Page 121 of Power Play
Not when someone kisses your boyfriend on camera.
Not when your chest aches so much it’s hard to breathe.
Mia comes back in the evening, arms full of snacks and a look on her face that says she’s ready to fight anyone who hurts me. She doesn’t say his name. Doesn’t have to.
She makes us tea. We curl up on the sofa. She puts on trash TVand I let her. Because I need something mindless. Something loud enough to drown out the way my heart’s still cracking in two.
At one point, I catch Mia watching me out of the corner of her eye.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks gently.
I shake my head. But then I do, because it’s been sitting on my chest all day and I can’t carry it anymore.
“I thought he was the one,” I whisper. “I really thought...”
And then it comes.
The tears I swallowed. The ache I buried. The hope I’d tried to tape back together.
I curl into Mia like a child, sobbing until I can’t breathe, until my hands shake and my body feels as if it’s collapsing in on itself.
She doesn’t say anything. Just holds me and lets me fall apart in her arms. And for the first time since I saw that photo, I let myself admit I’m heartbroken.
Utterly, stupidly, hopelessly heartbroken.
And I don’t know how to come back from this.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
MURPHY
Ihaven’t slept.
Not properly. Not even badly. I just lay there in the dark like a corpse, staring up at the ceiling and waiting for the sun to rise, hoping maybe then everything will make more sense. It doesn’t.
My phone’s still on the floor where I dropped it last night. But not before I fired off five messages and called her twice. All unread. All ignored.
I don’t know how to fix this.
I keep going over it, every second, every expression on her face as though it’s some kind of test I failed. Sophie, standing in doorway, hands clenched at her sides, voice shaking when she told me to leave. And me, stupid, stunned, speechless, watching the whole thing fall apart like it wasn’t even real.
I should’ve fought harder.
I should’ve said something. Anything. Instead, I just stood there, holding a bin bag like the world’s most useless prick.
She looked hollow. As though someone had gutted her from the inside and left her with nothing but the shell. And I did that. I made her feel like that.
God.
I scrub both hands over my face, and try to catch my breath, but it’s not working. Everything’s tight. Like my skin doesn’t fit right anymore. It’s as though I’m too much and not enough all at once.
It was supposed to be good. It was supposed to be more than good.
The last night I stayed over, when we laughed, when she touched me like I was something careful and precious, I thought that was it. The beginning. Of whatever this was becoming.
But now it’s just nothing.
And she won’t even read my texts.
