Garrett Graham x f!reader
Summary: Senior year starts with you and Garrett still broken apart and carrying everything unsaid between you. When the truth finally comes out, it forces you both to face why you really fell apart. What follows is a painful reckoning with fear, love, and regret. The question becomes whether you can find your way back to each other, or let it end for good.
Author's Note: I’m alive, guys!!! Life has been chaos lately with work and a move, so I’ve barely had time to breathe, let alone write. I had to literally lock myself in a room to get this finished, and I didn’t want to split it into parts even though it ended up being super long. This one was honestly a challenge, but I’m really glad I pushed through and wrote it. As always, thank you so much for reading and enjoying.
Warnings: Angst, hurt/comfort (finally)
*********************************************
You spent the summer alone in your apartment learning how to exist inside your own life again, because Hannah and Allie had gone home for the break and the campus had emptied out around you until everything felt strangely suspended, like Briar had been holding its breath. Some days that meant sitting in therapy and saying Garrett’s name out loud without your voice shaking as badly as it used to, and other days it meant saying it once and then going completely still afterward, because even though it hurt less than before, it still felt like opening a door you were not sure you could close again. Madison, your therapist, had been patient in a way that never made you feel rushed or foolish for still hurting, and slowly, almost so gradually you could barely notice it happening, things began to shift.
You talked about your father too, and that was harder in a different way, because it was not heartbreak exactly, it was history, and history had a way of reaching into places you thought were long buried. It meant talking about the younger version of yourself who had learned how to brace for absence before it even happened, who had learned to expect people to leave before they actually did. Madison had told you something once that stayed with you longer than most things anyone had said in that room.
“You can accept that you didn’t deserve what happened to you then,” she had said gently, “and still allow yourself to decide what you want now.” It had sounded simple when she said it. It had not been simple to live it. Because deciding you were allowed to want something did not erase the instinct that kept warning you it would leave anyway.
Still, you tried with your dad. Small steps, cautious ones. A text you did not overthink before sending. A phone call you did not immediately avoid. A conversation where you did not shut down the second your chest tightened, even when you could hear, in his voice, how genuinely happy he was to be talking to you. And slowly, carefully, you began to reopen a door you had spent years sealing shut, not because you forgave everything or because it stopped hurting, but because you were beginning to understand that healing did not always look like distance. Sometimes it looked like choice.
And somewhere in between all of that, Garrett existed.
Not as something you were trying to erase, because that had never worked, but as something you were learning how to hold without letting it consume you whole. You talked about him in therapy too, and that was the hardest part, because saying it out loud made it real in a way that thinking about it alone never did. “He didn’t leave me,” you had said once, staring down at your hands. Madison had been quiet for a moment before asking, “What about the relationship made you feel like you needed to run?” And that was always where everything cracked open.
“He kept choosing me in moments when he shouldn’t have,” you admitted quietly, your voice barely more than a breath. “And I kept thinking, what if one day I become too much and he realizes it? What if he leaves and I can’t handle that? I didn’t know if I could go through that again.”
Madison had been silent for a long time after that, and when she finally spoke, her voice had been soft. “And when he stayed?”
You had gone quiet. That was the part your mind refused to let itself fully accept. He had stayed. Right up until you made the choice for both of you.
That was the pattern you were finally beginning to see clearly: not that you had been abandoned, but that you had abandoned first. Not because you wanted to hurt him, but because somewhere deep inside you had decided that leaving early would hurt less than being left later. Madison called it survival mode, a version of you that had learned love always came with an expiration date and had tried to outrun it before it could prove itself right. And Garrett, without meaning to, had triggered that fear just by loving you too well.
That did not make you a villain.
But it did not make it fair either, and that was the truth you spent the whole summer sitting with.
So when August ended and Briar’s campus started filling again with returning students, rolling suitcases, loud reunions, and the familiar chaos of a place that never really stopped moving, you told yourself you were ready. Not fixed or healed. Just ready enough to try.
Your senior year arrived with all the usual noise and none of the mercy, and you were barely through the first week back when the apartment door burst open and Hannah’s voice rang through the place.
You smiled before you even looked up.
Allie’s voice followed right after, laughing as she dragged her suitcase inside, and the second you heard them, something tight in your chest loosened. God, you had missed them. More than you had realized. Living alone all summer had taught you that loneliness had a way of sneaking up on you when you were not paying attention.
You pushed yourself off your bed and hurried out into the living room.
The second you saw them, something in your chest gave way completely.
You crossed the room fast and wrapped your arms around both of them at once, and for a second neither of them moved, like they had both frozen in surprise. Then Hannah gasped dramatically.
Allie looked just as shocked. “Are we dreaming?”
“She hugged us first,” Hannah said, grabbing your shoulders as if she needed to examine you properly. “Check her temperature.”
You rolled your eyes, but you were smiling, really smiling, and apparently that only made them stare harder.
“Look at her,” Hannah whispered, putting a hand over her heart like she had just witnessed a miracle. “She’s happy to see us.”
“This is huge,” Allie said solemnly.
“You two are ridiculous,” you muttered, though you were laughing now, the sound strange and unfamiliar after so many months of hearing mostly your own voice.
“We missed you too,” Allie said, and there was nothing teasing in her tone this time.
The three of you eventually ended up collapsed on the couch surrounded by half-unpacked bags and the kind of easy mess that only felt comforting when it belonged to people who knew you too well. For a while the conversation stayed light, summer jobs and family drama and travel disasters and Allie’s cousin somehow getting arrested for something involving a golf cart, and by the time Hannah finished telling a story about being stranded in an airport for twelve hours, all three of you were crying with laughter.
For the first time in months, everything felt almost normal.
Or at least close enough.
Then Hannah looked at you with that familiar too-serious expression she got when she was about to ask something she already knew the answer to.
You narrowed your eyes immediately. “What?”
“What was your summer like?”
The question settled between you, and a year ago you would have dodged it, changed the subject, made some joke, pretended everything was fine. But now you found yourself looking down at your hands, actually thinking about it, while both girls stayed quiet and let you take your time.
“I started therapy,” you said at last.
“How was it?” Allie asked gently.
You thought about Madison, about all the hard, strange, painful little steps that had slowly started making sense. “Hard,” you admitted. “But really good, actually.”
You glanced up at them and gave a small smile. “I talked about my mum. And my dad.” They had already known, at least in pieces, what the situation with your father had been, and they had never once looked at you like you were fragile or pitiful for it, which you were grateful for in a way you could never fully explain. “And Garrett.”
You expected something, some flicker of surprise or awkwardness, some tiny pause that would betray the name’s weight, but there was nothing like that at all. Allie simply reached for your hand and held it.
“That must not have been easy,” she said softly, “but we’re proud of you, babe.”
You blinked quickly and nodded because suddenly your throat felt too tight for anything else. “Thanks, guys.”
The three of you stayed on the couch for a while after that, talking about anything and everything, until Allie’s phone pinged beside her. She glanced at it, smiled at the screen, and you knew immediately who it was.
“You guys are so disgusting,” Hannah muttered.
“I second that,” you said automatically, and Allie laughed as she typed a quick reply back.
“Apparently they’re having the first party of the school year at their place,” she said, looking up at you. “He wants to know if we’re coming.”
You hesitated instantly. You already knew what that meant, but you were not ready to see Garrett.
Hannah, meanwhile, had grabbed her phone to see if the party was worth it. She started scrolling through Instagram, opening the guys’ stories while the three of you huddled together on the couch as she played one story after another, snippets of the party, people arriving, drinks being passed around, the usual chaotic start-of-year noise. It all blurred together until one story in particular made your heart drop so suddenly it felt like someone had reached into your chest and tightened a fist around it.
You reached for Hannah’s phone before you even realized you were moving.
You watched the story once, then twice, then paused it and zoomed in when your brain started refusing to accept what your eyes were seeing. You would have recognized those shoulders anywhere. Garrett. Standing in the back of the picture, smiling at someone just out of frame, and when you enlarged it enough to make out the girl beside him, your stomach twisted so hard it almost made you feel sick.
Back when you first met Garrett, he had been annoyingly honest about his dating history, and Kendall’s name had come up more than once, one of the girls he had hooked up with occasionally before the two of you had become whatever the two of you had become. Hannah and Allie exchanged a look beside you, but you did not say anything. You just kept staring at the photo, your mind already doing what it always did when it was hurt and looking for somewhere to put the pain. It filled in blanks. It created stories. It found reasons to spiral.
There was nothing in the picture, not really. No hand holding. No kissing. No obvious sign of anything at all. Just two people smiling and yet.
Allie’s voice was soft, careful.
You did not answer. Hannah gently took the phone from your hands, and you let her because suddenly you felt exhausted in a way that went deeper than being tired. It sat in your bones. You had spent the entire summer learning how to stand on your own feet again, learning how to survive without him, learning how to live with choices you could not undo, and Garrett, was still allowed to move on. You had left him. Not the other way around. The thought hurt, but it was true.
A long silence settled over the couch.
You felt angry. Angry at yourself, at the fact that you were still sitting here letting one picture control your whole night. At the fact that you had spent months hiding in your apartment feeling sorry for yourself. At the fact that your first instinct, even now, was still to retreat, disappear, run.
You looked up. Both girls were watching you with the careful kind of concern people use when they are not sure if you are about to cry or explode.
Instead, you straightened your shoulders.
Hannah frowned immediately. “You don’t have to—”
“I know.” You cut her off gently. You knew you did not need to do anything for anyone else. This was not about proving something. It was not even about being brave. It was about not spending another night alone with your own thoughts. “I just… I need something.”
The words came out quieter than you wanted, but they were honest.
“I need to get out of my head for one night. It’s either that or I sit here and spiral for the rest of the evening.”
Hannah still looked unconvinced, but Allie was already getting to her feet.
“Fine,” she said. “We’re getting dressed.”
You let out a squeal. “Really?”
“Yup.” She pointed toward your room like the decision had already been made. “We are not spending the first night of senior year crying over a blurry Instagram story.”
Hannah sighed dramatically. “I already hate this plan.”
“That’s because you’re boring,” Allie said.
Thirty minutes later, you found yourself crammed into a booth at a crowded bar, Allie shoving a shot into your hand while Hannah looked like she was already regretting every life choice that had brought her there.
“To senior year,” Allie announced.
Hannah stared at the shot glass. “Please slow down.”
After maybe half an hour, you were drunk enough that the room had softened around the edges, the music louder, the lights brighter, the whole night feeling a little less sharp than it had before. You and Allie ended up on the dance floor for a while, laughing at nothing, moving badly and not caring, and even Hannah gave in for a few minutes before she went to get water for the three of you. It was not perfect, but it was movement, and movement felt better than stillness.
Eventually Hannah came back and grabbed both your hands. “Alright, we’re leaving.”
“Already?” Allie protested, swaying slightly.
“Yes,” Hannah said firmly, already steering the two of you outside.
