Page 115 of Catching Feelings

I narrow my brows in confusion and wait for her to continue.

“I’ve been seeing someone—”

“You’ve been seeing someone?” I repeat.

“Raye has helped me get through the emotional baggage I’ve been carrying.”

“Ray?” I whisper.

The revelation hits me like a punch to the gut, the kind that leaves you breathless, disoriented, and aching in places you didn’t even know existed. Harder than the broadside tackle that dislocated my shoulder five years ago.

My heart beats erratically, caught between disbelief and a raw, gnawing ache that I can’t shake.

She is with someone else.

The thought ricochets in my brain, spinning out of control, colliding with every hope I’d dared to entertain about us, abouther. I imagined a thousand moments we could share, a future built in quiet, unexpected ways. But all of it is suddenly meaningless in the face of someone else’s touch. Someone else’s presence in her life.

Anger, sharp and cold, bubbles up, but it’s quickly overrun by an overwhelming wave of helplessness. I can’t make her choose me. She hadn’t chosen me. She hadn’t even given me a chance to fight for what we could have had.

The hurt is the worst part. It isn’t the sting of jealousy, though that is there, too, gnawing at me like a bitter taste in the back of my throat. It isn’t even the sense of betrayal—because, deep down, I know I hadn’t given her enough to stay. I hadn’t asked for more. I let her go and respected her space, it all came back to bite me in the ass.

It’s the raw, hollow feeling of being...irrelevant. Of realizing that, in the end, I wasn’t the one she needed.

I drop my chin to my chest and close my eyes in pain, the image of her laughing with another man burning into my mind. For a moment, everything around me blurs, the edges of reality dulling to a soft, distant hum. My body moves on autopilot, seeking space, seeking air, but the truth settles deep in my chest like a stone, weighing me down, suffocating me with the certainty that I will never be the one who gets to love her the way she deserves.

And that? That is what stings the most. That Ican’tbe the one who loves her. Not now, not ever.

I push my chair back and reach for my wallet, pulling out a wad of cash.

“This isn’t going to work, Rowan. I don’t have the capacity to be near you and not...” I squeeze my eyes shut and breathe through my nose before I say something I’ll regret. “I’m happy for you. Have a good life.”

I turn and walk out the door, wondering how the fuck I’m going to go on without Rowan in my life.

?CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

ROWAN

---