SWNOVELS Our Overtime: Chapter 25
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Panic welled inside my chest like I’d never experienced before.
I sat there staring at myself in the bathroom mirror. It couldn’t be true. It just simply could not.
Looking back at me was a shell of who I used to be. Dark bags under my eyes, hair that needed attention stat, and ribs showing because I’d decided coffee and alcohol would be great staples for a diet. Forget working out or skating. Everything I used to do reminded me of him. I had to avoid it all. Except avoiding it all made me look and feel like absolute shit.
There was no way what I saw could be true.
What I saw came with “a glow,” and instead, it looked like someone stole any light I once had.
My vision blurred then from the tears that immediately came. I cried so hard my body was shaking.
This was not how it was supposed to go. I was supposed to be in Texas with Greyson. Not stuck at one of my grandparents’ houses and now crying and having absolutely no one to talk to.
How did Greyson just turn it off? How was he so fine? I streamed his first game tonight and it was torturous. He was playing better than he’d ever before. He looked like he was moving twice as fast as everyone else on the ice.
It was actually surreal. I’d been at almost every one of his important games since high school, and now he was making his AHL debut, a sure highlight in his life… while I was probably at my lowest.
Watching him celebrate with him teammates on my computer screen while I held a pregnancy test cemented that he was in an entirely different world than me now, and that realization made me cry the hardest.
I kept glancing at my phone, wondering if I should try to congratulate him on his game… but what was the point? There was no going back now.
Alone on the floor of my bathroom the grief was finally replaced with twisted hatred. As much as it was my fault for getting with Kevin, I never in a million years would have ever been with him if Grey hadn’t abandoned me.
I sought out Kevin for comfort, but in the back of my mind, I knew it wasn’t something he could ever give me.
I would never be able to love anyone the way I loved him, and I thought he felt the same way about me. It felt so stable and so real. I could still picture him like he was right there in front of me. The way he looked down at me and said he loved me so quietly; like half of him wanted to say it to me, but half also wanted assurance from me. He’d told me once that he just loved hearing me say it to him. How the hell was that not true love? How could he just walk away from that?
What we had was raw and true and rare. And now it was ruined forever.
He discarded our love like a piece of trash and in doing so, he ruined me. He had no right to make me fall in love with him if he wasn’t going to fight for us.
But that’s how it was for me. I was never good enough for anyone’s love. Not my grandparents, and now not Greyson’s either. I just needed to get used to being on my own and I needed to accept that Grey had been it for me.
If only it could be that easy though. He entered and exited my life, but I couldn’t disregard all my memories and feelings for him. The way he looked at me and touched me with a gleam of awe and respect making me feel treasured… the way he held me in his arms and comforted me as I cried… the way he pinched my stomach, saying his baby would be there one day.
It was all too much for me.
Because this was Kevin’s.
The thought of that broke me.
Greyson would never forgive me.
But who was I kidding? Greyson didn’t want me anyway before this. No way would he ever want me now.
A baby.
I touched my stomach.
My grandparents were nowhere to be found. Greyson didn’t want me. Kevin wanted me only as a status symbol and possession and didn’t really care to have me around unless it was for show.
But I really wasn’t alone anymore…and I vowed to myself to never treat my baby with the carelessness that I’d been shown. I needed to keep him. This was my little love to protect.