Page 49 of Price of Victory
“I trust you completely.”
“Then why couldn’t you tell me that your father’s heart attack is all over the news? Why couldn’t you let me help you deal with whatever fallout that’s causing? Did you think I leaked the news?”
The fact that he already knew, that he’d seen the headlines and been waiting for me to bring it up, made everything so much worse. He’d been giving me opportunities all morning to open up, to let him in, and I’d thrown every single one away.
“No,” I whispered. “I didn’t even know you knew it was on the news.”
“Of course I knew. It’s front-page news on every business website. I was waiting for you to tell me about it, to let me know how you were handling it. I was hoping you would trust me enough to talk about it.”
“I didn’t want to burden you with it.”
“And I didn’t want to have a relationship with someone who sees me as a burden instead of a partner.”
The door opened, and cool November air rushed into my apartment, cutting through the warmth we’d built together over months of Sunday mornings and shared secrets.
“This is for the best,” he said without looking back at me. “We both know this was always going to end badly. Better to do it now before we get in any deeper.”
“I’m already in as deep as I can get,” I said to his retreating figure, but I didn’t think he heard me.
The door closed with a soft click that sounded like finality, and I was alone in my expensive apartment with nothing but the echo of my own mistakes for company.
For a long moment, I just stood there, staring at the door and trying to process what had just happened. The morning had started with coffee and pastries and the comfortable routine we’d built together. Now, it was ending with recriminations and accusations and the terrible knowledge that I’d destroyed the best thing in my life because I’d been too afraid to trust it.
My phone was buzzing again, more calls from my mother, more urgent demands for my presence at whatever media circus they were orchestrating. But I couldn’t bring myself to care about stock prices or shareholder confidence or family unity.
All I could think about was the look on Rhett’s face when I’d accused him of fishing for information, the way his expression had shifted from hurt to something harder and more final. The way he’d walked out of my life like it was the easiest thing in the world.
I grabbed my keys and headed for the door, suddenly desperate to get out of the apartment, which still smelled like his cologne. I needed to drive, needed to move, needed to do something other than stand here replaying every moment of our fight and cataloging all the ways I could have handled it better.
The city blurred past my windows as I drove with no destination in mind, just following the flow of traffic and trying to outrun the growing certainty that I’d just made the biggest mistake of my life.
But heartbreak was faster than my car, and it caught up with me at every red light, in every pause, in every moment when I had to stop running and face what I’d done.
I’d had everything I’d ever wanted, and I’d thrown it away because I’d been too much of a coward to believe it could last.
Now, I was driving through Chicago with nowhere to go and no one to call, completely alone in a way I’d never been before.
And it was entirely my own fault.
EIGHTEEN
RHETT
The silencein my dorm room was deafening.
I’d been sitting at my desk for the past hour, staring at the same page of my economics textbook without absorbing a single word. The numbers and theories blurred together into meaningless patterns while my mind replayed the morning’s conversation in an endless, torturous loop. Every word I’d said, every expression that had crossed Aiden’s face, every moment when I could have chosen differently but hadn’t.
Lennox was at Oliver’s again, which meant I was alone with my thoughts and the crushing weight of what I’d done. The room felt too big and too small at the same time, empty without his easy chatter to fill the silence but suffocating in its familiarity. Everything reminded me of mornings when I’d rushed to get ready for coffee and pastries at Aiden’s apartment, when Sunday had meant something more than just another day to get through.
I closed the textbook with more force than necessary and rubbed my eyes, trying to dispel the exhaustion that had settled into my bones. It wasn’t physical tiredness, though I hadn’t slept well in the past few nights. It was the bone-deep weariness that came from carrying around emotions I didn’t know how to process.
Practice the next day was a special kind of hell. I went through the motions of drills and conditioning, my body moving on autopilot while my mind searched the ice for a presence that wasn’t there. Aiden’s absence was like a missing tooth, something I couldn’t stop probing with my tongue, even though it hurt every time.
Coach didn’t mention where he was, and none of the guys seemed to know either. Or if they did, they weren’t saying anything to me. I caught Lennox and Elio exchanging glances when they thought I wasn’t looking, but nobody asked questions I wasn’t prepared to answer.
The library was worse. I’d claimed our usual table out of habit, spreading my books across the surface before realizing that without Aiden sitting across from me, making dry comments about my study methods and stealing my highlighters, it was just another table in an overcrowded building. I packed up after twenty minutes and went back to my room, where the silence waited.
Even the gym felt wrong. I went through my usual routine, pushing weights and running on the treadmill while memories of competitive banter and stolen glances played in my head. The space where he should have been felt hollow, like someone had cut a piece out of the world and left jagged edges behind.
