Page 134 of Gamebreaker

The words settled into the center of my chest and stayed there, burning, like a coal someone had placed in my hands to carry through the dark. It hurt to hold. It was dangerous. It could set fire to the life I'd built so carefully.

I closed my fingers around the hair tie on my wrist, and for the first time in twelve years, the thought of that fire didn't scare me as much as the thought of letting it go out.

I fell asleep holding on.

17

Well, Shit

Harper

Four days.

Four days since I'd walked out of Cam's house in the early morning light and climbed into a SHAU4 and told myself I was doing the right thing. Four days of eating leftovers Mia had brought me, refreshing Instagram because I had absolutely zero self-respect, and staring at my apartment ceiling at 3 AM wondering if this was what emotional growth felt like or if emotional growth was just a lie therapists told you to keep you coming back.

My therapist, for the record, would probably have a lot to say about this situation. I'd called her and started seeing her again, but I'd been carefully not telling her about it for four days.

I'd also made a decision in those four days. A quiet one, the kind you make alone at two in the morning when you're being honest with yourself in the dark.

I was going to the playoff game on Friday.

And then, I was never going to another Fangs game again.

Not because I was being dramatic about it—though let's be real, I was being a little dramatic about it, it's part of my brand—but because I was self-aware enough to know my own limits. Cam's world had orbited into mine through Mia and Laine and Isla and Trish, and I'd let myself get comfortable in it, let myself become a courtside fixture at Fangs home games like it was a normal and sustainable thing to do. Like it wasn't going to cost me, eventually.

It had cost me. Obviously.

So Friday would be the last one. One final game, one last attempt at something resembling closure, and then I was going to extract myself gracefully from the Fashion City Fangs fan experience and reclaim my Friday nights for activities that didn't involve watching the woman I was hopelessly in love with from fifteen feet away.

Closure. That was the plan.

I was already not optimistic about how well it was going to work.

I was at my desk, working. Processing insurance claims. You know, living my best life.

"Mrs. Calloway, I completely understand your frustration," I said into my headset, in the voice I reserved for clients who were technically wrong but emotionally correct. "Let me just put you on a brief hold while I pull up your policy details."

I hit mute.

Across our cubicles, Mia was also on hold, also muted, watching me with the expression she'd been wearing for four days. The one that said I'm worried about you, but I'm trying to be subtle about it while being approximately as subtle as a goddamn car alarm.

"You look like you haven't slept," she said.

"That's because I haven't. Not really. Not well, anyway." I spun slightly in my chair, staring at the ceiling tiles the way I'd been staring at my apartment ceiling tiles. "I keep almost falling asleep, and then my brain goes, 'hey, remember that thing? Let's think about that thing,' and then I'm awake again at four in the morning thinking about—" I made a vague gesture that encompassed everything. "You know."

"Have you heard from her?"

"No." I said it evenly, though it was a very practiced evenly. "And I won't. I'm taking space, and she's respecting it. Which is the right call."

Mia's expression suggested that she was waiting for the second half of my sentence.

"But?" she offered.

"But it fucking sucks, Mia." The words emerged with more feeling than I'd anticipated coming out from my mouth, loud enough that I glanced around the office to make sure no one had heard. "It sucks that she's respecting it. It sucks that she's doing the right thing. It sucks that we both did the right thing, and we're both miserable. It's very annoying. Doing the right thing is supposed to feel righteous and vindicating, not like someone removed an organ I didn't know I needed."

Mia opened her mouth to respond.

I brought the client back on the line.