Hail Mary: An Enemies-to-Lovers Roommate Sports Romance(93)

“I don’t want to pretend,” I said, climbing to my feet. My chest heaved as I stared at her. “I don’t want to pretend I left you in high school because I didn’t. I don’t want to pretend like I didn’t want you the second you moved across the street, even before I knew who you were. And I refuse to pretend that I don’t want you now, more than ever, because I do know who you are.”

Mary’s face didn’t show an ounce of emotion, but another tear slid down her cheek, landing silently on her shoulder. She clutched Palico closer.

I took the fact that she wasn’t leaving yet as my last shot to make her stay.

“Can I hold you?” I asked on a desperate whisper. “Please?”

Her lip wobbled, but she nodded, and as soon as she carefully sat the cat back on the bed, I swept her into my arms before she could take another breath.

She clung to me just as fiercely as I held her, and I closed my eyes against the emotion strangling me as I crushed her to me — one hand in her hair, the other wrapped completely around her. I inhaled her, telling my poor fucking heart that this wasn’t over even as I felt her slipping away.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I shouldn’t have gone last night. I was an idiot. I should have stayed with you, should have been here with you.” I shook my head, still holding onto her. “I didn’t think. I fucked up. But I swear I will do everything to make it up to you. Please,” I begged. “Stay.”

Mary choked on a sob, clutching me tighter, and I held her to me until she pressed her hands against my chest asking for space. When she looked up at me, I wanted to die.

She was in so much pain.

And it was because of me.

“I need some time, Leo,” she said, and her eyes didn’t cower from my own. “This dream that I’ve worked for for… years… is just… gone.”

She stuttered, and I wanted to hurl myself off the roof.

“I’m jobless. Homeless. Broke.” She shrugged. “I have no idea where to go from here.”

“Let me go through it with you.”

Something hardened her then, and she stepped even farther away, out of my grasp.

My heart shattered at the thought that that might have been the last time I ever got to hold her.

“I don’t trust you.”

The words slid through me like a hot knife, slicing me right in half like I was just a stick of butter.

“Mary,” I tried.

“You have the game,” she said, crossing her arms. “You need to focus on yourself, and I need to focus on me. All of this happened so fast. One day I was full swing in the life I’d created for myself, the one where I was living despite the hell you put me through. The next, I was in a heaven I never knew existed, wrapped up in everything that you are, that we are, together.”

I wanted her to stop there. I wanted that to be the end. But she sniffed and continued.

“And now, I’m in hell again. Deeper, this time, because now I’ve lost the one thing that has always been mine despite what happened to me. I worked my ass off for this, Leo,” she said.

“I know,” I told her. I bit back the urge to remind her that it wasn’t me who took it away from her. It was Nero.

But then I remembered that I’d made matters worse. She’d had a plan, she’d said — and I didn’t doubt it. Mary was strong. She was smart. She could handle herself.

It was me who fucked everything up.

“We just… we need to take a break,” she said with finality, picking up a duffle bag and tossing it over her shoulder. “My parents will be here in twenty minutes. Could you…” She swallowed. “Can you please not be here when they are?”

That gutted me.

Just a few weeks ago at our old high school football field, she’d told me she wanted me to meet them.

Now, I felt like a shameful secret being locked away in a closet never to be found.

“I’ll do whatever you need me to do,” I promised. “I’ll leave. I’ll give you space.” I closed the distance between us, tentatively reaching out. When she didn’t flinch, I slid my hands into her hair, framing her face, holding her gaze to mine. “But I will not give up on us.”

She closed her eyes. “What if I need you to?”

“Then I’ll leave you disappointed.” I paused. “Again. Because I can’t do that, Stig. I… can’t.” That last word left me like a guttural declaration of truth, one pulled from me against my will.

I didn’t know if it was a laugh or a sob that came from her next, but I pressed my lips to her forehead, closing my eyes and praying harder than I had in my entire life that this wasn’t the end for us.

“I love you, Mary,” I breathed.

She stilled in my grasp, and I pulled back until I was looking down at her again.

“I love you,” I repeated. “I may be a colossal fuck up. I may make mistakes. I may disappoint you and fall short in more ways than I measure up. But I love you, and that will never not be true.”

Mary covered my hands with her own, closing her eyes again and leaning into my palm. She let out a slow exhale.

Then, she peeled my hands off her and stepped away.

“Right now, I have to love myself,” she said softly.

My heart was a bloody, bruised, barely living thing — but I let her go.