The music changed as soon as you stepped back into the night air, and the DJ started playing a song Allie loved. She let out a small squeal and ran back toward the dance floor like she had forgotten how exhausted she was, while Hannah turned to face you with the kind of expression that meant she was so close to losing it.
“Stay right here,” she said. “Do not move. If anyone comes up to you, do not talk to them. I’ll be right back.”
Before you could argue, she was running after Allie.
You sat down on the curb, already feeling sick, already regretting the drinks, already hating the way the alcohol made everything inside you feel louder and less contained. You had always hated drinking for exactly this reason. It stripped away the barriers too fast, and when you were upset, it made every feeling feel like the truth.
And your mind, traitorous as ever, went straight back to Garrett.
The questions started circling before you could stop them, faster and sharper and uglier with every second. You should not have thought it. You knew that. But the alcohol had loosened your restraint just enough to make the impulse feel unbearable. Before you could think better of it, you pulled out your phone and scrolled to his name.
It was easy to find. He had been the first person you called for nearly everything for so long that his contact still sat exactly where your fingers expected it to be.
For one impossible second, hope crawled through you so fast it made you feel dizzy. Then someone picked up.
The voice on the other end was feminine.
“Who is this?” she asked, sounding confused.
All of the sense rushed back into your head at once, brutal and immediate, and you cut the call so fast it barely even felt like your finger had moved.
Your breath caught and your vision blurred.
You drew your knees up to your chest and wrapped your arms around them on the curb, humiliation flooding through you so fast it made your face burn. You wanted to disappear. You wanted the pavement to swallow you whole so no one would have to see you sitting there, drunk and crying and falling apart over a man who was no longer yours to call.
Hannah’s voice cut through the haze just enough to pull you back.
You lifted your head slowly. Allie was swaying a little beside her, but the second she really looked at you, the haze in her face cleared and she crouched down in front of you at once, suddenly alert in a way she had not been moments before. “What’s wrong?”
Your throat tightened before the words even made it out.
Your voice cracked halfway through, and the second it did, the tears came harder. The alcohol only made everything worse, making your emotions feel too big for your body, too loud for your skin, too heavy to hold in anywhere. “Nothing is wrong with you,” Hannah said immediately, one hand settling on your shoulder.
But you shook your head, the motion small and desperate.
“I pushed away the one person who actually fucking saw me,” you whispered, and the sentence broke apart as it left your mouth. “And I’m tired of pretending this isn’t ruining me.”
Hannah crouched beside you and pulled you gently into her side. “Hey,” she said, and her voice had softened into something almost unbearably kind. “You’re drunk and hurt and spiraling. That does not mean there is something wrong with you.”
You shook your head against her shoulder, unable to stop the tears. “I called him,” you choked out. “I feel so stupid.”
“You are not stupid,” Allie said at once, her voice sharp with a protectiveness that made your throat tighten even more. “You’re heartbroken.”
“She picked up,” you said, lifting your head just enough to look at them, your chin trembling so badly it felt like your whole face was coming apart. Both of them frowned immediately.
“Who?” Allie asked, though the answer was already dawning on her.
“Kendall,” you whispered.
The reaction was instant. “Oh, shit,” Allie said at the same time Hannah muttered, “No way.”
“I’m not even angry at him,” you said quickly, because you needed them to understand that, needed them to understand the shape of the pain before it swallowed you. “Or at least I’m trying not to be. He can move on with whoever he wants. I just feel so raw all the time, like everything is sitting right under my skin and it all hurts.” Your voice cracked again, and you looked down because you hated how exposed you felt, hated how much of yourself was leaking out in front of them. “And I keep thinking about how I ended things, and it just—” You swallowed hard. “It feels awful.”
Hannah shook her head right away. “You don’t know for sure what’s going on,” she said carefully, trying to keep her voice steady for you. “They could just be friends. Or she could have just happened to answer his phone.” She paused, making a face. “Okay, I don’t actually know how to explain the phone part, but my point is, you don't know.”
You knew she was right, but knowing something in your head did not always mean your chest would believe it.
Allie pulled you closer without saying anything else, and Hannah rubbed slow circles into your shoulder while you tried and failed to breathe through the ache sitting in your ribs.
You buried your face in your hands.
“I don’t know how to do this.”
The words came out muffled, cracked, and small enough to make you hate them the second they were spoken.
“I don’t know how to let people love me.”
You kept going. Your emotions flowing like a dam had broken open.
“I knew he loved me,” you whispered, and your voice broke on the last word. “I knew it, and I still left. I spent the whole summer trying to figure out why I did it,” you said, and a bitter laugh slipped out of you, humorless and wrecked. “Therapy helped. Talking about my dad helped. All of it helped, but it still hurts.”
Neither of them interrupted.
“I miss him,” you admitted, and the words felt like they scraped on the way out. “I miss calling him. I miss telling him stupid things. I miss him being the first person I wanted to talk to.”
Your shoulders shook harder now.
The confession came out almost like a breath.
Allie’s face crumpled immediately. You rarely let yourself be this open, this unguarded, this stripped down to the bone, and seeing that hurt on her face only made you feel more exposed.
“I’ve spent months pretending I’m okay,” you said, staring down at your hands. “I keep telling everyone I’m doing better.”
You wiped at your face angrily, but the tears kept coming anyway. “I am doing better,” you repeated, though even you could hear how fragile it sounded. “But I still love him.”
“I love him so much it hurts.”
For a second, nobody said anything at all.
Then Allie moved first, wrapping both arms around you and pulling you against her so tightly it almost knocked the breath out of you. “Oh, come here” she said, and the words cracked halfway through.
And then Allie was crying too.
Which somehow made you laugh through your own tears because it was such a stupidly human thing, the three of you falling apart together on a curb outside a bar in the middle of Briar’s first night back, all of you wrecked in your own separate ways and somehow still trying to hold each other up.
“You guys are such a mess,” Hannah said softly, though her voice was breaking too.
Another watery laugh escaped you before you could stop it.
Hannah crouched closer after a second, then reached out and brushed your hair back from your face with a gentleness so careful it almost hurt. “We’re not crying because we pity you,” she said quietly.
Your throat tightened at once.
“We’re crying because you’ve been carrying all of this by yourself for months.”
And you had. You had held every sharp piece of it inside yourself and called it strength, as if not falling apart in public meant you were doing okay. You let out a shaky breath and dragged the back of your hand across your face, though it barely did anything to help. Your cheeks were still wet, your eyeliner was definitely ruined, and your head felt heavy from the combination of alcohol and emotion and the sheer exhaustion of having kept so much inside for so long.
“All right,” Hannah said after a moment, pushing herself to her feet with the carefulness of someone who had decided the night was done. “I think we’ve had enough curbside therapy for one evening.” She offered you a hand. “Come on.”
You looked at it for a second, then took it, letting her pull you up from the curb while Allie steadied you from the other side. The sudden shift from sitting to standing made the world tilt briefly, and you had to blink a few times until the pavement stopped trying to move under your feet. Allie immediately looped her arm through yours, giving you a little squeeze.
The three of you started walking back toward the car together, slower than before, with your heels clicking faintly against the pavement and your breath still uneven in your chest. The night air had cooled a little more, brushing against your damp cheeks and making you shiver, but not in the ugly way grief had earlier. This felt different. Tired, yes. Fragile, absolutely, but not quite as lonely.
***********************************************
A week passed, and you wished you could say you were feeling better.
That would have been a lie.
The ache was not as sharp as it had been that night outside the bar, but it was still there,, lingering beneath everything you did and following you through classes, through the long hours at night when you stared at the ceiling instead of sleeping.
The one good thing that came out of that night was Hannah and Allie.
After you got home, the three of you had ended up curled together in the living room until nearly sunrise, talking about everything and nothing. At some point in the middle of it all, the three of you had fallen asleep on the couch, tangled together beneath blankets and half-empty takeout containers, and when you woke the next morning with a crick in your neck and Hannah’s foot somehow shoved into your side, you felt lighter in a way you hadn’t felt in months.
Unfortunately, it did nothing for your current problem.
There was a game today, Briar U against Northwest College, and the girls were currently in your room trying, once again, to convince you to go with them.
“Don’t you guys remember what happened the last time I went to the game?” you said, trying very hard not to think about the look on Garrett’s face when he’d seen you in the stands. “They lost. I’m bad luck.”
Hannah scoffed while Allie groaned and flopped onto your bed. “That is not true.”
You crossed your arms. “Garrett played the worst game of his season.”
“That had nothing to do with you.”
You pointed toward the television instead, trying to look more casual than you felt. “I have plans.”
The two of them turned to look.
On the screen, the opening music of The Real Housewives was already blaring dramatically through the speakers, and for one ridiculous second Allie actually considered your excuse before breaking into a grin.
“…Okay,” she admitted, “that is a strong argument.”
“You can never go wrong with Real Housewives.”
Hannah rolled her eyes so hard you thought they might get stuck. “Fine.”
She held up a finger. “But you are updating us every hour.”
Allie laughed and Hannah threw a pillow at your head, and after a few more minutes of back-and-forth complaining, the two of them finally left only after extracting several promises that you were, in fact, okay and absolutely not planning to spend the entire evening alone in your room spiraling.
The second the apartment door clicked shut behind them, the silence settled back over everything.
You sighed and sank into your bed, trying to focus on the television. You really did. The women on the screen were arguing over something ridiculous, but even their shrill voices and dramatic arguments were not loud enough to drown out your own thoughts for long.
After trying endlessly and failing to care about anyone’s champagne dispute, you grabbed your phone because apparently you enjoyed torturing yourself.
Five minutes later, you were watching the Fifth Line livestream.
He assisted another goal.
By the third period, the commentators had practically stopped focusing on the game and started talking about him instead, about how incredible he looked this season, how composed and confident he seemed, how well he was playing compared to the last game, and how he would fit with the Bruins if the rumors were true.
You kept watching until the game ended in a close Briar win, and despite everything, a small smile tugged at your mouth anyway, because no matter what had happened between you, you were still happy for him. You were still capable of wanting good things for him. That part of you had never really gone anywhere.
Your phone buzzed before you could get too deep into your thoughts, and when you looked down, you saw the group chat with the girls lighting up.
Allie: We're going to Malone’s after. you should come
You stared at the message for a full minute.
Then another text popped up.
Allie: if you say no i’m coming back and dragging you out of bed myself
You knew she was not joking. Hannah, who apparently had zero faith in your ability to make good decisions while left alone with your own thoughts, sent a second text almost immediately after.
Hannah: seriously. you can’t hide forever.
You let out a long breath. You weren’t trying to hide, exactly. You were just protecting yourself, keeping a careful distance from that part of his life because it still hurt too much to be near it. So before all the reasons not to go could pile up and win. You typed back
You: i'll see u in thirty
The response came instantly.
Hannah: allie you owe me twenty bucks
You: did you seriously bet on me?
You shook your head and tossed your phone onto the bed, then got up and started getting ready, ignoring the fact that your hands were shaking a little and the fact that your stomach felt knotted so tightly it made you slightly nauseous, ignoring the fact that there was a very real chance you were about to see Garrett tonight.
