Page 96 of The Beautiful Collision
Looking at me.
Waiting.
My hands won’t stop shaking. I shove them deep into the pockets of my sweats, but that just makes the trembling move up my arms. My whole body feels like it’s vibrating at the wrong frequency, like I’m a guitar string that’s been tuned too tight and is about to snap.
Mike leans against his locker, arms crossed, his captain face on—the one that says he’s ready to handle whatever crisis is about to land in his lap.
Leo Cooper sits perfectly still, those steady hazel eyes of his taking everything in.
Ben Kellerman keeps fidgeting with his phone, probably wishing he was anywhere else.
Erik Schmidt looks like he’s mentally calculating how much this meeting is going to delay his evening video call with his girlfriend.
And Rook… fuck… Rook, who normally can’t enter a room without announcing his presence like he’s walking onto a late-night talk show… just looks sullen.
He’s blaming himself for my fall, when it’s not his fault at all.
They’re all waiting for me to explain why I’ve been a ghost of myself. Why I haven’t shown up to practice or the last two games, both losses. Why I look like I haven’t slept in days. And why a stupid bet has blown everything with me and the other senior guys on this team sky-high.
Just fucking say it,my mind screams at me.
But my throat has closed up completely. The words are there, but they’re stuck behind a wall of shame so thick I can barely breathe around it. This is what I’ve been running from my wholelife—this moment where I have to stand here without my armor, without my jokes, without the Maine Show to hide behind.
Just me.
Just the truth.
“A few months ago,” I finally manage, my voice sounding like someone scraped it raw with sandpaper. “Some of you were giving me shit.”
I force myself to look at them—really look at them.
Mike’s face has gone carefully neutral.
Rook just looks uncomfortable.
“About Maya.” Her name hurts coming out. Actually physically hurts. “Saying she was in my head.”
She was.
She is.
She probably always will be.
“You proposed a bet, and I went along with it like a fucking idiot,” I say, the words hang heavy in the air. “But when I started to fall for Maya, and I wanted to back out of the bet, I couldn’t afford to. I’d owe half a dozen guys on this team a hundred bucks each, which is cash I just don’t have.”
Rook leans forward. “Maine, I?—“
“No, Rook, this is on me.” I cut him off, swallowing hard. “I should have been a man about it, backing out of it and writing some hefty IOUs. Instead, I kept my struggles a secret from you all, because I love being the showman and the show has to go on, even though that decision has cost me the woman I love.”
The admission burns on the way out, but there’s something almost relieving about it. It’s like lancing an infected wound; it hurts like hell, but the poison has to come out. And the guys, for their part, are still deadly silent. No jokes about being whipped, no remarks about being a hundred bucks richer…
“Maya found out, as most of you know.” My voice is steadier now, finding its footing in the truth. “That’s on me, because I should have dealt with it sooner.”
A phrase that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
A life without her.
“But that’s not all,” I say, my voice wavering. “My sister is ill, as most of you know, but only Mike knows how bad it is. In short, I think she’s going to die soon.”
