Page 119 of Power Play
I nod slowly. “She said she was picking paint colours. For our place.”
Jacko grimaces. “Oof.”
“She was all in. And I just... let her down.”
“Yeah. You did. But you also loved her. Still do. That counts for something, doesn’t it?”
I don’t answer. Just eat the brownie. It tastes like regret and chocolate.
Jacko lets the silence hang for a while. Then he stands, dusting crumbs off his jeans.
“I’ll leave the rest here. And tomorrow, you’re getting up. Showering. Coming to training. Because the one thing you don’t get to do is give up. Got it?”
“Got it.”
He heads for the door, then pauses and turns halfway back.
“She looked wrecked, you know,” he says quietly. “When I saw her with Mia earlier. Red eyes. Shoulders tight as if she was holding in a scream. That’s not someone who’s walked away clean. That’s someone breaking quietly.”
The words hit me like a fist to the chest.
I nod, too choked to speak.
Jacko offers me one last look, softer now, less teammate, more mate. Then he’s gone, the door clicking shut behind him.
And I’m alone again.
But this time, it’s different.
Because I can’t stop seeing her.
Not in the way I did earlier; furious, heartbroken, flinging a binbag of memories at my chest, but the way she must’ve looked when no one was watching. When she finally let it fall apart.
When she thought I wasn’t worth crying over.
I press the heels of my hands to my eyes. Try to breathe through the weight of it. But it crushes me.
And all I want is to fix it. To make her see me and know I didn’t mean to hurt her. That I’d never, ever choose anyone else.
But tonight, there’s nothing to fix. Nothing to say. Nothing to do.
Except sit in the dark with the wreckage of what I broke.
And promise myself that I’ll find a way back to her, even if she never lets me in again.
Because she’s it.
She’severything.
And I’ll carry this ache until it becomes something I can put right.
Even if it takes the rest of me to do it.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
SOPHIE
I’ve cried so much my eyes burn every time I blink.