Close enough to remember every detail you had spent months trying not to think about.
By the time you made it to Malone’s, you were already regretting the decision, though not enough to turn around. The bar was packed with Briar students, the usual postgame noise spilling through the room in waves of warm laughter, shouted conversations, clinking glasses, and restless energy that made the whole place feel alive in a way that was almost overwhelming. The second you stepped inside, you spotted Hannah and Allie near the entrance, both of them looking far too pleased with themselves, and they moved toward you at once like they had been waiting for this exact moment.
Allie immediately shoved a shot into your hand.
“For confidence,” she said, low enough that only you and Hannah could hear.
You took it without argument, because there was no way you were surviving this night without a little help. “So he’s not here yet?”
Allie shook her head. “Not sure if he is at all. I asked Dean if he was coming, but even he didn’t know. Apparently he’s been unpredictable lately.”
You let out a breath and tipped the shot back, trying not to make a face as the alcohol burned down your throat. It was awful, and you almost gagged, but at least it gave you something to focus on other than the fact that your stomach was already knotting itself in anticipation. Part of you was relieved at the thought that Garrett might not show. It would have spared you the stress, spared you the terror of having to look at him after so long and pretend you were a functioning person.
“Just remember you’ve got this.” Hannah said beside you.
You gave her a weak look, then let the girls guide you toward the booth where the rest of the guys were sitting. You had not really spoken to them in a while, mostly because every time you were around them the guilt settled so heavily in your chest that it was hard to breathe. The calls and texts had died down over time, which made sense. You would not exactly have wanted to stay close to your friend’s exes if one of them had hurt the person you cared about either. Hannah and Allie were still close with them, obviously, because they had known the boys long before you had ever come along, and you would never have asked them to choose.
Dean and Tucker smiled when they saw you, both of them lifting a hand in greeting, and you gave them a small wave back before your eyes flicked to Logan. The memory of that night outside the locker room came back immediately, sharp and unwanted, the way he had looked at you so tired and disappointed and told you Garrett was always going to love you, like it was a problem instead of a truth. He had been right, probably. That did not make it hurt any less to hear out loud.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Dean said with a grin, his dimple showing as he leaned back in the booth.
Allie immediately dropped beside him and shot him a look. “Babe, no one says that anymore.”
Dean just leaned in and muttered something in her ear that made her laugh, which made you smile despite yourself. “Hi,” you said, trying not to sound as awkward as you felt.
Hannah sat beside Tucker and immediately started texting someone, probably Justin, which left you to slide into the booth beside Logan. He gave you a small, almost careful smile before going back to whatever he had been doing on his phone, and you were grateful for the lack of pressure even though the silence between you still felt strange.
The six of you started talking, or at least tried to. Dean and Tucker carried most of the conversation while Allie rolled her eyes at Dean and Hannah kept one hand on her phone and the other around her drink. You made a few attempts to join in, but your attention kept slipping away, your eyes drifting over the bar again and again in search of one specific head of curly hair, one specific face you were not ready to see and somehow wanted to see anyway.
You were talking to Hannah when Dean suddenly raised his voice over the crowd.
Your heart dropped so fast it felt like it hit your stomach on the way down. You turned toward the entrance, and there he was.
A few people slapped his hand as he walked in, congratulating him on the win like it was the most natural thing in the world, and he made his way toward your table with that familiar easy confidence that had once made your whole body feel lighter the second he entered a room. But when he saw you, he stopped.
A brief expression flickered across his face so quickly you almost thought you had imagined it, and then it was gone.
And for a moment, your mouth completely forgot how to work.
Allie kicked you lightly under the table, and you startled before forcing out, “Hi.”
Your voice came out quieter than you meant it to, hushed and fragile in a way that made the whole booth go unnervingly silent. You could feel every pair of eyes shifting between the two of you, and your heart was pounding so hard it made your ears ring. Garrett cleared his throat and looked away first, glancing at the guys as if he needed the brief relief of not looking at you directly.
He pulled up a chair and set it in the middle of the booth, and the moment he sat down, the air felt tight. Hannah’s hand found yours under the table, squeezing once in quiet support, and you tried not to stare at Garrett, though it was nearly impossible not to.
His hair had gotten a little longer, his jaw looked sharper, and he looked older somehow. He had a small cut on his cheek, and you had the sudden, absurd urge to ask him how he got it, to ask about everything you had missed, to ask questions you had no right to ask anymore.
Before the silence could stretch too far, Dean lifted his beer with a grin that was just a little too loud and announced, “Well. To Briar not embarrassing itself on national television.”
“Cheers to that,” Tucker said, raising his glass.
Everyone clinked bottles and cups together, and you lifted yours a second late. Garrett’s bottle tapped yours by accident, the contact so small it should have meant nothing, but it sent a jolt straight through your stomach anyway.
“It’s fine,” you said too quickly, your voice coming out a little too eager, a little too careful, like you were afraid of saying the wrong thing and somehow making this worse.
Across the table, Garrett took a drink, and you stared down into your own glass for a second because this was ridiculous. You had spent almost a year talking to this man every day, and now the two of you could barely manage a few sentences without sounding like strangers.
Dean looked between the two of you, clearly about to say something stupid, but Allie kicked him under the table before he could open his mouth.
He winced and turned to her. “What was that for?”
“Nothing,” she said sweetly.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Anyway,” Tucker cut in loudly, and you loved him for it.
The conversation moved on from there, bouncing around the table in quick, messy little bursts as everyone started talking over each other. Someone complained about summer classes. Someone else brought up hockey. Dean and Allie started bickering immediately, which somehow turned into flirtation halfway through and made Tucker gag dramatically. Hannah laughed so hard she almost dropped her drink. Gradually, a little of the tension in your chest began to loosen.
Then Dean looked directly at you.
You blinked. “What about me?”
You took a sip of your drink, mostly to give yourself a second to think, and then shrugged. “It was okay.”
Dean stared at you like he was not about to accept that as an actual answer. “That’s all we’re getting?”
You tipped one shoulder up. “I spent time with family.”
You had spent more time with your father over the summer than you had in years. Dean seemed to accept the answer eventually, though his expression made it clear he suspected there was more you were not saying.
“Fair,” he said, and let the subject go.
The conversation shifted again, and thank God for that. For a while, you mostly listened, which was easier. You let the noise of the booth wash over you, let yourself fade into the edges of the group while everyone else filled the space. Then Tucker suddenly turned toward Garrett.
His fingers tapped once against the neck of his beer bottle before he answered. “Good.”
Tucker gave him an exaggerated look. “That is literally the same answer she gave.”
Across the table, Garrett’s eyes flicked toward yours for just a second before sliding away again. He shrugged, and the conversation kept going, but you felt that tiny glance like it had landed somewhere deep in your chest. You wanted to say something. Anything. You itched with it, the urge growing heavier every minute you sat there pretending you were fine.
An hour later, Malone’s was somehow even louder.
Dean and Allie had vanished onto the dance floor, and Justin had shown up halfway through the night and immediately stolen Hannah away, leaving her grinning in a way that made you want to throw something at both of them. So you slipped away from the booth and headed toward the bar for another drink, letting yourself breathe for a minute in the space between the crowd and the music.
The bartender was busy, which gave you entirely too much time alone with your thoughts, a dangerous thing on a night like this. You rested your elbows on the counter and waited, trying not to overthink anything, trying not to glance back at the booth, trying not to search for him.
When you looked over, you saw her.
She was walking up to the table where Logan, Tucker, and Garrett were sitting. They all smiled at her, and she slid easily into the space beside Garrett, laughing at something one of them said. Her laugh carried over the noise of the bar, bright and easy and somehow entirely too perfect, and irritation shot through you so fast it almost startled you.
Even her laugh sounded angelic.
The bartender finally slid your drink toward you, and you took it automatically, though you could barely taste it now, let alone enjoy it. Your attention had already started drifting across the room again, pulled in that direction against your will, when a voice broke through your thoughts.
You turned and found a guy standing beside you, tall, dark-haired, smiling in that easy, confident way people seemed to do when they assumed the night might go somewhere interesting. “What?” you asked, blinking at him because you had only caught the tail end of whatever he had said.
“I asked if I could buy you the next drink,” he said, still smiling.
Your first instinct was to say you had a boyfriend. It was automatic, almost muscle memory at this point, the kind of reflex you did not even realize you still had, but the words died before they reached your mouth because you didn’t have a boyfriend. Not anymore.
“Um, sure,” you said instead.
He ordered the drink for you, then turned back with a hand extended. “I’m Caleb.”
You hesitated just long enough to feel slightly ridiculous, then shook his hand and gave him your name.
“So,” he said, leaning lightly against the bar with an easy grin, “are you here alone, or—”
“Oh, I’m here with friends,” You said quickly. “Just celebrating the win.”
It came out a little awkwardly, and you immediately wished you sounded more natural, more like someone who knew how to do this. But Garrett had been your first boyfriend, and it had taken you an embarrassingly long time to realize he liked you in the first place, which meant flirty small talk with strangers had never exactly been a skill you’d had much practice with.
Caleb laughed softly and slipped a hand into his pocket. “Yeah, I figured.”
The teasing in his voice was light enough to make your mouth twitch, and to your surprise, the conversation started to flow. He liked traveling, had too many opinions about food, and talked with the kind of casual enthusiasm that made him seem genuinely interested in the world around him. He was nice and was, objectively, exactly the sort of person you should have been able to keep talking to without your thoughts drifting somewhere else.
But your heart was not in it.
Because every so often, no matter how hard you tried not to, your eyes kept flicking back toward the booth.
And when they did, you found Garrett already looking at you.
The second your eyes met, your heart kicked so violently it almost hurt. The room seemed to compress around that single point of contact, around the fact that he had seen you talking to someone else and you had seen him seeing it.
Then Garrett’s gaze shifted to Caleb.
His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
You watched him turn to Logan and say something you couldn’t hear over the music. Logan’s head turned toward him immediately. Garrett said something else. Then, without warning, he stood. He grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair and headed for the exit.
You felt Logan’s eyes flick toward you, but you didn’t meet them. You could already feel your pulse climbing, your thoughts starting to scatter, your body following Garrett with every instinct you had spent the last six months trying to control.
Caleb’s voice brought you back. “Hey, are you okay?”
You blinked at him, suddenly aware that you had gone quiet. “Hmm?”
“Oh.” You forced a small smile, though it tasted wrong on your face. “I’m fine.”
The lie sat bitter on your tongue.
Your mind told you to stay where you were, to let him go, to stop turning everything into something it did not need to be. But your heart did not seem interested in listening. You still cared. That was the problem. You still cared in ways that were inconvenient and humiliating and far too big for the amount of time that had passed.
“I’ll be right back,” you said, pushing your chair away from the bar.
But before you could even stand fully, movement caught your eye from across the room.
She had already gotten up from the booth, grabbed her jacket, and said something to Tucker that you couldn’t hear over the noise before heading straight toward the same exit Garrett had just used.
