Page 119 of Fear of Falling

“Hey,” I greeted, hitting speaker phone.

“You’re up early,”he commented.

“Yeah.” I shifted in my seat before continuing. “I take it you read the article.”

“I did. You and Josie are trending on twitter.”

Of course we are.

“Want to talk about it?”

“Lan, I…” I didn’t know where to start, then suddenly it all spilled out. Everything from how scared I was that something had happened to Josie when she called me. How the paparazzi bombarded her and accused her of cheating and using me. How I wasn’t sure if I could let her stay in my life knowing there was a chance she could always be thrown into the media.

“You’re in love with her.”Landon said it so casually, like he’d known for a while.

“Yes.” I didn’t even try to say otherwise.

“So why are you fighting it?”

“I’m not. I?—”

“Yes, you are. You literally listed off a bunch of stupid reasons to push her away.”

“They aren’t stupid. You know how they can be.”

“I do. All of us have dealt with the press at point or another but you get use to it. Josie will too.”

“Lan I can’t do that to her.”

“Wyatt,”Landon said with a sigh, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I love you, but you are an idiot.”

“You didn’t even like Josie a few weeks ago,” I shot back.

“Yeah, well, I was wrong. She’s the best thing to ever happen to you, so remember that before you go and ruin it,”Landon said before ending the call.

I looked at my phone with raised eyebrows.

My brother literally hung up on me.

Knowing better than to call him back, I kept my eyes on the road, his words following me the rest of the way to Buffalo.

“Dude, you’re playing like shit,”my teammate, Max said next to me as we sat on the bench waiting for my shift on the ice. I didn’t bother with a reply. I knew I was. My head wasn’t in it, not since I’d left Josie this morning.

The entire game I’d missed shots I should have made in my sleep. I even went as far as letting other players slam me into the boards. By the glare from Coach, he wasn’t thrilled by my performance either.

When my shift came back, I got up to hop the board, only for Coach to step in front of me.

“You’re sitting out the rest of the game.” His tone left no room for discussion.

“But Coach?—”

“Sit, Boone.”

I felt like a little kid being scolded as I sat back down on the bench. I couldn’t blame him for keeping me out of the game. We only had four minutes left and I was letting shots go when I shouldn’t be. I was just hurting the team by being out there.

I was a mess, and it was all self-inflicted.

The rest of the game Trevor and Bryton shot me looks like they too had no clue what was going on with me. When I returned from my overnight trip, I’d avoided them, not wanting to hear what they had to say about the article. Bryton had probably already heard about the whole thing from Mila.

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