Wasted Time (The Steel City #1)

21. Penny

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

penny

I read the conversation with Declan over and over again, buried under the blankets in Avery’s spare room. If you can even call it a conversation, really. It was completely one-sided since I never quite found the courage to answer.

Regret floods through me as I stare at the words on the screen. He took care of me. He kept me in one piece, and I rewarded him for that by ignoring every single message and call that he sent my way.

He was just being a good friend.

I take back what I said about him being a bad one. I didn’t mean it. My head is just in shambles after thinking about all of it, thinking about him , after we did what we did. It felt like it changed things. I was too scared to stick around and figure out if it actually had.

I type out an apology, but delete it just as quickly.

Too much time has passed. He might take it as a slap in the face that I waited until he was out of the country. Hell, I would consider it a smack in the face. What would I even say? Hi? Sorry for ignoring you after you gave me the most mind-blowing orgasms of my life?

Yes, orgasms. Plural.

I misplaced my anger and pinned it on Declan. My fear, too. That wasn’t fair. Gavin was, and is, the issue here. I have no idea how the hell I would even begin to come back from this catastrophic mess I’ve created between Dec and I. I don’t know if I’m capable of sorting this mess out and giving it my full attention, which it requires, before I sort out the mess waiting for me at home.

I’m scared. That’s all there is to it. I was terrified when I woke up that morning. I’m still scared. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know why I’m doing all these things that I’m doing. I’m doing it wrong, that much is clear—but I can’t stop for long enough to think about things because then I have to feel .

I don’t want to feel.

My thumb hovers over the call button.

I could just call him. He might answer and I could just… what? Anything I say has the power to make this worse. Declan doesn’t anger easily, but when he does, he wants the whole world to burn. I’d bet all of my remaining sanity that he is furious with me right now.

I might have missed the window to fix this.

I don’t even know if I know how to fix this.

Maybe I need to fix myself first. If I handle this while I’m still going down in flames, I risk burning my entire world, including my crew, to the ground. I can’t call him when I’m not even sure what I would say. If he hits me with another low blow, I’m not positive how I’ll react or what I’ll say to hurt him back.

Sighing, I swipe out of the conversation and pull up my Instagram. My feed is still flooded with photos from Friendsgiving and the engagement. I can’t help but smile, ignoring the weight sitting on my chest. I’ll never get tired of seeing Avery’s face in these pictures. I’ve never seen a single person look so happy.

My eyes catch a comment from @DLowes33.

@DLowes33: thank god I look good in a suit.

But then I remember something.

I hurriedly search for another account: @Lowesy33.

It’s his burner account. I forgot to unfollow that one. There’s no profile picture attached to it, and this account only has two hundred followers in relation to his verified account, which is nearly at the three million mark. He rarely uses this one.

I smile, clicking the profile. A surprising rush of relief washes over me when I see that I haven’t been blocked or unfollowed. I wonder if he realizes he still has access to me here. A grid of Declan being Declan floods my screen. He doesn’t post often, but when he does, he does it well.

Him standing in the middle of an empty rink in Pittsburgh, dressed fully in his gear, but his helmet tucked under his arm. He’s smiling, those dimples popping through. Him with a bunch of puppies from a local shelter in Pittsburgh. Him, Seth, Wyatt, and EJ tailgating at one of our parties on the lake.

My chest constricts. I click one of the photos from two years ago. It’s Declan and I sitting around a bonfire. We’re both wearing red, buffalo plaid jackets and sitting on folding chairs. He’s gripping my cheeks tightly with one hand and holding a marshmallow to my mouth with the other.

I’m glaring at him. He’s laughing uncontrollably.

My eyes dart to the caption .

If I had a Penny for every time I loved pissing her off…

Sadness sits heavily in my stomach. Is it silly to think that one night could ruin our friendship? It was stupid for me to think one fight could have done that after the bar, too. Hell, half of the people we knew in college slept together and managed to stay friends.

He and Tiff are still friends. Kind of.

Did time really have the power to change that? Why does it seem like it is much more of a big deal now that we are nearing thirty and we aren’t those crazy, reckless college kids anymore? We should be able to deal with these situations easier now. We’re more emotionally mature.

Right?

But it isn’t easy.

I force myself away from Declan’s page, but I can’t bring myself to block or unfollow this account. That feels too final, and I’m not ready for that. I exit the app completely. I don’t look back at his texts either, no matter how badly I want to. Instead, I pull up the highlights from his game tonight, which we watched on Avery’s couch.

It was surreal sitting with my friends and watching him play again. Together, just like we used to. Wyatt treats every game like the Stanley Cup final, pacing and screaming, cheering Dec on as if he can hear him in a whole other country. He probably wouldn’t want Dec to know that. He likes giving him shit to keep him humble.

Avery and I did the same mantras we used to do in college when all four of them were on the ice. We’d lock our pinkies and mutter: “We already won, we already won, we already won” exactly three times with our eyes closed.