The chair beneath you suddenly felt too heavy, your fingers tightening around the edge of the table as a stupid, ugly feeling settled in your chest.
You closed your eyes briefly and clenched your jaw, because you were getting so tired of it. Tired of the jealousy and feeling like your heart got pulled in different directions every time Garrett Graham walked into a room.
You stood abruptly. “I need the bathroom.”
Caleb didn’t question it, and for that, you were grateful.
The second the bathroom door shut behind you, you braced both hands against the sink and stared at your reflection. You looked exhausted, though not in the obvious way. Not physically. Emotionally. There was a difference, and tonight it was written all over your face.
A reckless thought slid into your head before you could stop it.
You could let Caleb flirt with you. Kiss you. Prove to yourself that Garrett was not the center of your universe, that you were capable of moving on too, that you were not still orbiting around him like he was the only thing holding you in place.
You looked away from the mirror immediately feeling sick for even thinking that.That was not what you wanted. The problem was not wanting someone. The problem was you still wanting him.
By the time you returned to the booth, you felt a little more composed, though not much. Everyone was back now, including Garrett, and Kendall had rejoined the table too, sitting beside him like she belonged there without effort. The sight of them together made something sharp and uncomfortable twist in your chest, and you hated how childish the feeling was, hated that it still managed to hurt anyway.
Kendall noticed you first and smiled warmly, easy and unbothered, like she had not accidentally become the center of every insecurity you had been carrying all week. You forced a small smile back, then looked away.
You could not do this tonight, not anymore. You really tried but it just wasn't working.
“I think I’m going to call it a night,” you said, hoping it sounded casual.
Allie and Hannah both looked up at once, their expressions shifting into the same skeptical look best friends always seemed to have when they knew you were lying but wanted to see how far you would take it.
“Sure, let’s—” Allie started.
“No,” you said quickly, too quickly, and they both blinked. “You guys stay.”
They exchanged a look that said they were probably about thirty seconds away from arguing with you, but you grabbed your jacket before either of them could say anything else.
“How are you getting home?” Hannah asked.
Of course she would ask that.
You nearly groaned. “I’ll call a cab, or maybe Caleb can—”
The words had barely left your mouth before Garrett’s voice cut straight across the table.
The entire booth went silent.
Garrett was already looking at you, his expression dark, his jaw tight, his voice carrying that captain’s command so cleanly it left no room for argument.
“You are not getting into a random car at midnight.”
You hated that your stomach still flipped when he sounded like that.
“I can take care of myself,” you said quietly.
“I know.” The answer came instantly, too instantly, like he had not meant for it to sound that certain but could not stop himself. Then, after a beat, he added, “I’ll drive you.”
The whole table seemed to hold its breath.
Dean looked like he was trying very hard not to laugh. Logan let out a long sigh and dropped his head into his hands. Even Tucker had that look on his face like he didn't know what was happening.
Your self-consciousness came rushing back in a wave so fast it almost made you dizzy.
There was no way you could be in a car alone with him. And for one brief, ridiculous second, the thought of going home with Caleb actually felt safer than being in Garrett’s car by yourself, because at least Caleb was a stranger, and strangers did not carry a year of history in the shape of their hands and the sound of their voice.
You started shaking your head, ready to refuse, but Garrett had already grabbed his keys and stood up. He said something low to Kendall that you couldn’t hear before heading toward the door with the kind of finality that told you there was no arguing with him now.
You looked at Allie and Hannah, both of whom were staring at you with equal parts confusion and concern, and all you could think to do was blurt out, “I’ll text you when I get back to the apartment.”
Kendall smiled at you as Garrett passed, and you hated yourself immediately for the ugly things you had been thinking about her all night. She was sweet. Warm. Completely kind to you. None of this was her fault. You couldn’t blame Garrett for maybe being with someone like her when she looked so effortless beside him, so easy to talk to, so unlike the mess you were.
You swallowed hard and followed after him.
The cool air outside hit your face the second you stepped out, and your fingers fidgeted uselessly at your sides as you made your way to where Garrett had parked. He was already in the car when you reached it, staring ahead with one hand resting on the wheel, his fingers tapping a quiet, irritated rhythm against it. He looked annoyed about something, though you had no idea what, and that only made the nerves in your stomach coil tighter.
You got in beside him, and the familiar smell of the car wrapped around you at once, pulling you backward into memory so quickly it almost hurt. For a second, you could pretend this was normal, that this was just another night where the two of you were leaving a party early and driving back to his place, where you would stay over and everything would feel simple again. Then the engine started, and the moment shattered.
The drive was painfully quiet.
All you could hear was the low sound of the road and the soft, steady tapping of Garrett’s fingers on the steering wheel. The silence felt suffocating because he was so close. Closer than he had been in months. If you shifted your hand even slightly, you would be close enough to touch him. It made your chest feel too tight, and eventually you realized you could not take it anymore.
“You didn’t have to drive me,” you said quietly, glancing at him before looking back at the dashboard. “But I appreciate it. Thank you.”
His fingers stopped tapping for a second. He let out a breath. “Don’t sweat it.”
You turned the phrase over in your head and frowned, because somehow it felt too casual for what was happening. That was all he could say? That was the best he had?
“Really,” you said, pushing through the awkwardness because you needed to say something, anything, before the silence swallowed you again. “I feel bad, you and Kendall probably had plans or something later, and I’m sorry if I interrupted them.”
You didn’t even know why you said it. You just needed to know. Needed some kind of answer, even if it embarrassed you to ask for one.
He was quiet for a second before glancing at you. “Why would Kendall and I have plans?”
The confusion in his voice made you hesitate.
You should have stopped there. Should have taken the out he was handing you. But it was already too late.
“I don’t know,” you said, the words coming out small. “You guys looked pretty close, so I just assumed…”
“As opposed to you and Caleb?” Garrett asked.
The question hit you so unexpectedly that for a second you had no idea how to respond.
“You looked pretty close with him too.”
You couldn’t tell whether there was frustration in his voice or something sharper than that, and the first thing your mind did was panic that you had somehow hurt him again. You shook your head quickly.
“No, there’s absolutely nothing going on with Caleb and me. I just met him tonight, and he bought me a drink, that’s it. Nothing is happening.”
The words came out faster than you meant them to, as if you could force the truth into place by saying it enough times. A ridiculous, terrible part of you wanted him to think the worst. Wanted him to misunderstand and feel something for once, because he was the one moving on, so why should he get to be unaffected? But you couldn’t do it. You couldn’t bear having another reason to feel guilty, because the guilt you were already carrying was more than enough.
The streetlights flashed over his face as he drove, catching the sharp line of his jaw for a second before dropping it back into shadow. Then, without looking at you, he said, “You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”
The words landed somewhere between polite and cold, and your chest tightened almost immediately.
“Okay,” you said quietly.
After that, neither of you spoke. The familiar Briar streets slid past the window while Garrett drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, and you hated the sound more than you wanted to admit because you knew it. Garrett only did that when something was bothering him.
Eventually, you couldn’t stand it anymore.
“You seem upset,” you said softly.
He let out a short, humorless laugh. “Do I?”
He shook his head, eyes still fixed on the road. “It’s just…” He paused, like he was deciding whether or not to say the next part. Then, with a tired sort of honesty, he added, “I spent months thinking about what I’d say if I ever saw you again.”
He kept going, his voice low and rough around the edges. “I had whole conversations planned. His grip tightened around the steering wheel. “Sometimes I’d imagine you’d explain everything. Sometimes I’d imagine I’d finally get to say all the things I didn’t get to say.”
The words hung there, heavy and dangerous.
Then he gave a small, exhausted shake of his head. “And now you’re sitting right here,” he said, “and we’re talking about Kendall and some guy named Caleb.”
A tired laugh slipped out of him, but it didn’t sound amused. It sounded worn down. “So yeah,” he murmured. “Maybe I’m a little upset.”
You stared at him, guilt rising so fast it made your stomach turn. You had done this again. Made things worse without meaning to. Your hands twisted together in your lap, your fingers clenching tight enough to hurt.
“I’m sorry,” you said before you could stop yourself.
Garrett shook his head once, immediate. “Don’t.”
You turned to look at him.
He still wasn’t looking at you. His eyes stayed on the road, his jaw set, his whole body carrying the tension of things he was clearly trying not to say.
The second time came out rougher, like the word itself hurt.
He didn’t want your apology.
An apology couldn’t give him those months back. It couldn’t answer the questions he had spent all that time carrying around. It couldn’t undo the nights he had spent hurt and alone and trying not to fall apart. And somehow that made the guilt feel even worse.
You looked down at your hands.
The apology sat between you, unanswered and useless.
Because Garrett was right.
Sorry didn’t fix any of it.
The rest of the drive passed in silence, neither of you seeming to know what to do with what had just been said. Eventually your apartment complex came into view, the familiar buildings glowing under the parking lot lights, and Garrett pulled into a spot near the entrance. He shut the engine off, but neither of you moved.
He was staring straight ahead, both hands still wrapped around the wheel, his jaw tight like he was holding something back.
You wanted to tell him. God, you wanted to tell him everything. That you still loved him. That not a single day had passed without thinking about him. That every conversation tonight had only made it worse, because it reminded you exactly how much you had lost. But the words stayed trapped in your throat.
He had just spent ten minutes telling you how much you had hurt him.
Telling him all of that now felt selfish.
Cruel, even. Like you would be opening a wound just because you were finally ready to look at it, so instead you reached for the door.
“Thank you for the ride,” you said, and your voice nearly cracked on the last word.
Garrett nodded once without turning to you. You swallowed hard, then climbed out of the car.
The night air hit your skin cold and sharp, but you barely felt it as you made your way toward your building without looking back. One step. Then another. Then another. You could feel him there behind you, still parked, still waiting.
By the time you reached your door, your eyes were burning. You fumbled with your keys twice before finally getting the lock open. The second you stepped inside, you heard the familiar sound of an engine starting outside.
A watery smile pulled at your mouth despite everything, because some things had not changed. No matter how angry he was. No matter how hurt. No matter how much distance sat between you now. Garrett still waited until you got inside safely before he drove away.
*********************************************
The text from your father came on a Thursday afternoon while you were half-listening through class.
Dad: Raegan has a soccer game on Saturday and wanted to know if you’d come watch.
Your first instinct was to assume he had worded it wrong, that maybe he meant Rachel had asked, or that he was just relaying something casually and not actually asking you yourself. You typed back almost immediately.
The response came less than a minute later.
Dad: Yes, you.
Dad: She’s been talking about it all week.
Dad: No pressure.
Your brows pulled together.
Sure, things had gotten better over the summer. You had been coming around more. Dinner every now and then. Movie nights. Helping Raegan with homework one afternoon when she got so frustrated over fractions that she burst into tears on the kitchen floor. Watching cartoons on the couch while Rowan loudly complained about the plot, but this felt different.
This wasn’t your father or Rachel asking.
The same little girl who had hidden behind Rachel’s leg the first time you met her and barely spoken above a whisper around you for weeks. Now she wanted you at her soccer game.
