Page 92 of Hard Pass

Her brows lift slightly. “Do you believe you?”

I don’t answer because I can’t. Because the truth is sitting there, loud and unavoidable.

No. I don’t believe me.

The look on her face says she knows as much. “What is it you want, Dublin?”

“It was one night. I don’t get to want anything from it.”

“Wanting doesn’t need permission.” The words settle in the space between us. “But it does come with consequences.”

“Fuck.” I scrub my hands over my face. “I don’t know.”

Willa studies me for a long moment. “But you do want there to be something.”

It’s not a question.

I shake my head immediately. “I can’t. That’s—no.”

She doesn’t argue or push. She just watches and waits. And because she’s Willa, because she knows me better than anyone, she doesn’t need me to say it. Not when it’s written all over me. In the way I haven’t changed out of his shirt or stopped thinking about him since I left.

In the way my body still remembers every second of last night.

“I don’t know,” I repeat.

But that’s a lie.

I know exactly what I want.

And that’s the problem.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Cole

Dr. Hawley talked again.

I heard maybe half of it.

Explanations about anticipation. Control. Breaking patterns before they break me.

You’re not broken, Cole. You’re anticipating the failure before it happens.

You’re trying to control the outcome instead of trusting the process.

The hesitation isn’t physical. It’s fear.

Fear.

Right.

Because that’s exactly what I need in my head when I’m standing in a pocket with three-hundred-fifty-plus pounds of a defensive end trying to take my head off.

It started to sound the same after a while. Different words. Same problem. Still hasn’t gone away.

I step out into the hallway, frustrated, dragging my hand down my face.

I flex my hand instinctively. The tremble. There it is. That split-second hesitation that shouldn’t exist—but does. Way to show up after the therapy session instead of during it.