Page 48 of Trick Play

She covered her mouth and shook her head. “No. I won’t let myself slip back to you because it’s comfortable. You didn’t want me anymore. You don’t.”

“Yes, I did.” I do.

Didn’t she understand that was what I’d been trying, and evidently failing, to explain?

“Not enough to fight for me.”

Her words were a physical blow. I closed my eyes, absorbing the ache before standing. “I should go.”

There was nothing more I could say right now to convince her. I’d poured my heart and soul out at her feet. What happened next was up to her.

“Bye,” I said without turning around, then let myself out and hurried down the stairs and straight for campus.

How did life get so messy so fast?

Wasn’t this exactly what I’d been trying to avoid freshman year? Or was I seeing it for the first time? I never gave her the chance to see how badly I hurt her because I left and refused to look back.

By the time I got to my dorm, I was shaking. This was all too much. Today. Yesterday. This week. This semester.

I was fighting and scraping and doing all I could to keep my head above water, but I kept slipping under and it was getting harder to resurface.

I needed a break. A few hours alone, but when I walked through my door, Haley and Reid were sitting on his bed, looking as if they were waiting for me. Wonderful. I probably still looked red and blotchy from my breakdown, and they were the last people I wanted to face.

“Ethan?” Haley’s voice followed me as I collapsed on my bed. It dipped under her weight, and her hand pressed between my shoulder blades. “What happened?”

I’d been answering that question too often. I ignored her and closed my eyes, keeping my face turned away from them.

Haley leaned over me. “Please, Ethan? Talk to me.”

I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to involve her. I didn’t want to make her sad too. But that was what originally got me into so much trouble. Not involving others. Thinking I was saving them when, really, I’m hurting them more. I wasn’t sure I could talk to her in this state without letting too much slip. I didn’t trust myself. I didn’t want to be the one to tell her about our parents. That was their responsibility.

But it had been nearly four years.

They wouldn’t tell her, and she deserved to know. After the way they made her feel, she should know. I wasn’t sure if it would make her angrier or give her some clarity on why they were so twisted up.

I needed to give her the option to decide for herself. If it came to that.

“I was at Kennedy’s.”

Her weight shifted off me, but she kept her hand on my back. “Okay.”

“I told her how I’ve been struggling with classes. No recruits are interested in me.” I waved two fingers in the air down near my thigh. “The usual.”

She scoffed but didn’t interrupt me.

“She told me about back then, when I broke up with her. What it was like for her. How much I hurt her.”

“Oh, man,” Reid said, but it sounded far away.

I was back in her living room, feeling the world I carefully pieced together crumble around me.

“I was so wrong. Everything I did was messed up. I thought I was doing the right thing, but I screwed up.”

I gave them a shortened version. Not going into the marriage side of things or about my parents yet.

“Why didn’t you come to me?” Reid asked. “If you’ve been feeling like this? Why didn’t you talk to me or Benjamin or Coach?”

“What good is talking about it going to do? It doesn’t change how my brain works or my grades. It won’t convince any scouts to come watch me. It doesn’t undo the damage I caused between me and Kennedy.”