The Locker Room(77)
“Then why the fuck are you trying to end this?” he yells, arms out to the side. “Stay committed to me, Em.” His hand raps his chest. “Make this work.”
“I am committed to you.” I wipe away another tear, my breath starting to become heavier and heavier as my throat closes. “I’m committed to seeing you happy.”
“You want me to be happy? Well guess what, Em, you are what makes me happy. You. And you’re taking that away.”
Oh God. I suck in a breath and will my shaky limbs to hold strong. I want nothing more than to erase this day and go back to how things were—without the knowledge that Knox will be leaving—but I can’t do that, nor can I hold him back either.
“Is this because you don’t trust me to be out on the road? You don’t trust that I won’t hook up with someone else? I told you, I’m not your fucking ex-boyfriend. I would never treat you the way he did. Ever.”
“That’s not it. I trust you, how can you question that?”
“I don’t know,” he answers angrily, still pacing. “Fuck, I don’t know why we’re having this conversation. We should be out to dinner with my mom, celebrating the win, but instead, my fucking girlfriend is breaking up with me.” He sinks into the chair of my desk and rests his forearms on his knees, completely deflated.
I don’t know what to do. How to fix this, how to make him see what I see. After watching him play today, his future is going to be incredible, and I refuse to be the reason he doesn’t give it his all. This is all for him. Yes, I’m shattering my own heart. Yes, I feel like I’m breaking into a million pieces. I’m barely strong enough to lose him now, so I know I’ll never recover if I grow closer through experiencing even more amazing moments with this incredible man. I just can’t. And I don’t want him feeling torn and undecided because of me. That’s not fair to him.
“How can this be any different, Knox? If this were a perfect world, how would you play out this relationship? Do you see a future with me beyond dating?”
His head lifts, but he stays hunched over.
“You’re fucking kidding me, right?” The muscles in his jaw pulse as he stares me down. “I see more than a future, Em. Fuck, I . . . I . . .”
“Don’t say it. Please don’t say those words, not right now.” I shake my head, tears in a constant flow now. “Not in this moment.”
He must sense the kind of impact those three words would have, how they’d be coated in negativity rather than a positive, joyful moment they should be cherished in, because he shuts his mouth and folds his hands together.
His teeth roll over his bottom lip before he says, “If I had a choice, this is how it would play out. We’d move past this moment, you’d come back to the loft, and you’d sleep in my arms. We’d stay together the rest of the semester growing our bond stronger until the moment I have to leave. From there, we’d promise to make the effort to see each other. Talk every night, send each other gifts, just like over winter break. Only an extended period this time. It will be hard, we’ll get in fights, but in the long run, we’d always come back to each other, because”—he motions between us—“we’re meant to be together.”
I curl my knees to my chest and rest my face in my hands, trying to envision how that would work. He makes it seem so simple, and yet, three years is a really long time, three of the most important years of his career, where he needs to work his way up through the farm system. He can’t be worrying about me and where my head is at. He needs to worry about himself, and that’s something I won’t budge on. This is his dream, and I’ll be damned if I distract him from giving it his all.
“I care about you, Knox, and I want nothing more than to follow through on what you just laid out, but we need to be real about this. You’re going to be consumed with baseball, and I want you to be consumed by it, I want it to be your life, your obsession. And that can’t happen if you’re worrying about me and how I’m doing, what my mental state for that week is because I’ll be honest, it will be erratic with you gone. That’s not fair.” I slide off the bed and walk to him, his large sweatshirt hitting me mid-thigh. I push him back on the chair and take a seat on his lap. His arms immediately wrap around me as I lift his chin so he has to look me in the eyes. “Rule number one.” I lightly press a kiss across his lips, taking in the softness one last time. When I pull away, I say, “Friends forever and always.”
“Shit,” he mutters, his chest rising and falling faster than normal. “Baby, please don’t do this, we can make it work.”
“We could struggle to make it work and then, a year in, we break up because we can’t handle the distance, the unpredictability, and then we’d be worse off than if we end things now. You know I’m right.”
He presses his head against my shoulder.
“But we’ll always be there for each other; we signed on it. Friends first, Knox.”
“I don’t want to be your friend. I want to be your boyfriend, your goddamn forever.” His hands drive up my sides, holding my ribs, holding on to me tightly. “I want you forever, Em.”
When he pulls away, tears falls from his eyes and in that moment, every nerve ending in my body goes numb as I watch the man I love cry—cry over what we had and what we’re losing. It’s the last thing I want to do, to inflict this kind of pain on Knox, but I don’t have a choice. He needs to be free, to focus, to be the man, the exceptional ball player he deserves to be.