Page 88 of Offside for Christmas
He opened the door.
"Cole—" Ellie started, but he couldn't hear it. Couldn't hear whatever she was about to say, because if she asked him to stay now, he would, and they'd just have this fight all over again.
He walked out. The door closed behind him with a hollow click.
Ellie stood in the middle of her apartment, shaking, tears streaming down her face.
Outside, she heard Cole's truck start. Heard him drive away.
"No," she whispered to the empty room. "That's not what I wanted. I wanted you to choose me."
But he was gone.
And she'd pushed him away, exactly like he'd said.
Ellie sank onto the couch, pulling her knees to her chest, and let herself sob. Great, heaving sobs that shook her whole body. This was worse than Marcus. So much worse. Because with Marcus, she'd been young and naive and hadn't known better.
With Cole, she'd known exactly what she was losing. And she'd pushed him away anyway because she was too scared to fight for him.
Her phone buzzed.
Through blurred vision, she saw it was a message notification. The one from Sarah Chen, the reporter from Chicago. The one she'd left unanswered for days.
Ellie stared at it for a long time.
Then she made a decision.
If Cole was going to leave—and he was, she knew he was, because that's what they all did—then at least he'd leave with his reputation restored. With his career intact. With everything he deserved.
Even if he hated her for it.
She opened the message and typed a response:
ELLIE:Hi Sarah. Yes, Cole is here in Vermont. I think we should talk. I believe I can help you both. Can we set up a call?
She hit send before she could change her mind.
Then she curled up on the couch, surrounded by tissues and Christmas lights and the wreckage of her heart, and cried until there were no tears left.
Outside, the snow kept falling on Evergreen Cove.
Inside, Ellie Winters learned that sometimes love wasn't enough.
Sometimes fear won.
14
ELLIE
Day two post breakup.
The PT session on Monday morning was torture.
Ellie had spent the entire weekend alternating between crying and staring at her phone, waiting for a message from Cole that never came. By Monday, she'd convinced herself she could be professional. Clinical. That she could touch his shoulder and not remember how that shoulder had felt under her hands when they were tangled in his sheets.
She was wrong.
"How's the shoulder?" Ellie asked, her voice carefully neutral as Cole sat on the PT table.
