Page 162 of Gamebreaker

"It was supposed to be Monday. The morning of Game 1." She let out a breath. "I couldn't wait three more days. You'd already been on a date. Every day I waited was another day you spent learning how to stop waiting for me." She looked down at the hair tie. "I wasn't going to let that be the reason I lost you."

I sat with that. I let it go all the way in.

"Okay," I said, and my voice had gone very quiet and very steady. "My turn."

I told her what the last three weeks had cost me. I didn't say it as an accusation. I was past that. She hadn't wronged me the way Henry had. I'd spent enough sleepless nights working out why those two situations were different to know it clearly now. Henry had turned my trust into a weapon. Cam had been honest about what she couldn't give me, and that had been devastating to live through, but it wasn't the same wound, and I wasn't going to treat it like it was.

I told her about the bathroom floor. About the knot at the nape of my neck that took twenty minutes to pick loose, right where she'd held my hair, and how I'd cried over it like I'd lost a person and not a tangle. About my therapist saying grief three times.

"I went on a date," I said. "I literally downloaded Catch. You know, the dating app you are the ambassador for? Her name was Elyse. A lawyer. Funny. Out. She had her entire life organized in ways mine is not currently organized. And none of it..." I looked straight at her. "None of it did anything to me. Then she mentioned you. Totally innocently. Just a basketball fan telling me you were playing out of your mind this postseason. And I short-circuited at the dinner table in front of a perfectly decent woman who deserved more than sixty percent of my attention."

Cam's jaw moved, barely.

"It wasn't her fault," I said. "It was yours. You've been living in my head without paying rent for a long time. Maybe since the moment we met."

"Since the moment we met," she repeated quietly.

"Don't interrupt me, I'm on a roll." I uncurled my legs and set my feet flat on the floor. "I told her I wasn't over someone. She was gracious about it. We hugged. It was very mature and deeply depressing." I took a breath. "Then I drove to Laine's. And I took the route I always take, and I didn't realize I was on your street until I was already on it."

Her face changed. She went very still.

"I told myself I wouldn't look," I said. "I looked. There was one light on in your kitchen. Just one, in that whole enormous house." My voice started to go, and I let it. "And I slowed down, Cam. I got down to fifteen miles an hour. I almost pulled into your driveway. I almost came up to that door and knocked, and I knew you would've let me in, and I knew exactly what I'd be if you did. So I drove away and watched your light disappear in my rearview mirror."

Cam had both hands pressed over her mouth.

"I was in the kitchen," she said through her fingers. "Friday. I was sitting under that light."

"I know."

"I was sitting there looking at your picture." Her eyes were streaming. "You were fifty feet away from me. You were in my driveway."

"Almost."

"Harper." She said my name like it truly pained her. "I would have opened the door."

"I know," I whispered. "That's why I couldn't knock."

The room held that for a long moment. Neither of us moved.

"I read the text you sent that night," I said finally. "I want you to know that."

"I know you did. I watched it change to Read."

"Twelve times. I read it twelve times."

"I figured," she said quietly.

"And I deleted it. Not because I didn't want to answer, but because you reaching for me in the dark wasn't what I needed. I needed you to act in daylight. And a message at midnight was still the dark, Cam."

She nodded once. It was the kind of nod that said she'd known, had always known, and had respected it even when it hurt.

"I understand the fear," I said. "I want you to know I always did. I watched my mother tell me that who I am is a sin, and I walked toward it anyway, and I know what that costs. I know what it costs to choose exposure on purpose when you can't predict how it lands." I held her gaze. "I never blamed you for not being ready. I just couldn't be the price of your hiding. Not when I'd already paid the price of coming out. I wasn't going back into the closet, Cam. Not even for you. Especially not for you, because it would have rotted what we had from the inside."

Cam leaned forward, elbows on her knees. It was the way she sat when she was about to be honest and had decided to stop running the math first.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Yes."