get to watch her get older, watch her grow into a teenager, but Ellie stopped that.

And I want to hate her for that. I want to be mad that I won’t get to experience that now, but I can’t. I saw the look in her eyes, I saw the pain she felt when she made the choice.

I hate the choice. It’s not the choice I would’ve ever made, but it wasn’t mine to make. I love her enough to support her, even if that means letting her handle something like this on her own.

I tell Rex about it all. I tell him about Ellie and me, how we talked about our feelings for each other, our love. I told him about Tom and how he hurt her and everything he’s done or hasn’t done for Addy. Then I told him about Tom and his threats, how she ended things before returning to her apartment.

I knocked on her door. I knocked for fifteen minutes when I heard her crying, but she never answered, so I finally went home.

When I finish, he’s watching me, flipping his phone in his hand as he thinks.

“So, I just have one question for you,” he says casually. “Are you going to continue being the dumbest smart person in the world or are you going to pull your head out of your ass and go get the girl.”

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