You looked down at your phone for a long second, and then typed back:
The reply came immediately.
For some reason, that made you smile.
Saturday arrived faster than expected. You stopped at a store on the way and bought a small teddy bear wearing a soccer jersey because showing up empty-handed felt wrong, and because somewhere along the way, you had started caring. That realization sat strangely in your chest on the drive over, unfamiliar enough to be unsettling.
By the time you reached the field, parents were already setting up folding chairs along the sidelines and kids were running everywhere, all elbows and shin guards and excited noise. Someone had brought an obnoxiously loud air horn that you were already silently judging. You spotted your father right away, standing near the field talking to another parent, while Rachel sat in a folding chair with a travel mug in one hand and Rowan sprawled beside her, eating what looked like an alarming amount of nachos for ten in the morning.
Your father saw you first.
His face brightened, and he lifted a hand in greeting. Rachel turned, smiled, and then bent toward Raegan, pointing in your direction.
Everything after that happened fast.
Raegan looked up and saw you. Her entire face lit up with such pure, immediate joy that it nearly knocked the breath out of you. Before you could even fully process it, she took off running straight toward you.
You barely managed to keep hold of the teddy bear before catching her, the force of the impact making you stumble back a step. For a second you just stood there, frozen, unsure what to do with your arms or your hands or your whole body, and then her little arms tightened around your waist.
Nobody had warned you how strange it would be to realize someone had actually been hoping you would show up. Waiting for you. Looking for you.
“You came!” Raegan said, pulling back just enough to look up at you.
She sounded genuinely shocked, like she had not let herself believe it until this exact second. The expression on her face did something unbearably soft to your heart.
She grabbed your hand before you could say anything else. “Come on.”
You barely had time to adjust your grip on the teddy bear before she was dragging you across the grass. Within seconds she was tugging you toward a group of girls gathered near the sidelines.
The moment they noticed her coming, they started waving.
Then one of them spotted you.
All of their attention turned at once. Raegan bounced on her toes, practically vibrating with pride. “This is my big sister.”
Your heart stumbled. You were not sure what hit you harder: the title or the fact that she said it with so much certainty.
One of the girls smiled. “She’s pretty.”
“Obviously,” Raegan said immediately, as if this were the most reasonable fact in the world.
“This is Emma,” Raegan announced dramatically, pointing to one of them, then moved her finger to the next. “And that’s Lily. And that’s Ava.”
“Hi,” you managed, still slightly awkward, though thankfully none of them seemed to mind.
“She’s in college,” Raegan added, sounding like she was delivering information that deserved respect. All three girls looked at you impressed.
You almost rolled your eyes. “It’s really not that exciting.”
“It is,” Raegan insisted, like you had offended her personally by disagreeing.
“She’s really smart,” she told them, with an amount of pride that made your throat tighten.
It had never occurred to you that someone like Raegan could look at you like that. Like you hung the moon. Like you were someone worth bragging about.
You looked down at her and smiled despite yourself. “Okay, you’re laying it on a little thick.”
A whistle blew from across the field, and the girls immediately straightened.
“Coach is calling us,” one of them said.
Raegan groaned dramatically, then looked up at you again, suddenly serious. “Wait.”
She reached for the teddy bear in your hands, and her eyes widened when she saw it. “Is this for me?”
For one second she only stared, then she launched herself at you again, and somehow the second hug hit even harder than the first.
“Thank you,” she mumbled against your shirt.
She pulled back almost immediately and held the bear up for her friends to see. “Look what my sister got me!”
The girls crowded around her at once, instantly fascinated, and before you could stop yourself, your gaze drifted toward the sidelines.
Toward Rachel and your father.
Rachel was smiling, something soft and emotional in her expression as she looked between the two of you and your father looked at you with a kind of proud expression on his face.
There were still too many things between you for a look to fix. Too many years. Too much hurt. Too many questions with answers neither of you could make satisfying now. But standing there while Raegan proudly showed off her teddy bear and told anyone who would listen that her big sister had come to watch her play soccer, the anger in your chest felt quieter.
**********************************************
After Raegan’s soccer practice, Rachel insisted that you come back to their house for dinner, and even though every part of you wanted to protest, to insist you were probably intruding, Raegan and Rowan had both looked at you with the kind of hopeful certainty that made saying no feel almost impossible.
You finally understood why people said it was hard to refuse younger siblings, because the way they asked made it feel less like a request and more like they had already decided you belonged there.
So you drove home with Raegan beside you, because of course she had insisted on riding with you again, and the whole way back she talked without stopping, moving from one thing to the next in the effortless, scattered way children did when they trusted you enough to fill the silence. She told you about practice, about a girl on her team who kept stealing the ball, about Rowan’s dramatic complaints over dinner the night before, about a teacher she liked and another one she did not, and somewhere in the middle of it all you realized you were smiling without having to force it.
The warmth that settled in your chest was almost frightening in how quickly it came, because it felt so much like home that you were scared to name it too soon. That kind of feeling had become rare since your mum died. It was the kind of thing you had been chasing for years without realizing it.
By the time you got back to the house, the awkwardness between you and your father had not completely disappeared, but it had softened enough to stop feeling sharp. You still had not really exchanged many words with him, and maybe that would have bothered you once, but your therapist had been right when she told you that you did not need to force conversation just to prove you were trying. Sometimes simply being in the same room was enough. The fact that your nerves no longer felt raw around him, not in the same way they used to, meant more than you wanted to admit.
Rachel was already in the kitchen making dinner when you offered to help, and she let you without making a big deal out of it. Things were still a little strange between the two of you, and maybe they always would be, because there were still moments when it was hard to look at her and your dad together and not think about everything that had happened because of it.
Other times, guilt crept in from the opposite direction, quiet and unpleasant, because you hated yourself for noticing how well they fit, how easily your father seemed to love her, how completely he looked at her the way you used to look at Garrett, like she was the answer to every prayer he had ever been too afraid to say out loud.
After dinner, you stood at the sink washing dishes while Rachel dried them beside you, the two of you moving around each other in a careful rhythm that was not quite comfortable yet, but no longer fully awkward either. The kitchen was quiet except for the sound of running water and plates shifting in your hands, and you found yourself getting lost in your own thoughts until Rachel finally spoke.
You didn’t look up right away. “I’m fine.”
Rachel snorted softly, and when you glanced over at her, there was the smallest smile on her face. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but that’s kind of the official family answer.”
You rolled your eyes before you could stop yourself. “Must’ve gotten it from my dad.”
The joke slipped out faster than you intended, but Rachel smiled a little wider at that.
The silence between you no longer felt strained, only thoughtful, like both of you knew there was more to say but neither of you wanted to force it out before it was ready.
Then Rachel asked, very quietly, “Do you miss him?”
The dish in your hand stilled and you looked up.
Rachel’s expression softened at once. “You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to.”
You looked back down at the plate, water running over your fingers as you tried to steady yourself. “Yes,” you said, and the word came out much quieter than you expected. Then Rachel nodded once, like she had already known the answer anyway. “I figured.”
A small laugh escaped you before you could stop it, but it sounded fragile around the edges. “Am I that obvious?”
“Only to people paying attention.”
You kept washing dishes because it gave your hands something to do, something mindless enough to keep you from falling too far into your own head. Rachel dried the plates beside you, and after a moment she said carefully, “You know… when I found out about you and your mother…I was furious”
You did not talk about that much. You barely talked about it with your dad. The subject was still too tender and full of damage. So the fact that Rachel was bringing it up now made your chest tighten with a nervous kind of anticipation.
Rachel folded the towel in her hands and looked down at it for a second before continuing. “I know that probably sounds surprising.”
“A little,” you admitted.
She gave a small, humorless smile. “I knew he’d made mistakes. But seeing the reality of them is different.” Rachel’s voice stayed calm, but there was something deeper under it now, something that sounded older than anger and less forgiving than sadness. “I knew there was a little girl somewhere carrying the consequences of decisions she never got a say in.”
Your throat tightened so quickly it almost hurt.
“And honestly?” she said, shaking her head slightly. “I was angry with him for a very long time.” You stared at her in surprise. “You married him anyway,” you said before you could stop yourself.
Her expression did not change. “But not because I thought what he did was okay.” The words were steady. Certain. “I married him because people are more complicated than the worst thing they’ve ever done.”
The kitchen went quiet again, and this time it felt heavier, more thoughtful, like the air itself was waiting for something to shift. Rachel looked directly at you, and you had to force yourself not to look away.
“Your father hurt people,” she said, and there was no hesitation in it. “He hurt your mother.” Your eyes burned immediately. “He hurt you,” she added, gentler now, but no less certain. “And nothing I say is going to change that.”
For a moment, neither of you spoke. Then Rachel let out a slow breath. “The problem is that pain doesn’t stay neatly where it belongs.”
You frowned slightly. “What does that mean?”
“It means eventually we start handing it to people who didn’t create it.”
The words landed somewhere deep inside you, deep enough to make your stomach turn.
Rachel’s voice softened even more. “I think you’ve spent time preparing Garrett to pay for something your father did.” The truth of it was ugly, and because it was ugly, it made your chest feel even tighter. Rachel lifted a hand before you could speak.
“That doesn’t make you a bad person,” she said immediately.
Her eyes stayed on yours.
“But sweetheart…” Her voice gentled in a way that made the tears threaten harder. “Fear explains behavior. It doesn’t always justify it.”
The room suddenly felt too small, the air too thick, like your body was trying to contain too many feelings at once.
Rachel studied your face for a long moment before speaking again, quieter now. “I know you’ll always carry some of that hurt. I carry some of mine too.” You looked away because you could not seem to hold her gaze and your own thoughts at the same time.
“But I need you to answer one thing honestly.”
Rachel waited until you looked back at her, then asked in a voice so soft it nearly broke you, “Does losing Garrett make it worth it?”
The question hit like a blow and you opened your mouth. Then closed it.
Rachel saw that immediately.
She nodded slowly, as if confirming something she already suspected. “You don’t have to forgive your father.” Your eyes stung.
“You don’t have to forget what happened,” she continued. “And you don’t even have to stop being angry.”
“But if you keep letting that pain make the decisions for you…” Rachel reached across the counter and squeezed your hand, her touch warm and steady. “You’re going to lose things that had nothing to do with causing it.”
“And Garrett?” she said softly. “He sounds like one of those things.”
You didn’t know how to answer that, because she was right, and the truth of it landed all at once, heavy and unavoidable. You had spent so much time feeling sorry for yourself that you had stopped seeing how much of your fear was deciding things for you. Even when you had been with Garrett, that fear had never really gone away; it had just sat there quietly in the background, waiting for the worst, bracing for the moment everything good would be taken from you.
Talking to Rachel made something in you finally crack open.
Just enough for you to see it clearly.
You had done the work. You had been to therapy. You had talked to your friends. You had tried to make sense of why loving him had felt so frightening, and every conversation had brought you back to the same truth in one form or another. You needed to be honest with yourself.
