Page 112 of Blindside Me
“And one bad moment doesn’t erase all the good ones either,” I counter. “You think shutting me out is protecting me? It’s not. It’s protecting yourself.”
“Myself? Please enlighten me.”
“You’re protecting yourself from caring too much. From being vulnerable. From the possibility that I might actually stay even when it gets hard.”
The words hover between us. They’re dangerous, but there’s truth in them. Drew’s face shifts, and the mask he wears to perfection slips, revealing something raw underneath.
His eyes close. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“But you did.” I don’t try to hide the pain in my voice now. “Not by fighting my ex. By shutting me out afterward.”
Silence stretches between us.
“I don’t know how to be what you need,” he says finally.
“I never asked for perfection. I asked for honesty.”
Drew opens his mouth to speak, but no words come out.
So I turn. “Goodnight, Drew.”
He doesn’t stop me.
I reach the door and pause. I wait. Just for a second. Just long enough to hope. But he doesn’t move.
Drew fought for me on the ice, risked his hockey career, future, everything, and now he’s running from me. The cruel irony isn’t lost on me. He’ll fight the world for me, but he won’t fight his demons to stay.
I walk back inside without looking back. Let him be the one left standing alone this time.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Jade
The ink bleeds like a wound. My hands shake, and it spreads, tiny blue veins crawling across the page like the thoughts I can’t say aloud. It’s two-seventeen A.M., and I’m doing what I always do when sleep feels impossible, and my chest won’t stop aching: I write.
Not the stories I show people.
Not the polished poems for class.
Just an ugly, messy truth that nobody else will ever see.
My dorm room feels too small, the walls pressing in. The desk lamp casts harsh shadows across my sketchbook, illuminating scraps of discarded drafts and half-finished sketches scattered around me. I haven’t actually drawn anything tonight. Just words. Messy block letters that look like they’re shouting because maybe I am somewhere inside where no one can hear.
My roommate’s gone for the weekend. Good. I don’t need witnesses for this particular breakdown.
The ballpoint pen digs into the paper as I press harder.
He’s avoiding me. Three days of walking into class at the last possible second. Of bolting the minute when the lectureends. Of staring at the back of his head while he pretends I’m invisible.
I pause, thumb smudging the fresh ink. Seven fucking days since Barton’s, and Drew Klaas might as well be a ghost. A ghost with excellent time management who knows exactly how to slip through doorways before I can catch him.
I flip to a clean page, needing fresh territory for these thoughts.
Sorry again for assaulting your junk. That wasn’t the impression I wanted to leave you with.
I laugh, a dry, broken sound that doesn’t belong to me. Our second meeting: me, rushing around a corner in the corridor, stolen recorder in tote; him, heading back to the locker room. The near collision sent hot coffee directly to his crotch. His face, that perfect mask, cracked into genuine shock for just a second before he controlled it.
I didn’t know then that those cracks would become my favorite thing about him. The glimpses of real beneath all that discipline.
