Page 77 of The Triple Play

She swallowed, her throat working, her voice wobbling. “Xavi, please don’t make this harder?—”

“No.No. You don’t get to just say that like it’s done and gone and like it never mattered.” My throat felt like it was closing in. Hell, the wholeworldfelt like it was closing in. Was this cracking my head at the bottom of the spiral?

“It wouldn’t have worked.” Her breath rose and fell erratically, her voice shot, the tears starting to slip free. “Three guys and one woman? That’s not howlifeworks, Xav.”

“Don’t give me that,” I said, my voice fully cracking now. I pushed back from her, giving her space, givingmespace, the feeling of overwhelming suffocation settling in. It was happening again. I was being left behind. “We were making it work, Annie, we were figuring it out. We had a few kinks on the road but we were ironing them out. You don’t know that it couldn’t have worked?—”

“I had to make a choice,” she croaked.

“You didn’t choose,” I shot back, a flash of anger streaking through the dark apartment. “You ran.”

Silence. Thick, heavy.

“You didn’t even give us a chance to help you figure this out,” I murmured, trying to calm it down, trying not to let my frustration seep into this. “You didn’t give me a shot, baby.”

Her head dipped, and for a second, I didn’t quite know why she was moving. But then my hoodie slipped off her shoulders, pooling in her hands, and she held it out to me without a word.

I stared at it in horror. “I don’t want it back.”

“Please.”

I hated the way she said it, like she was choking on the word. That single word made me do things I’d never do, and I reached out, hesitantly taking my hoodie back, and threw it over my shoulder.

I wanted to say something else. I wanted to beg her, wanted to throw myself at her feet and say every single thing that came into my head and not put a filter on it, wanted to tell her things I’d never told anyone else.

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t, because I’d only hurt myself more.

So I left.

I walked out with my chest aching and hollow, my jaw locked, my eyes burning. I got into my car and didn’t take a breath until the engine started, didn’t let myself cry until I was back in our driveway.

I’d taken hits before. On the ice, and off it. But nothing, absolutely nothing, had ever hit as hard as her words had.

Chapter28

Colton

The house was too quiet. Even with the game rerun humming low on the television and the fridge humming louder as Xavi shoved another case of beer into it, it was still too quiet. Like a whole person was missing.

I hated it.

Cole was on the couch with his head tilted back on the cushions, his eyes closed, but I knew he wasn’t sleeping. He hadn’t been sleeping well at all since Annie had told me about what was happening with her dad and disappeared. He was just… quieter about it all than Xavi.

The sound of another can cracking open made me wince as I sat at the breakfast bar. “Dude, please, slow down,” I said, nodding toward the half-drained bottle on the counter beside the fridge he’d abandoned a few seconds ago. “Do you really need two on the go at once?”

“Shut up, Colton,” Xavi muttered, not bothering to look across at me.

“Please don’t tell me he’s double-fisting now,” Cole groaned from the couch.

“He is.”

“Christ,” Cole said. “It’s not even midnight. We’ve got a flight tomorrow morning, Xav. Boston, remember? You’re gonna screw yourself over.”

“Thanks, old man.” Xavi chugged the last of the bottle and tossed it into the trash.

We’d never been this much of a mess. Never. We’d all had our own rough patches in the last few years of living together, but this was worse than any of that combined. There was no one whowasn’tfeeling the effects of this who could try to help the others. We were all losing patience with each other.

I sighed and ran a hand through my air, untangling the bottom from its hair tie. “We should be excited for Boston,” I tried to say, tapping into the draining energy reserve to be the fun one, the happy one, the one that brought the mood up when we needed it. All those years of doing it for my parents after Melody’s death had hardwired it into my brain. “It’s always a good crowd there. The fans are nuts, the hotel’s sick, and there’ll be plenty of?—”

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