You had made a mistake, yes, but you were not the sum of that mistake. You were not doomed to keep punishing yourself forever. You had to forgive yourself too. You had to be kinder to the part of you that had been scared for so long, the part that had only ever learned to leave first because staying had always seemed more dangerous.
You could not keep living like this.
You could not keep letting fear make every choice for you.
When you looked at Rachel again, something in you moved before you could overthink it. You stepped forward and wrapped your arms around her. She looked surprised for half a second, and then she hugged you back just as firmly, like she understood exactly how much this meant even if you did not have the words for it yet.
“Thank you,” you said quietly as you pulled back.
Then you grabbed your keys and headed for the door before you could lose your nerve, because if you stayed in that kitchen for even one more minute, you knew fear would find a way to talk you out of this again. It was almost eight, which meant Garrett would still be at the hockey arena; he always stayed late on weekends, always pushed himself a little harder when there was nowhere else to be, and for once it felt like the one thin thread of timing the universe had given you.
This was the last act of love you were going to do for him, and maybe for yourself too, because you were done letting fear make choices that had already cost you six months of your life. It had not been fair to you, and it had not been fair to him either, and you were ready to do something that was not running.
The drive to the hockey arena felt strange in the best and worst possible way, because your mind was quiet for once, not empty but focused, almost buzzing with a kind of scared anticipation that kept you from spiraling too far into the “what ifs.” The parking lot was nearly empty when you arrived, and you could already see Garrett’s car sitting there, which made your stomach flip hard enough to make you grip the wheel for a second before you could force yourself to move.
You got out, walked inside, and found him almost immediately gliding across the ice in the soft glare of the arena lights, the sound of pucks striking the net echoing through the empty space, and for a second you just stood there and watched him the way you used to, because it had always been one of your favorite things, the way he looked when he was completely inside his element, all focus and speed and instinct, like nothing else in the world mattered as much as the next play.
Your hands were already sweaty by the time you stepped closer to the boards, and all the bravado you had built up in the car felt like it was slipping through your fingers.
He had fought so hard for you when you were together, and now it was your turn, even if you were months late, even if you were terrified, even if every nerve in your body was screaming at you to turn around and leave before he saw you. But then you moved closer, and he looked up, and the second his eyes found yours he stopped skating completely.
The distance between you suddenly felt enormous, then nonexistent, then enormous again, and for one awful second neither of you moved, like the whole arena had been reduced to the two of you standing on opposite sides of something neither of you knew how to cross. Then he pushed toward the boards, climbed off the ice, and by the time he pulled off his helmet and ran a hand through his damp hair, you had already forgotten every clean, carefully rehearsed sentence you had planned on the drive over.
He walked toward you, and your heart felt like it was trying to climb out of your chest; somewhere in the back of your mind, you wondered what Hannah and Allie would say if they could see you now, if they would cheer you on or tell you you were making the biggest mistake of your life.
“Are you okay?” he asked, and the concern in his voice was enough to make your throat tighten.
You nodded too quickly. He looked at you like he was trying to understand what could possibly have brought you here, and when he started to speak again, you cut him off before he could stop you. “Please don’t say anything yet.”
Garrett's eyebrows shot up.
“I know you probably don’t want me here,” you said, the words rushing out now that you had finally started, “and I know I do not really have the right to show up like this, and I know it has been months and I know you probably have a million reasons not to listen to me, but I need you to.” You swallowed, staring at the floor for a beat before forcing yourself to look at him again, because if you were going to do this, you were going to do it all the way.
Garrett said nothing, but you could see the tension in him. “I know I hurt you,” you said quietly, and the understatement made you want to laugh at yourself, except there was nothing funny about any of this. “Actually, no. Hurt is not even the right word. I broke your heart. I know I did.”
You looked away, then back, because there was no point pretending anymore. “I have spent six months trying to understand why I did what I did, and the worst part is…” You let out a shaky breath. “The worst part is I knew I did not want to break up with you.”
“From the second the words came out of my mouth, I knew I was making the biggest mistake of my life.” Your voice cracked, and the sound of it made something in his expression shift. “I did not want to leave you. I wanted you. I loved you.” You wiped at your face, but the tears kept coming anyway. “I still love you.”
Garrett closed his eyes for a moment, as if the words had physically hit him, and you pushed onward before your courage could collapse under you. “The morning I broke up with you, I heard something. You were in the shower, and I went downstairs, and I heard Dean talking to Tucker and Logan.” His frown deepened. “He said you were giving too much of yourself to me, that he was worried you were losing pieces of yourself for me, and I believed him.” Your throat tightened. “I believed it because I already had all of this in my head, all the stuff I never really said out loud, all the baggage from my dad leaving, the way I spent years wondering what was wrong with me that made it so easy for someone to walk away.”
You could hear the hum of the arena lights overhead, hear the puck echo somewhere in the distance, but mostly all you could hear was your own voice shaking apart. “If my father could leave,” you whispered, “then eventually everyone would. And all I could think was, what if one day you realize I am not worth it? What if you wake up and resent me because of my baggage, because of my trust issues, because of all the parts of me that do not make sense?” Garrett’s face had gone so open now it was almost painful to look at. “I thought I was protecting you. I thought if I left first, you would hate me, and hating me seemed easier than watching you stop loving me.”
The silence that followed felt endless, but you kept going because there was no stopping now. “I made the choice for both of us. I did not ask what you wanted. I did not trust you enough to let you decide.” Your hands were shaking so badly you had to clasp them together. “And I regret it. I regret it every day. Every morning. Every night. Every time something happens and you are still the first person I want to tell.” Your breath broke completely. “I love you. I never stopped.”
Garrett finally moved, just slightly, and when he spoke, his voice was rough in a way you had almost never heard. “You just decided.”
“You decided what I could handle,” he said, and now he was the one stepping forward, his eyes locked on yours with that same devastating intensity that made the whole world feel both too bright and too small at once. “You decided what I wanted. You decided what was best for me.” His voice cracked on the last word, and that was what nearly broke you, because Garrett never sounded fragile like this, never sounded like he was one breath away from falling apart.
He looked away for a second, like he could not bear to say the next part while looking straight at you, then looked back and said, “I loved you. I would have followed you anywhere. I would have fought for you. I would have chosen you every single time.” His eyes were shining now too, and the sight of that made your chest ache in a way that felt almost physical. “But you never gave me that choice.”
He dragged a hand down his face, exhausted in a way that made him look older than he had only moments ago, and when he spoke again his voice was so quiet it was almost worse than if he had shouted. “You had my heart in your hands,” he said. “And I trusted you with it. I trusted you more than anybody.” One tear slipped down his cheek, and he did not bother wiping it away. “And then one day you decided what was best for me and crushed it.”
A sob tore out of you before you could stop it, sharp and ugly and full of all the guilt you had been trying to hold at bay for months. Seeing him cry felt like a blade driven straight through your chest. “And for that I’ll always be sorry,” you said, and your voice cracked so badly on the last word that it barely came out at all.
Garrett shook his head and took a step back, as if the distance was the only thing keeping him upright. “I don’t know,” he said, and the softness in his voice made your stomach twist because it sounded less like anger and more like fear, like he was trying to tell you the truth before he let himself hope too much. Then he looked at you again, and the question in his eyes was so raw it almost hurt to witness. “What if one day you decide that again?” His throat worked around the words. “What if you leave again?”
“I can’t go through this again,” he admitted, and the confession came out rougher than anything else he had said. “I love you, but I can’t…” He looked down, jaw tightening, like the rest of the sentence was too painful to finish. “I can’t.”
He did not have to say the rest. You heard it anyway. He did not trust you with his heart anymore, not fully, not the way he had before. And of course that hurt, because you had wanted so badly to come here and make it all better, to hand him the truth and somehow walk away with forgiveness, but this was not a wound that healed just because you finally knew how to name it.
You sniffed and nodded, wiping at your face with shaking fingers. The smile you gave him was small and broken, but it was real.
“I understand. You don’t owe me anything,” you said, and the words sounded like they hurt him too, which somehow made it hurt worse.
You could see it all over his face, in the tears he was no longer bothering to hide, in the way he was looking at you now like he wanted this just as badly as you did but could not afford to trust that wanting it would not destroy him all over again. Love was not the problem anymore. Trust was. And you had broken that.
“I didn’t come here expecting you to forgive me,” you said, and your voice shook with every word. “I didn’t come here expecting you to take me back.”
“I came because you deserved the truth.”
The arena felt painfully quiet around the two of you, too big and too empty to hold everything that had just been said, and somehow neither of you moved. The silence stretched, raw and uncertain, until it felt like the whole night was balanced on the edge of one more sentence.
“I love you,” you said then, and this time the words came easier, not because they hurt less, because they didn’t, but because they were finally honest. No fear. No running. No hiding. Just the truth. “I think I’ll probably love you for a very long time.”
Garrett closed his eyes, and you could tell the words had landed exactly where you meant them to.
“But Rachel said something tonight,” you continued, your voice trembling around the memory of it. He opened his eyes again, his brows pulling together slightly in quiet confusion. “She told me that if I kept letting my pain make decisions for me, I’d lose things that had nothing to do with causing it.”
A tear slid down your cheek, and you wiped it away before it could fall any farther.
“And she was right,” you whispered. Then you looked at him, really looked at him, with every wall finally lowered enough to let the truth stand between you. “I lost you.”
His face crumpled just a little, enough to make your own chest tighten painfully.
“And maybe I can’t fix that,” you said, your throat closing around the words. “Maybe I already ruined it.” The thought nearly broke you, but you kept going anyway because stopping now would mean leaving everything still half-spoken. “But at least now you know.”
You drew in a shaky breath, and when you spoke again, your voice was softer, quieter, almost reverent with the weight of what you were admitting. “And if this is the last conversation we ever have, I want you to know that you were the best thing that ever happened to me.”
******************************************************************
Garrett did not move. The soft click of the door closing behind you seemed to echo through the arena, and then you were gone again, leaving only the silence behind.
It hit him all at once, heavy and suffocating.
For months he had imagined that conversation in a thousand different ways. Never once had he imagined this, had he pictured you standing in front of him with tears on your face, telling him you had loved him the entire time, telling him you regretted leaving every single day.
“Fuck,” he muttered, dragging both hands through his hair as he stood there alone on the ice. Your voice kept replaying in his head, soft and wrecked and honest in a way that made the whole thing hurt even worse.
He had wanted the truth for so long, but now that he had it, the anger he had been clinging to felt weaker somehow, harder to hold onto. Anger had been easier. Anger had given him somewhere to put all of it. This was worse. This was love and grief and fear tangled together so tightly he did not know how to separate any of it.
Garrett lowered his head into his hands and let out a choked sob that sounded like it hurt as much as crying would have.
He did not remember the drive home. He barely remembered leaving the arena at all. The only thing that stayed clear was the sick, disorienting feeling of knowing that all the progress he had made over the last six months had come crashing down the second you told him the truth, and like a complete fucking idiot, he had let you walk away again without stopping you.
