As I sit here, staring into the depths of his troubled expression, I feel the familiar, crushing despair settle in, a despair that whispers through every beat of my aching heart.
I’d already hurt him by pushing him away—again.
"Jaxon." His name cracks in my throat, barely more than a whisper.
The space between us feels both vast and microscopic, charged with everything we’ve left unsaid, everything we’ve run from, everything that still lingers in the air between us.
He looks different than he did in the hospital—less clinical, more human. Faded jeans, a navy sweater clinging to his frame just enough to remind me how solid he is, how real. The onlyvisible sign of his injury is the small cut above his eyebrow, a stark reminder of why he was there in the first place.
My stomach twists.
"You didn’t stay." His voice is quiet, not accusatory, just factual. Somehow, that hurts worse than if he had yelled.
I stand and shift on my feet, the cool night air pressing in like it wants to push me even further away. Even it knows I don’t belong here anymore. "I couldn’t."
Jaxon tilts his head slightly, eyes locked on mine, searching for something I don’t think he’ll find. "Couldn’t or wouldn’t?"
The question lands between us like a weight.
I had rehearsed a dozen explanations on the walk here, lined up reason after reason, but under his gaze, they all dissolve. My throat tightens, and I force myself to answer. "Both." I inhale sharply, wrapping my arms around myself like I can hold in the truth.
His jaw tenses. "You know what the worst part is?" His voice is steady, but there’s something underneath it—something raw, something breaking. "It wasn’t even that you left. It was knowing you were there, just on the other side of that door, deciding whether or not I was worth staying for."
His words slam into me, knocking the air from my lungs. I wrap my arms around myself then, squeezing like it could hold me together when I already feel like I’m coming apart.
"It wasn’t about worth, Jax."
"Then what was it about?" His voice stays level, but I see it, the slight tremble in his hands before he shoves them into his pockets. "Because every time, Mads, every single time, you get close enough to see me—really see me—and then you’re gone."
The night air thickens, pressing in on all sides. A car passes in the distance, its headlights illuminating the exhaustion written into the sharp lines of his face, the same exhaustion I glimpsed through the hospital window before I turned and left.
"I was scared," I admit, the words scraping against my throat, jagged and broken. "When I saw you take that hit on the field, Ithought—" My voice cracks, and I have to swallow hard to keep myself from falling apart completely. "I thought I’d lost you before I ever figured myself out."
Jaxon exhales slowly, nodding. "So you decided to lose me on your own terms instead?"
I flinch at the accuracy of his words. "That’s not fair," I whisper, but even as I say it, the truth settles deep in my bones.
"Isn’t it?" Jaxon steps closer, his presence warm despite the cold, his scent—a mix of soap and something unmistakably him—wrapping around me. "You’ve been running since I met you, Mads. Every time we get close to something real, you find a way to sabotage it."
I shake my head—not in denial, but in desperation. "I don’t mean to."
"I know." His voice softened, and somehow, that hurt worse than his anger. "That's what makes it so damn hard to walk away from you."
The gentleness in his voice slices through me like a knife, cutting through the layers of defenses I’ve spent years building. It leaves me exposed, vulnerable in a way that makes every instinct scream at me to turn and run.
But I don’t.
I can’t.
I force myself to stay rooted, to face what I’ve been avoiding for so long.
"I keep thinking," I say, my voice barely above a whisper over the distant hum of traffic, "that if I leave first, it won’t hurt as much when you eventually leave me."
Jaxon’s laugh is hollow, mirthless. "And has that worked for you so far?"
I drop my gaze to the pavement, watching a leaf skitter across the concrete between us, as if it might hold the answer, but it doesn’t. It never has.
"No," I admit. "It hurts every time."
