Page 68 of Face Off
He stills, staring at me, confusion flickering under his fury.
“You don’t get it,” I press on, hands trembling. “My entire life has been defined by who my dad is. Every friend, every boyfriend, every person I’ve ever tried to get close to, it all came back to him. To his money. To his power. To what he could do for them. And when it wasn’t that, it was what I could do to piss him off.”
Ollie’s jaw tightens, but he doesn’t move. Doesn’t interrupt.
I can’t stop now. The words pour out, jagged and raw. “At school, no one cared who I was. They cared that I was the sponsor’s daughter. At university, people lined up to be seen with me, notwith me. And when I thought I’d found someone who actually liked me for me…” My throat clogs, but I force the words out. “It turned out to be a dare. A joke. Sleep with the sponsor’s daughter. Break her heart. Everyone laughed about it behind my back.”
Ollie’s face shifts, the anger dimming into something else, pain, maybe.
I wrap my arms around myself, like that can hold me together. “So yeah, maybe I didn’t tell you right away. Because Iwanted, just once, for someone to look at me and seeme. Not his money. Not the club’s strings. Just… Chloe.”
Silence swallows the room. My breath shudders.
Finally, Ollie moves. Slowly, like he’s approaching a wounded animal, he takes a step toward me. His voice is quieter now, but no less raw. “You should’ve told me.”
“I know,” I whisper, tears pricking hot at the corners of my eyes. “I was scared.”
He exhales, dragging both hands through his hair, pacing again but softer now. “Do you know what it felt like? Standing there while Coach told me? I thought he was going to tell me I was benched. Instead, he tells me the girl I’m…” He stops himself, shakes his head. “The girl I’m with is the sponsor’s daughter. Do you know how that looks?”
I wince. “Like you’re sleeping your way into favour.”
“Exactly.” His eyes flash with frustration. “I don’t care about that, not really. But the team? The press? They’ll eat me alive. And Murphy? Christ, after what happened with him? He’ll think I’ve lost my mind.”
His words land heavy. Because he’s right.
I swipe at my eyes, voice small. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
He looks at me for a long, hard moment. Then his shoulders drop, tension bleeding out like air from a balloon. “You didn’t just hurt me, Chloe. You scared me.”
That hits deeper than the anger did.
“I’ve been terrified since the second I realised how much I care about you,” he admits, voice rough. “Because if this goes sideways? If you walk away? That’s it for me. I’m done.”
The room blurs. My chest aches. “I’m not walking away.”
“Promise me,” he says, stepping close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off him. His eyes search mine, desperate, pleading. “Promise me you’re not going to disappear because it gets unpleasant.”
I reach up, trembling, and press my palm to his jaw. His stubble scrapes my skin, grounding me. “I promise.”
For a beat, neither of us move. Then Ollie lets out a shaky laugh, like he’s trying to defuse the tension even as his eyes are still wet. “Christ, you drive me mental, you know that?”
A broken laugh bursts out of me, a kind of half-sob. “Takes one to know one.”
He leans his forehead against mine, his voice barely a whisper. “Don’t ever keep something like that from me again.”
“I won’t,” I breathe. “No more secrets.”
And when he kisses me, slow, deep, nothing like the rushed urgency of before, it feels like forgiveness. Like rebuilding from the wreckage.
We don’t talk for a while after that. We just sit on the sofa, tangled up, the TV flickering in the background but ignored. My head rests on his chest, his fingers stroke lazy circles into my hair, and for the first time since he stormed through the door, I feel like I can breathe.
Eventually, he breaks the silence with a muffled grin. “Next time, remind me to at least make it through a full dinner date before we argue like a married couple.”
I huff a laugh against his shirt. “Next time, remind me to tell you everything before it blows up in my face.”
He tilts my chin up, puppy-soft grin tugging at his mouth. “Deal.”
When I look into his eyes, still rimmed red from anger and fear, I see it. His vulnerability, raw and unguarded. And maybe that’s what makes me fall all over again.