When he got back to the hockey house, the lights were still on in the sitting room, which meant the guys were still awake, and that only made his temper flare hotter. That was another thing he could not untangle from the rest of it, the fact that they had been part of this too, whether they meant to be or not. He opened the door and stepped inside, and the second the guys saw his face, Dean straightened up on the couch.
“Woah,” Dean said, frowning. “What the hell crawled up your ass?”
Garrett would have normally thrown something sarcastic over his shoulder, but not tonight.
“That morning we broke up,” he said, his voice low and hard as he looked from one of them to the next, “she heard you.”
Dean frowned, glancing at Tucker and Logan in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
Garrett did not let himself slow down.
“She came to see me tonight,” he said, the words coming sharper now, angrier because he needed them to understand, needed them to feel the weight of what they had done. “She told me the truth. She told me why she left.”
He fixed Dean with a look that made the guilt on his face immediately visible.
“You remember what you said?”
Dean’s expression changed before Garrett even finished.
“You said I was giving too much of myself to her,” Garrett went on, his voice tightening. “You said one day I’d wake up and realize I’d lost myself.”
Dean closed his eyes. “…Fuck.”
“She believed you,” Garrett said, and there was something cracked and raw in the words now, something that made the whole room feel smaller. “She thought she was protecting me.”
“She thought if she stayed with me I’d resent her,” he said, his jaw tight, his breathing uneven. “So she made the decision for both of us.”
Dean looked sick now, genuinely sick.
“No, I need to know.” His voice snapped sharply enough to silence him. “When the fuck did my relationship become something you all got to sit around and analyze?”
He looked at all three of them now, one after the other, and they all had the same expression on their faces by then, the same guilty, stunned realization that this had gone far beyond whatever they had intended.
“We were worried about you,” Tucker said quietly.
Garrett turned on him immediately.
“I didn’t ask you to be.”
“I loved her,” Garrett said, and now his voice had gone rough in a way that almost made it worse, because there was no anger in it anymore, only hurt. “I would have given her everything I had.”
“I know,” Dean said softly.
“No, you obviously didn’t, because if you knew me at all,” Garrett said, his voice breaking at the end, “you would have known there wasn’t a single thing you could have said that would have changed my mind.”
Dean dragged both hands down his face, looking every bit as wrecked as the rest of them.
“We weren’t trying to break you guys up.”
“And that’s the fucked-up part.” His eyes burned. “None of you meant for this to happen. But it did.” He pointed toward the floor as if the answer were somehow there.
“She was downstairs,” he said, his voice going even rougher. “She heard every word. She walked into my room already convinced that leaving me was the only way to save me.”
He looked from Dean to Tucker to Logan, one by one, and the silence that followed was sickening because everyone in the room knew he was right.
“She thought that’s what everyone believed,” he said quietly. “That I was better off without her.”
Dean finally spoke, barely above a whisper. “I’m sorry.”
Garrett stared at him for a long moment, his chest rising and falling too fast, too shallow, too angry.
Because one conversation, one stupid conversation between friends, had become the thing that lived in your head long enough to make you walk away from him, and now it had come full circle and destroyed what little he had managed to hold together.
Garrett turned away cause he could not stand looking at any of them anymore. Garrett turned away from them completely, because suddenly he could not stand looking at any of them anymore.
Not after understanding that you had walked away not because you stopped loving him, but because you had loved him enough to believe leaving was an act of mercy. And that hurt almost more than the breakup itself.
*********************************************************************
You would not say the heartbreak was worse this time.
Different, yes, but not worse. This time there was still pain, but it did not feel suffocating anymore because now he knew the truth.
He knew you never stopped loving him, and even though the memory of his voice cracking when he admitted he could not trust you still made your chest ache, even though the thought of how much you had hurt him still made you want to fold in on yourself, there was something different underneath it now.
Just a strange, fragile kind of peace.
You had broken the safest place he had ever given you, and you could not even be angry that he had not been ready to hand it back. A part of you would probably always regret that. Maybe you would carry that regret for the rest of your life.
Hannah and Allie had not believed you when you came home. In fact, they had practically taken shifts watching over you, as if either of them were worried you might disappear into your own head again if left alone too long. You could not even bring yourself to be offended. The last time your heart had broken, you had barely left your bed for days.
This time, a week later, Allie was standing behind you trying to do your hair while Hannah sat cross-legged on your bed with a notebook balanced on her knees, absently scribbling lyrics like she had decided your crisis was no reason not to be productive.
Allie frowned at your reflection in the mirror. “I don’t get it.”
You looked at her through the mirror for a long moment before your gaze dropped to your hands. You turned them over once in your lap, then said quietly, “I’m not.”
“I still wake up thinking about him,” you admitted. “I still miss him. I still…” Your mouth tilted into something sad and small. “I still love him.”
Neither of them interrupted.
“I think,” you said after a beat, staring at your reflection as if the answer might be written there somewhere, “I think I’m finally accepting that loving someone does not always mean you get to keep them.”
Then Hannah closed her notebook.
“No,” she said softly. “It doesn’t.”
You gave a tiny, tired smile. “I spent six months punishing myself,” you said. “I kept thinking if I carried enough guilt, maybe it would somehow undo what I did. It did not. It just made me miserable.”
Your throat tightened, but you kept going anyway. “I kept thinking if I could just explain myself well enough, maybe everything would magically go back to the way it was.” You shook your head. “That is not how it works.”
“I can’t control what Garrett chooses,” you said. “I can’t make him trust me again. I can’t erase what I did.”
“But I did give him the truth.”
You swallowed hard. “And now whether he forgives me, whether he doesn’t, whether he ever loves me the same way again…” You looked toward the window, where the light was soft and gold and distant. “That is his decision.”
“I spent our entire relationship making decisions because I was scared,” you whispered. “I made one for him. I made a hundred for myself.” You gave a quiet laugh through the tears, more exhale than humor. “I’m done doing that.”
For a second, neither of them moved.
Then Hannah stood and wrapped her arms around you from behind, and Allie joined in a second later, folding herself into the moment like she had done it a hundred times before.
“I’m really proud of you,” Allie said softly.
You leaned back into them, closing your eyes.
“So am I,” you whispered.
And for the first time in a very long while, you believed it.
**********************************************
The knock came just as you were halfway through folding laundry.
The bedroom door opened a moment later, and Allie poked her head inside with a look on her face that was immediately wrong—too careful, too strange, like she had just seen something she wasn’t sure how to explain.
You frowned. “A visitor?”
Your first thought was your father. The girls still hadn’t met him, but he had mentioned wanting to stop by with something Rachel had baked, and you were already turning back toward your dresser when she cut you off.
Allie hesitated just long enough for your stomach to drop.
“I think you should come out here.”
Every muscle in your body tensed. You stood slowly, your pulse already climbing for reasons you did not understand, and walked toward the living room on legs that suddenly felt too stiff to belong to you.
Then you rounded the corner and stopped.
Garrett was standing just inside the doorway.
Hands shoved deep into the pockets of his hoodie. Hair slightly disheveled like he had dragged both hands through it over and over on the drive over. Dark circles under his eyes.
For one second, neither of you moved. You forgot how to breathe. Behind you, Hannah’s gaze flicked between the two of you, then to Allie, then back again, and all at once her face changed like she had just remembered somewhere urgent she needed to be.
“Well,” she said slowly, “I suddenly remembered we have to go to the library.”
Allie turned to stare at her. “We do?”
Hannah grabbed her wrist before she could finish. “Immediately.”
Understanding lit across Allie’s face a second later. “Oh. Right.” She looked at you, then at Garrett, then at you again. “Library.”
She started toward the door, and as she passed behind Garrett, she caught your eye and, completely hidden from him, lifted one tiny thumbs-up.
You would have laughed if your lungs remembered how.
And just like that, it was only the two of you.
The apartment felt impossibly small.
Garrett rubbed the back of his neck, and you noticed his hand was shaking just slightly. “I… wasn’t sure if you’d answer your phone.”
“I would have,” you blurted, too fast, and immediately wanted to disappear. You hadn’t even imagined this was a possibility, not really, not after the arena, not after the way he had looked at you like he was afraid to hope for too much. “I mean—I—”
He gave the smallest nod, then his gaze lifted to yours again, and there was something in his expression that made your heart stumble.
Garrett watched your face carefully. “He told me you came looking for me the night of the game.”
“You waited outside the locker room,” he said, his voice quieter now, “and he told you to leave.”
You nodded once, though the movement felt distant, unreal. “He did.”
When he opened them again, there was something raw sitting there that made your throat tighten.
“I didn’t know.” His voice barely carried. “I swear to God, I didn’t know.”
You stared at him, frozen.
“I found out this week,” he continued, “and I nearly lost my mind.”
A breath left him that sounded too close to breaking.
“I spent months thinking you saw me play like complete shit, saw me falling apart, and just…” He stopped, his throat working around the rest of the sentence. “Didn’t care.”
You felt that one in your chest.
Then his eyes shifted, just briefly, and you knew he had seen the shape of your guilt before you had even spoken.
“I saw you talking to that guy that night.”
You had not thought about Ethan in months, and suddenly the memory felt absurdly distant, almost irrelevant, but clearly it had not been for Garrett.
He looked embarrassed to admit it, which hurt in a strange, quiet way. “I thought…” He let out a humorless breath. “I thought you were happy.”
The words came out so softly you almost missed them.
“I thought you’d already moved on. When I saw you smiling…” He shook his head with a faint, bitter laugh. “I remember thinking, good. At least one of us is okay.”
The silence that followed was unbearable.
You swallowed hard. “I wasn’t.”
You stepped forward before you could lose your nerve. “The girls practically dragged me there. I didn’t want to leave the apartment.” Your voice shook, but you kept going. “I was just being polite. That was it. I wasn’t okay, Garrett. I hadn’t been okay since the day I left.”
Something in his face changed then, like that answer had landed exactly where it hurt most.
He looked down for a second, then let out a long breath.
“I’ve spent the last six months with everybody making decisions for me.”
Your brows pulled together. “Garrett—”
“My friends.” He looked back at you. “You. Me. Everybody.”
The bitterness in his voice made your stomach turn.
“You left because you decided what was best for me,” he said quietly. “The guys had that conversation because they decided what was best for me. Logan saw you outside that locker room and decided what was best for me.”
You opened your mouth, but he shook his head before you could say anything.
“I’m not angry because they were trying to protect me.”
His voice softened, and somehow that made it harder to hear.
“I’m angry because I never got the chance.”
Your eyes burned instantly.
“I would have wanted to see you,” he said, and now his voice was rough around the edges. “I would have wanted to hear whatever you came to say. I didn’t care if I was angry. I didn’t care if I yelled. I didn’t care if I cried. I wanted the chance.”
The tears came before you could stop them.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered, and the apology felt too small the second it left your mouth.
Garrett shook his head immediately. “No.”
“This time,” he said, taking a shaky breath, “I’m the one who’s sorry.”
He rubbed a hand over his face, exhausted in a way that made him look older than he had a minute ago. “I should have known something was wrong.”
