Saving Us by Wendy Million

Chapter Thirty-Five

Iparked my dad’s car in the parking space closest to my townhouse and climbed out. I’d texted Sebastian to tell him I was headed home. My dad had stayed at the hospital in case Annika needed anything or anyone showed up to talk to her. Dad wasn’t sure if Johnny would try to influence Annika or if he’d stay away.

I took my phone out of my pocket and checked again. Nothing. Sebastian’s history of trying to clean up Johnny’s messes made me nervous. Would he help Johnny now, too?

When I got to my door, I found it unlocked. Cautiously, I pushed it open. “Hello?”

“Nattie!” Sebastian jumped off the couch and turned to face me.

“You used the spare key?” I dropped my purse and keys on the little table.

“Yeah, I—how’s Annika?” His brow furrowed.

“Beaten pretty badly. Most likely sexually assaulted.” I listed her trauma in a flat voice because dwelling on it would send me spiraling. A downward slide would come, but I couldn’t let myself sink into it yet. Rounding the couch, I fell into a seat.

He eased down on the other end, not close like he normally would. A lump formed in my throat.

“Do the police know who did it? What happened?” He rubbed his legs.

I swallowed my tears. “What was the emergency meeting about this morning?”

“Coach wanted to talk to me.” He kneaded his thighs with his fingers.

“About what?” I slouched deeper into the couch. The tension between us was thick. Something bad festered.

He stood and strode into the kitchen. “You want a beer?”

“No, I don’t want a beer. It’s ten o’clock in the morning.” Anger boiled in me under the surface. Below the anger, disappointment and heartbreak were lodged, waiting to break free.

Sebastian returned with an open bottle in his hand, and he perched on the edge of the couch, rolling the beer between his hands.

“Come out with it.” It was obvious where this was headed. Might as well face it head-on.

He set his beer on the table and ran his hands along his face. “I can’t come out with it. I don’t want to do this.”

“Then make a different choice.”

“It’s not that simple,” he said. “Coach called me into his office this morning. Not a team meeting. Just me. He asked me how my season was going, if I enjoyed playing for the Ravens, for him. He asked where I wanted to go in my career.”

“Okay.” Wouldn’t those be normal questions toward the end of a football season? Sebastian still had one more year left to play, and this was his first season here.

“Then he asked about my social life. I mentioned you. He said he’d heard you were Johnny’s ex-girlfriend Annika’s roommate.”

“Ex-girlfriend?” I sat up.

“Yeah, surprised the hell outta me too.” For the first time since I got home, a glimmer of the man I loved appeared.

“And?” I rested my elbows on my knees.

“Coach said he was looking at the roster for next year, at the scholarship allocations, at playing time and so forth. He told me he was on the fence about whether he was going to keep me.” He snatched up his beer and took a long drink.

“What?” I asked. “You’ve been playing well. Like, really well. Even I can recognize that.”

“He’s telling me to keep my mouth shut, Nattie. He’s threatening me. If he drops me from the team, I can’t play anywhere else without him signing off on my transfer. I can’t go to another college for football. My football career would be done. No senior year. No draft. Nothing.”

“That’s ridiculous. He can’t have that much power.”

Sebastian gave me a long look. “He does. Even if he didn’t, alumni, sponsors, football fans, scouts—anyone associated with football will think I’m not a team player.”

“So what are you saying?”

He chugged the rest of his beer and set it on the table. He wasn’t making eye contact.

Tears pricked my eyes and welled up to blur my vision. With my gaze trained to the ceiling, I willed myself not to cry.

“I’m saying I have to be a team player,” Sebastian said quietly. “He’s got me cornered.”

I closed my eyes, and tears rolled down my face. When I opened them, Sebastian’s anguish caused cracks across my heart.

“I don’t wanna assume anything. I love you, and I want to be with you. This situation is not what I want. But he’s got me pinned. If I go against him, he’ll ruin any chance I have of playing football.” He focused on his beer bottle.

“What are you asking me, Sebastian?” My voice was thick with tears.

“I’m asking whether you’ll still be with me if I stick with the team.”

His face, his dear face, overflowed with love and sadness. I wanted to ease his pain, part of me wanted to make this decision easy for him. If I said yes, I didn’t understand how our relationship would work. I’d be harboring secrets, information about the case. Maybe he would too. If he didn’t come forward with whatever he knew, I would never forgive him.