See? I was a manifesting queen back then too, and I didn’t even know it .

Then, we kiss our thumbs. Three times. Always.

It worked like clockwork. Declan won. He scored the first and the final goal in a 4-2 game.

Seeing him on the ice doing what he is so ridiculously good at never gets old. And Declan is good . Obviously, if he made it to the pros he is skilled, but even in a league full of inexplicable talent, he is breathtaking.

Wyatt had been a deadly player too, but even he couldn’t compete with Declan’s shine. We all think Wyatt could have also gone pro, but he chose to stay in town and coach the college team, instead. He didn’t even enter the draft. He never gave a reason for that decision, and he never wanted to talk about it. It just wasn’t what he wanted to do with his life.

The highlights start playing on my phone, and unsurprisingly, it starts with a shot of Declan. I’m torturing myself, but that’s fine. Apparently, that’s one of my favourite pastimes. Dec is like a bolt of lightning when he’s on skates. He is like a damn shooting star. Blink and you miss him.

He’s superhuman.

I watch him with heavy lids, sleep slowly pushing in on me. My thoughts trail to reality, to the present. I’m in that phase of the break-up where I wish I made every decision differently, where I wish I didn’t give Gavin the chance that he fought for. I should have said no then. At the very least, I should have said no when he wanted me to sell my dream house and move. I knew it was a bad decision and I made it anyway.

I really loved that house.

I should have said no.

I really loved who I was before him.

I should have said no.

But I didn’t. I kept saying yes until I became too afraid to say no. Now, I have to face the reality that I made for myself. I can’t hide at home forever. Avery’s house doesn’t count. At some point, I have to return to that empty house full of meaningless things and deal with my problems head-on. I have to have the big conversations that I don’t want to have, knowing that he will try to bulldoze me into getting what he wants and knowing that I’m so tired, I might just give it to him.

My instinct is to handle this alone, without Avery and the rest of the crew. I’d prefer not to include other people in one of the worst moments of my life. That sounds like a waking nightmare. I’d rather die from the pressure and the pain than have an audience of people I love watch me fall apart.

I’m sure Gavin would help me load a U-haul if I needed him to. It’s the least he could do, to be fair. He’d probably get a kick out of helping me empty his life of me.

It’s one bandage that must be ripped off, and then the wound will heal. Then I can figure out the rest of my life. I can begin to fix the fallout. But it all starts there, in that house that I hate. With the man who broke my heart.

There’s a twinge of emotion that feels like relief, but it’s masked by so much hurt that I can’t decipher if I'm ready or just empty.

I would have stayed in that relationship until I burned out and turned to ash. I would have stayed, I would have fought, and I would have exhausted myself because I love him.

At some point, I started loving him more than I loved myself.

My priority was always us or him, and it had slowly stopped being myself at all. My worth was wrapped up entirely in keeping him happy, even when I couldn’t remember what my own happiness felt like. I still can’t.

That isn’t healthy. I know that now. Hell, I knew that years ago, but I kept pushing because I didn’t want my time and efforts to be in vain. How pathetic. I was willing to stay with a man who couldn’t even give me the bare minimum when I was working on giving him the world each and every day.

I need to go back to London. I need to say goodbye to that man and that house and figure out how we are going to move forward. After that, I’ll leave that city behind and never look back.

After that, I’m free.

I want to do this alone, but I shouldn’t. What if I can’t survive these big moments on my own anymore? It’s going to be hard. Even though I'm starting to realize that this break-up is now a blessing in disguise, it’s still going to hurt.

If I show up with Avery, I doubt Gavin would blink. If I show up with Avery and his old friends from college, I don’t know how he’ll react. He and the guys used to be decent friends. It was only after we moved that Gavin stopped communicating with them. I don’t think he’ll be pleased to see them. Not in this setting.

Seth and EJ will try to put their heads down and get the job done. Seth might even try to be polite and talk to him. Wyatt, on the other hand, well… he might pretend to keep his head down only to bash it against Gavin’s.

Putting them all in that situation just feels unfair. They shouldn’t have to be there at the very worst moment in our relationship. The end of the sentence. The period after the last word in our story. They shouldn’t have to pick up my pieces. But I’d do it for them. They wouldn’t have to ask. I’d be there because that’s what family does.

I’m too tired to make any decisions now. The moment I think I’ve made up my mind, I change it.

As Declan becomes a blur on my screen, I feel tears sliding down my cheeks. I don’t even bother reaching up to wipe them away. It comes in waves, and right now, I just feel really disappointed. In Gavin, in myself, and in how my life has turned out .

Let the tears come.

Gavin’s words echo in my head over and over as Declan smacks a goal into the back of the net.

I don’t know if I ever loved you. I don’t know if I ever loved you. I don’t know if I ever loved you.