Page 46 of Campus Crush
I tucked my phone back in my bag and sat on the bench, running a towel over my face to hide the frown I couldn’t quite suppress.
“You good, Kane?” Liam asked.
“Yeah,” I lied. “Just tired.”
“You know they’ll figure it out, eventually. They’re too nosey, so you might as well just tell them,” Gordy said.
“Tell us what?” Drew asked like an eager puppy with the nose for gossip.
But Gordy was right. We all lived together, so they’d find out eventually.
“I messed up with Abby.”
I gave them theSparkNotesversion.
Enough to get the gist, but without going into the nitty-gritty details that felt far too personal to share.
I didn’t say anything about how I still opened our Discord chat sometimes just to stare at the last message she’d sent me before everything got fucked up.
Drew whistled. “Dude. That’s rough.”
“Yeah,” I said, running my hand through my hair. “Kind of feels like I broke something I don’t know how to fix.”
Liam slumped onto the bench across from me. “You told her the truth, though, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you did what you were supposed to do. Doesn’t make it easier, but it means the ball’s in her court now.”
“You regret telling her?” Gordy asked quietly.
“No,” I said immediately. “I just… I hate that it hurt her. That I couldn’t find the right way to do it.”
“Sometimes there’s no right way,” he said. “Just the honest one.”
I nodded, but the weight in my chest didn’t budge. It had been sitting there since the moment I’d dropped her off at home after the skating rink. I’d watched her until the building door had closed behind her.
She hadn’t looked back once.
I kept waiting for the guilt to get lighter. For the ache to dull.
It hadn’t.
Drew slapped my shoulder. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s over.”
I looked up.
“Yeah, she ghosted you. But if she really didn’t care, you’d be blocked, not benched.”
“Or it means she doesn’t know how to say goodbye,” I said, voice low.
“Yeah, well…you won’t know unless she says it.” Liam stood and grabbed his hoodie from his locker. “Until then, show up. That’s what Coach says, right? Keep showing up.”
“Even if I’m benched?”
“Especially then.”
They filtered out one by one, joking and arguing about breakfast burritos versus breakfast sandwiches like we hadn’t just had an entire emotional intervention in the locker room.