“I loved you,” he said quietly, his eyes never leaving yours. “I knew you. You weren’t cruel. You weren’t selfish. You weren’t careless. So when you suddenly became all of those things, I should have known something was wrong.” His mouth tightened. “I should have come after you.”
A sad smile touched his face, but it didn’t last.
“I was just too busy trying to survive you leaving.”
“And I’m sorry,” he added, almost like he hated how much it cost him to say it.
You shook your head right away. “You don’t have to apologize.”
“You apologized for making the choice for me and walking away,” he said, his eyes searching yours with a kind of painful honesty. “So let me apologize for letting you walk away.”
For a long moment, neither of you moved.
His eyes were red. So were yours.
You had the strongest, most desperate urge to kiss him and never let him go, but your body felt rooted to the floor beneath you, held in place by everything you were both too scared to say too quickly.
“I told you at the arena…” His voice dropped. “I didn’t know if I could do this again.”
That hit you hard enough to make your chest ache.
“But…” he said, and his expression shifted into something softer, something painfully vulnerable, “I also realized something after you left.”
He took one more careful step forward.
There was barely any space left between you.
“I’ve spent six months trying.”
His eyes stayed on yours.
“I’ve tried to move on. I’ve tried to hate you. I’ve tried pretending you weren’t still the first person I thought about every morning.”
A tear slipped down your cheek, and he noticed immediately.
“I don’t want a life where I spend the next twenty years wondering what would’ve happened if I’d just walked after you,” he said quietly. “I’m done with that.”
Your breathing had gone uneven.
“So I’m done,” he said, and now there was something steadier in him, something resolved. “I’m done letting fear make decisions for me.”
Your lips parted, but nothing came out.
He reached for your hand slowly, carefully, giving you every chance to pull away.
When your fingers slid into his without hesitation, his eyes closed for the briefest second, like even that small contact had nearly undone him.
When he opened them again, they were full of you.
“I still love you,” he said.
His thumb brushed across your knuckles.
“And if you’ll let me…” His voice turned impossibly soft. “If everything you told me at the arena was real. If you still love me…” He swallowed. “Then I don’t want to spend another day pretending I know how to live without you.”
You stared at him, trembling.
He looked at you the same way he had the first time he ever realized he loved you.
Open. Terrified. Certain.
“I still choose you,” he said.
Your lips parted, and for a moment nothing came out. You just looked at him, at the man you had convinced yourself you had lost forever, at the boy who had loved you so completely it had once scared you into letting go.
“…Are you sure?” you asked quietly, almost in disbelief.
Garrett blinked once. “What?”
“You still…” Your voice wavered, and you had to swallow before you could try again. “You still want this?”
He looked at you carefully, like he already knew this question mattered more than any of the others.
“I hurt you,” you said, the words coming faster now, more desperate. “I don’t mean I upset you, Garrett, I hurt you. I broke your heart. I made the choice for both of us. I left. I made you question everything.” Your throat tightened painfully. “And after all of that… you still want me?”
Garrett’s face changed with something that looked almost like heartbreak of its own, because he could hear exactly what you were really asking.
Do I deserve another chance?
Am I still worth choosing?
Garrett lifted a hand slowly, giving you every chance to pull away if you wanted to.
When you leaned into his palm instead, his fingers settled against your cheek with a tenderness that made your chest ache.
“I can’t promise we’ll never hurt each other again,” he said, his voice low and honest. “I can’t promise everything will always be easy. I can’t promise life won’t get messy.” A tiny, sad smile touched his mouth. “But I can promise you this.”
“I’m done letting fear make my decisions.” His thumb brushed lightly beneath your eye, catching another tear before it could fall. “I still love you,” he said, each word careful and certain. “I never stopped.”
“And if you’ll let me…” He swallowed, and for the first time he looked almost as nervous as you felt. “I want to choose you every day. Even on the hard ones, especially on the hard ones.”
The silence that followed felt full instead of empty.
That was what finally broke whatever was left of your fear.
Not because everything was suddenly fixed. Not because the hurt disappeared. But because you believed him.
You nodded through your tears, and the answer you gave came out just as raw as everything else between you.
Garrett’s expression changed instantly, something bright and stunned and almost disbelieving flashing across his face.
You let out a shaky breath and gave him a tearful, helpless smile.
Then you closed the distance.
Your hands went to his face first, cupping his cheeks like you needed proof he was really there, really yours to touch, and when your lips finally met his, the kiss was anything but tentative. It was months of longing and fear and silence all breaking at once. Every swallowed confession. Every unsent message. Every night you had lain awake missing him. Every morning you had woken up wishing you could go back and do it differently.
It all rushed into that kiss.
Garrett made the softest sound against your mouth, almost like he had forgotten what it felt like to breathe, and then he was kissing you back with the same desperate tenderness, his hands finding your waist and pulling you closer until there was no room left between you. One hand slid up your back and then to your cheek, his thumb moving gently across your skin as if he was trying to remember the shape of you while also making sure you were not going anywhere.
You caught the back of his neck, fingers tangling in the soft hair there, and the second he felt you hold him that way, he held on harder, like he had been afraid to do it for months and was only now letting himself believe he could.
You had forgotten how perfectly he fit against you, how safe his arms felt. Forgotten how easily the sound of his heartbeat could quiet the noise in your head.
When you finally pulled back, it was only because breathing had become necessary, and even then neither of you moved far. Your foreheads rested together, both of you shaking with the same fragile kind of relief.
You smiled through the tears, and this time it did not feel like something thin or forced. It felt real. It felt like the first honest thing you had been able to give him in months.
“I’m done running,” you whispered.
He opened his eyes and looked at you like he had been waiting to hear those exact words, then he leaned in and kissed you again, slower this time, softer, but no less full of everything the two of you had been holding back.
This time it was not desperation.
It was a promise that whatever came next, you would face it together.
***********************************************
A few months changed more than you ever expected them to.
Garrett and you did not rush anything after that night. There was no sudden perfection, no pretending the last six months had never happened. Instead, there were conversations—some easy and difficult, some that ended in silence because neither of you knew how to say the next thing without breaking the moment in half. But you were really together this time. Just choosing each other, every day, in ways that felt quiet but steady and real.
The tension with the guys did not disappear overnight. It took time, and a few awkward conversations, and apologies that did not come easily. It took Garrett needing space from them some days, and all of them learning how to sit with that without making it worse.
Garrett did not forgive them right away, but he did forgive them in time. And when they found out you and Garrett had gotten back together, Dean had shouted so loudly someone from across campus probably heard him, Tucker had hugged Garrett like he had won something life-changing, and Logan had only smiled in that quiet way of his, like he had seen this ending long before any of you had.
Now you were all outside together on one of those rare afternoons where nobody was in a hurry to leave. Dean was talking too loudly about something no one was really listening to, Allie was arguing with him for the fun of it, and Tucker was laughing under his breath. Hannah sat beside you, leaning comfortably into your shoulder as she scrolled through her phone, and Garrett was right next to you, close enough that your knees touched, close enough that his hand resting loosely on your thigh no longer felt like something you had to think about. You glanced at him and caught him looking back almost immediately. He smiled a little, and you smiled too.
It still felt strange sometimes, how easy it had become. How something that had once shattered you could now sit beside you so naturally it almost felt like it had always been meant to be this way.
Logan raised his drink first. “To graduation,” he said.
Everyone groaned at once.
“I cannot believe we’re graduating next week,” Tucker complained.
Dean let out a louder groan. “Which is insane, because I still feel like I have assignments I forgot to do.”
“I cannot believe we all still stayed friends,” Hannah muttered, half-laughing into your shoulder.
That made you laugh too, softly, because she was right. You never thought you would find a group like this, not after everything. Not after the mess of it all. The misunderstandings. The hurt, and yet here you all were, still together, just changed.
Your gaze drifted across the group. Everyone was here. Everyone was okay. And for a moment, it hit you how far you had come, not just with Garrett, but with everything.
Your dad. That thought of him used to tighten your chest so hard it felt like you could not breathe. Now it still hurt sometimes, but it did not feel like a wound anymore. It felt like something that had been healing slowly in ways you had not noticed until one day you suddenly realized you could think about it without falling apart.
There were still hard days, days where old memories rose too quickly and you pulled back before you could stop yourself, days where you did not answer calls and days where you did. But there were also days where he showed up without expecting forgiveness, just presence, and slowly that had started to mean something.
You were closer to Raegan now, and to Rowan. At first you had not known how to fit into a space that felt like it had existed long before you arrived, but Raegan had decided for you. She had grabbed your hand at that soccer game and never really let go. Now she texted you about random things, sent you pictures of her day, and told you you were her big sister like it had always been true.
Rowan, somehow, had become Garrett’s biggest fan. He followed Garrett around whenever he visited, asked endless hockey questions, and pretended to be annoyed when Garrett helped him with drills, though the proud little grin he wore afterward gave him away every time.
Rachel had become something harder to define, not quite a mother figure, not a replacement for anything, just Rachel, and that had become enough. You had gotten to know her differently now, not through the lens of anger or history, but through kitchen conversations and dinners where she asked questions and waited for your answers.
Garrett leaned down, his voice soft against your ear. “You okay?”
You smiled and nodded. “Yeah.”
His hand on your thigh was warm and grounding, and you had stopped overthinking that kind of touch a long time ago. You leaned into him without thinking, and he shifted automatically to make more room for you, like space for you had become second nature.
Logan exhaled and leaned back. “Draft day is still insane to think about.”
That made Garrett glance up, a quiet look passing between the two of them that needed no explanation. Life had started moving for everyone, in different directions now, like the world had finally decided none of you could stay frozen in place forever.
Dean tipped his head back against the chair. “Still wild that you idiots are going pro.”
Garrett rolled his eyes, but there was something lighter in it now, something less guarded. Tucker smirked. “I still think I should have been scouted for something. I am extremely athletic in stressful situations.”
Hannah did not even look up from her phone. “You cried during a group presentation.”
“That was different,” he said immediately.
Allie laughed. “I am literally going to be on Broadway and I still think you are the most dramatic person here.”
That kicked off a wave of teasing and disbelief and congratulations, and you watched Allie smile through it all, bright and proud in a way that suited her so naturally it felt like she had been headed there the whole time.
It was strange, watching everyone step into versions of themselves that felt like they had always been waiting ahead of them. Dean talking about coaching like it was inevitable, like yelling at people from the sidelines had always been his future. Tucker pretending a corporate job did not terrify him. Hannah already half-living in songs she had not written yet, her mind always a little ahead of the rest of you. Logan, steady and quiet as ever, talking about the NHL like it was just the next logical step .
You had your own future waiting too, a job offer in Boston close enough to Garrett that it almost felt unreal when you first read it.
Life did not wait anymore and somehow, neither did you.
Your fingers brushed lightly against Garrett’s where his hand rested on your leg, and he laced them together without hesitation. For once, the future did not feel like something you were bracing for. It felt like something you were finally allowed to walk into.