I’d given him pieces of my heart, and they were strewn around this house: on the couch, at the front door, the kitchen table and counter, my room, even Annika’s room. Those pieces would vanish with him when he walked out the door. My heart might never be whole again.

“If you choose the team, we’re done.” My words were a whisper. I cleared my throat. “This isn’t something we can compromise on, Sebastian. This isn’t what food to order or where to go on vacation. She’s my best friend, and your teammate beat her so badly last night”—my voice caught on a sob—“that I hardly recognize her.” I took a deep, shuddering breath and let my anger rise over the pain. “If you’re choosing to stand by him, then you’re not a man I want to stand beside.”

Sebastian had never asked or expected me to be anything but myself, which was one of my favorite things about our relationship. I’d never be someone who could look the other way at injustice. It wasn’t in me.

He gave a curt nod and took his empty bottle into the kitchen. I sat on the couch, waiting for him to return, but when he didn’t, I went looking for him. I rounded the corner from the kitchen table, and his back was rising and falling as though he was holding in his sobs.

“Sebastian.” Each beat of my heart was a painful squeeze in my chest.

He turned and wrapped his arms around me, sobbing into my neck. I drew him tighter and let my own tears fall onto his shirt.

“I love you so much, Nattie,” he murmured into my ear. “Tell me we can figure this out.” He rested his forehead against mine.

The love and regret reflected in his expression caused fresh tears to slip down my face. “It won’t work,” I said. “There’s no way I can be with someone who supports what Johnny did.”

“I don’t support it.” A burst of anger raised the pitch of his voice. “I don’t support what he did. But I’ve given up so much, so much to get to this point in my football career. This has been my dream since I was thirteen. I’m on the cusp of something big.”

I stared at him for a long time. Part of me understood. Football took up the bulk of his life. I avoided his gaze when I said, “I guess I’m one more thing you have to sacrifice to get that dream.”

Sebastian flinched. “I don’t accept that.”

“This isn’t something you can persevere the hell out of. You’re making a choice.”

“What about when this situation is resolved?” he asked. “What then?”

I shook my head. “We’ll still be the same people who made these choices now.”

“So, if I go, I’m going forever?” His voice cracked.

I closed my eyes and wished for the floor to open up, swallowing me whole. I wanted to go to sleep and wake up in bed with Sebastian, have the last eight hours be nothing but a bad dream. If he chose the team, how would I ever look at him the same again?

“I don’t know, Sebastian. I don’t know.”

He drew me into his chest. I went willingly, breathing in the scent of his cologne. Would this smell bring me to my knees years from now when I walked past a stranger in the mall? He had branded my senses.

“I love you,” I said. “Part of me understands why you’re doing what you’re doing. I do. But I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forgive you for it.”

“I’m gonna figure something out,” he murmured into my hair. “It’s happened so fast I haven’t had time to think of a solution, but there has to be one. There’s always a way for us to be together and for Annika to get justice,” he said. “I’m not giving up on us.”

Desperation was plain in his voice. My heart was a weight in the middle of my chest, a load I had to carry. It was no longer light and complete like last night. I never realized a heart in pieces could be so heavy.

“If you’re going,” I said, my hands bunched in his shirt. “You should go. My dad’s coming here soon, and if you’re choosing the team, I’d rather he didn’t meet you.”

Sebastian stiffened. My words were another punch, one of many during this conversation.

He kissed my temple, not meeting my gaze when he drew away. This wasn’t right. I didn’t want him to go. I latched onto his arm, and my hands trailed along until he was almost out of my grasp. The reality of what was about to happen sank into me, filling me up. A sob spilled out.

Sebastian turned without a word and swept me into his arms, and his lips crashed into mine. I met him with equal parts desperation and anger. We shouldn’t end like this. We shouldn’t end at all.

I wanted to beg him not to go. I wanted to shove him out the door.

“I’m going. But I’m not going forever.” He wiped my tears with his thumbs. “I love you. I love you so much. And I’m gonna figure this out.”

For what might be the last time, his wide back disappeared out my front door. If things got as heated as I suspected they might, I didn’t see how we’d ever find a way back to each other.