Page 89 of The Beautiful Collision
“No, Maya, fuck…” He sighs. “It wasn’t about the money…winningit, I mean. But I couldn’t afford toloseonce I made the bet,” he continues, like that explains everything. “I was drowning, Maya. The rent, Chloe’s medical bills—I was working two jobs, and it still wasn’t enough. God, I’m such an idiot.”
I let him stumble through his excuses, each word digging the hole deeper. My silence is a weapon, sharp and unforgiving, and I wield it with the precision of a surgeon. Because, quite frankly,I just don’t give a fuck about anything that’s coming out of his mouth right now.
He hurt me the night he played the shitty game.
But tonight?
This is utter emotional apocalypse.
He’s still talking, still yammering on, but I’ve stopped listening. Eventually, he trails off, finally registering that I haven’t moved, haven’t spoken, and haven’t given him even the smallest indication that his words are landing anywhere apart from the cold pavement between us.
When he finally runs out of steam, when the last desperate syllable dies in the frigid air, I begin my systematic dismantling of Maine Hamilton. Because if there’s one thing thatmightmake me feel less shitty right now and fast-track cutting him out of my life, it’sthis.
“So.” My voice is dangerously calm, the eye of a hurricane. “Let me make sure I understand this correctly.”
He flinches at my tone, and I file that small victory away.
“That night you covered me with Chloe’s blanket—the one your grandmother made, the sacred family heirloom—that was what? Extra credit? Bonus points? Because if it was about fucking me, you could have cashed out weeks earlier, ticked that box and moved on…”
“Maya, no—“ His face crumbles. “The bet wasn’tthat, it was about getting you to admit you had feelings, that’s why?—“
I knew that, but I was waiting for him to walk into my trap. “Oh, it makes sense now. So when you sat with me on the kitchen floor after that little boy died.” My voice cracks slightly on that, but I push through. “When I was sobbing about losing a patient, at my absolute lowest, you finally figured it out…”
“It wasn’t like that!” The words explode out of him. “None of that was about the bet. By then, I was already?—“
“Already what?” I scoff. “Already feeling guilty about playing me? Or had you already figured out that the easiest way to make someone fall for you is to weaponize their trauma? To be there at their most vulnerable moment and play the hero?”
He looks like I’ve physically struck him, reeling back from the truth of how it looks, how it all looks now through this new lens.
“Chloe’s in the hospital,” he says suddenly, desperately, like this explains everything. “She’s in the ICU. Her lungs—they’re not responding to treatment, and I’ve been there for days, and I couldn’t—I couldn’t tell you because telling you would mean?—“
“Would mean what?” I cut him off, my voice rising for the first time. “Would mean being honest? Would mean treating me like an actual person instead of a mark in your con game? I’m sorry about your sister, Maine, and I hope she’s OK, but do you understand howmonumentallyfucked up this is?”
“I couldn’t ask you for help or tell you I needed you!” He’s shouting now too, his control finally snapping. “Not when I was lying to you about the bet. Don’t you see how fucked up that would be? To lean on you, to let you comfort me, knowing what I’d done to you?”
“Oh, so you do have a conscience.” The sarcasm drips like acid. “Too bad it only kicked in after you’d already made me fall for you, then pushed me away. No, not pushed me away, actually, because that would require a reaction out of you of some kind.”
“Maya—“
“I came to your room that night,” I continue over the top of him, each word scraped raw from my throat. “I finally let someone in. Actually let them see me, all of me, not just the fun parts or the sexy parts but the messy, broken parts too. I said ‘I need you’ and I meant it.”
He makes a sound like I’ve gutted him, but I’m not done.
“And you shut me out the next day. Do you have any idea what that felt like? To finally trust someone, to be that vulnerable,rightafter I finally decided to cut off my family, and have them… reject me? I thought it was because you’d seen the real me and decided I was too much. But it was worse. It was because you’d won.”
He physically flinches at that, and part of me—the part that still stupidly, pathetically, utterly fuckinginfuriatinglycares about him—wants to take it back. But the bigger part, the part that’s been carved hollow by betrayal, twists the knife deeper.
“You want to know the really pathetic part?” My voice breaks completely now, the anger giving way to something rawer, more painful. “I saw you falling apart after that game. I saw you benched, humiliated, and I was ready to be there for you. All in. No games, no pretenses, just… us.”
He looks devastated, and he’s clearly out of words. All fight has drained out of him and he’s just standing there, a boxer on the ropes, taking every shot, waiting for the knockout punch. I could spare him, and I have to pause to swallow against the tears that want to fall, but I don’t hold back.
I won’t give him that mercy.
Not now.
Because this is how I say goodbye and reclaim myself.
“I had money for you,” I say quietly, and watch his face go slack with shock. “I’d withdrawn the last of my savings. I was going to help you with whatever was going on, because that’s what you do when you love someone. You help them. You don’t make it a transaction or a game or a fucking bet.”
