Page 205 of Make the Play

“I don’t feel brave.”

She smiles through her tears. “You don’t have to feel it for it to be true.”

I shake my head. “I keep thinking, what if this is it now? What if this hollow, scared, angry version of me is all that’s left?”

Charlie swallows, her thumb brushing a tear from my cheek. “Zoe. You stood up for me when I couldn’t stand up for myself. You got in Alex’s face, and you nearly broke his nose that night in my dining room. You sat on the bathroom floor with me while I sobbed into a pregnancy test. You held my hand and looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘We don’t run, werebuild.’”

My breathe shudders, but I keep my watery eyes locked on hers.

“And now?” Her voice cracks. “I get to say that back to you. Let me be that for you.”

The sob that breaks from my chest is louder this time, uglier.

“I don’t know how to be loved right now,” I whisper.

Charlie’s arms tighten around me. “Then let us love you anyway, Zo. Not just when it’s easy or when you’re shining. Even when you don’t know how to take it.Especiallythen.”

I pull back, just barely, my voice shaking. “I love him.”

Charlie doesn’t ask who. She already knows.

“I love Chase,” I say again, thinking that repeating it will make it easier to say. “And that hurts more than anything because he’s seen all of it. All the versions of me. And I keep thinking, what if I never get those versions back? What if he looks at me and doesn’t seemeanymore? What if I pushed him so far away, he doesn’t come back?”

Charlie’s expression twists as if she’s about to cry all over again. “Headoresyou.”

I swallow thickly, tears sliding down again. “I said horrible things to him, Char. I made him feel like none of it mattered. Likehedidn’t matter. Because I was scared and I thought if I could just control the narrative, spin it fast enough, I wouldn’t have to feel what I was actually feeling.”

I pause, voice breaking. “But I do. I feeleverything, and it’s so much it scares the hell out of me, because it’s not all sparkles and sass. It’s raw and quiet and cracked in places I don’t know how to fix. This version of me?” My voice drops to a whisper. “This bruised and broken thing who can’t even hold a conversation without unraveling? Who the hell would wanna hold ontothat?”

“I would,” she says, without missing a beat. “Jake would. Tamara and Eli and Lulu. Pookie and Reid, Noah and Meadow—” Her voice catches as she says their names. “Every single person who loves you stilllovesyou. You are not less, Zoe. You’re not broken. You arehurting,and that’s allowed.”

I stare at her, silent tears still rolling down my cheeks. “I’m so tired.”

“I know, baby.”

“I don’t know how to hold it all.”

Charlie cups my face, her voice shaking. “Then we’ll hold itwithyou. Piece by piece.”

The tears don’t stop, but for the first time tonight, they feel like release instead of ruin.

Chapter forty

I feel like I’m ten again

Chase

The second the door to my condo clicks shut behind us, I start pacing. There’s too much in my chest, in my head, in my hands, and I don’t know where to put any of it.

Jake doesn’t even take off his shoes. He just leans against the wall with his arms crossed, watching me fall apart in real time.

“You okay?” he asks eventually.

I let out something that’s supposed to be a laugh, but it catches in my throat and comes out cracked and broken. “Do I look okay?”

Jake exhales. “Didn’t think so.”

I drag a hand through my hair, tugging hard at the roots, hoping I can pull the ache out through my skull if I just try hard enough.

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