The Deal

I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste blood in my mouth. Then I draw a long, unstable breath and cross my arms. “All right, so let me get this straight—and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. You fell in love with me and didn’t expect it, so now you want to date other people and fuck other guys—sorry, you want to explore, just on the off chance that you meet someone who is better than me.”

She averts her gaze.

“Is that what you’re saying?” My voice is cold enough to freeze everything south of the Equator.

After an eternity of silence, she looks up.

Then she nods.

I’m pretty sure she hears the massive crack in my chest as my heart splits open like a watermelon. God knows she’s the one responsible for it.

In the back of my mind, a little voice whispers, This is wrong.

No fucking kidding, asshole. There’s nothing right about this.

“I’m going to leave now.” I’m amazed that my paralyzed vocal cords allow me to speak. I’m not amazed by the naked anger in my tone. “Because I honestly can’t look at you right now.”

A tiny breath puffs out of her mouth. She doesn’t say a word.

I stagger to the door, my brain and heart and motor functions eerily close to shutting down on me, but I manage one hoarse parting line as I reach the threshold. “You know what, Wellsy?” Our gazes lock and her lips tremble as if she’s trying not to cry. “For someone who’s so damn strong, you really are a fucking coward.”

Alcohol. I need some fucking alcohol.

There’s no alcohol in the fridge.

I barrel up the stairs two at a time and burst into Logan’s bedroom without knocking. Fortunately, he’s not in the middle of boning some nameless puck bunny. I wouldn’t have cared if he was. I’m a man on a mission, and Logan’s closet is the mission.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demands as I throw open the closet door and reach for the top shelf.

“Taking your whiskey.”

“Why?”

Why? Why?

Maybe because my chest feels like someone scraped it with a dull razorblade for the past ten years? And then they took that razorblade and shoved it down my throat so it would tear up my windpipe and shred my insides. And then to add insult to injury, they ripped my heart out and threw it on the ice so an entire hockey team could slash it up with their skates.

Yup. So that’s where I’m at right now.

“Jesus Christ, G, what’s going on?”

I find Logan’s Jack Daniels bottle underneath an old hockey helmet and curl my fingers around it. “Hannah dumped me,” I mumble.

I hear Logan’s shocked breath. A bitter, spiteful part of me wonders if he’s happy by the news. If he thinks this might be his golden opportunity to move in on my girlfriend.

Sorry. My ex-girlfriend.

But when I turn around, I find nothing but sympathy flashing in his eyes. “Shit, man. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” I mutter. “Me too.”

“What happened?”

I twist off the bottle cap. “Ask me again when I’m shit-faced. Maybe I’ll be drunk enough to tell you.”

I swallow a deep swig of whiskey. Normally the alcohol would burn its way down to my gut. Tonight I’m too numb to feel it.

Logan stops asking me questions. He wanders over and snatches the whiskey from my hand. “Well.” He sighs before raising the bottle to his lips and tipping his head back. “Then I guess we’re getting shit-faced.”

41

Hannah

I knew I would be a basket case for the rest of the semester, but I didn’t expect it to be because of the hollow cavern in my chest that used to hold my heart.

I haven’t seen or spoken to Garrett in a week. A week is not a long time. I’ve noticed that as I get older, time seems to fly by in hyper-speed. You blink, and a week has passed. Blink again, and a year has gone by.

But ever since I broke up with Garrett, time has reverted back to the way it was when I was little. When a school year felt like forever, and a summer never seemed to end. Time has slowed down, and it’s excruciating. These past seven days may as well be seven years. Seven decades.

I miss my boyfriend.

And I hate my boyfriend’s father for putting me in this impossible situation. I hate him for making me break Garrett’s heart.

You want to explore, just on the off chance that you meet someone who is better than me.

Garrett’s bleak recap of my lying-through-my-teeth breakup speech continues to buzz in my brain like a swarm of locusts.

Someone better than him?

God, it killed me to say that. To hurt him like that. The bitter taste of those words still burns my tongue, because damn it, someone better than him?

There’s no one better than him. Garrett is the best man I’ve ever known. And not just because he’s smart and sexy and funny and so much sweeter than I ever gave him credit for. He makes me feel alive. Yeah, we bicker, and sure, his cockiness drives me crazy sometimes, but when I’m with him, I feel whole. I feel like I can drop my guard completely and not have to worry about getting hurt or taken advantage of or being afraid, because Garrett Graham will always be there to love and protect me.

The only silver lining to this awful mess is that the team is winning again. They lost the game that Garrett missed thanks to his suspension, but they’ve played two more since then, including one against Eastwood, their conference rival, and they won both. If they keep going the way they’re going, Garrett will get what he wants—he’ll lead Briar to the championships in his first year as captain.