Page 60 of Collateral Damage
“You’ve decided you can’t be attached to someone with the last name King.” It was the wrong thing to say, and I immediately want to take it back. “Ican’t lose you,” I add, voice cracking into a great chasm.
Her tears fall freely, and pain racks my chest. I want to scream. But I can’t. I have to sit here and wait and know that losing her is exactly what’s about to happen. We’re going to have to pick sides. She’s going to choose her family, and I’m going to choose mine.
She wipes the tears, and a calm sense of finality falls over her. “I’m only telling you because Ethan will need you. This conversation was meant to warn you, nothing else. You won’t change my mind.”
“It’s like that, then?” My voice is as cold as ice. It has to be. The pain is too thick otherwise.
“I’m sorry, but it’s time to move on.”
“From Ethan? Or from me?”
She stares at me for a long second, her features hardening.
“From both of you. I’m sorry, Cooper. I really am.”
She doesn’t sound sorry. She doesn’t even sound broken anymore.
How can she be so sure about something like this?
“Yeah, I’m sorry, too,” I finish coldly.
“Goodbye, Cooper.”
I stare at her for a second longer, and then she hangs up. There’s no goodbye from me—there can’t be when it comes to this girl. I love her too much to treat her the way she has treated me. There’s only silence, a blank phone screen, and the cruel realization that I’ve lost her.
Part Two
“The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.”
William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
Twenty-Seven
Sybil
Present - Age 27
Time flies, and before I know it, it’s the first day of filming, and I’m a nervous wreck. Benton calls me early, asking if he’s doing the right thing.
“Think of your games,” I say, knowing I have to pep-talk the shit out of him so we can both get through this day unscathed. “Do you get nervous for those?”
“Sometimes.”
“How do you get past that?”
“I don’t let it get to me. I know how to handle myself. I’ve trained. I know I’m one of the best. I’m prepared. Am I prepared for reality television? Hell no.”
“Were you always great at hockey, though?”
He’s quiet on the other line for a long moment. “No. I had to work at it.”
“I bet you had setbacks, same as everyone else. It’s not how you win that makes you a winner; it’s how you lose.”
He snorts. “You sound like a coach.”
“Why’d you call me, then?” I laugh. “Come on, let’s get our butts out of bed and get ready. We have a big day ahead, but I promise I have your back. Think of me as your teammate. We’re all in this together. We all want the show to be great.”
