Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 81281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Chapter 6
Livia
I’m a morning person and never set my alarm but my sleep was patchy last night, and I found myself up much earlier than that. I never sleep well when I travel, and despite the team staying in a luxury hotel here in San Diego, I still felt out of place.
Maybe it’s the new job, maybe it’s the excitement of game day—my first as a member of the Wildfire staff—but here I am at five forty-five in the morning, accessing the hotel gym with my key card.
There’s a twofold reason for me snagging an early-morning workout. The first is that I’ve always done my best thinking while in motion. I find the physical work quiets the part of my brain that won’t stop cataloguing and analyzing long enough for the actual useful thoughts to surface.
The second reason—and maybe the most important—I’m hoping to “run into” Locke. Van let it drop that they were going to meet up for a workout, which they often do as they are the type who will hit the gym before six a.m.
The fitness center is decent by hotel standards. The free weight selection is solid and the equipment is well-maintained. I currently have the entire place to myself. I drop my bag on a bench near the free weight rack, pull out my earbuds, and open my music app.
That’s when I see the text from Grant. It came in at two seventeen in the morning. Did you get my card? I just want to know you read it. That’s all I’m asking.
I stare at it for a moment.
That’s all I’m asking.
He’s been saying some version of that sentence for the last two months. Just one conversation. Just a chance to explain. Each ask framed as small and reasonable, each one underneath it the same thing—just give me a point of entry, just let me back in, just tell me the door isn’t permanently closed.
I step out into the hallway and call him, not giving a shit if I wake him up.
It rings four times and I almost hang up. “Livia?” His voice is groggy, heavy with sleep.
“I got the card,” I say, keeping my tone even. I’ve learned that any elevation or drop in tone—warmer, icier, fatigued, angry—gives him ammunition against me, but even ground is harder to negotiate against. “I’m not going to respond to it and I will not respond to texts. I’ve told you this.”
“I just needed to know you read it,” he whines, and I wrinkle my nose in disgust. “Did you? Actually read it?”
Ugh… I hate that I did read it because I can’t lie to him, and I hate that admitting I did will give him hope. I sigh in frustration. “Grant.”
“I’m not trying to start anything. I just… I put a lot of thought and meaning into what I wrote, and I want to make sure it didn’t go straight in the trash.”
I refuse to admit to reading it. “What you put into it doesn’t change my position. We are over. We were over the minute you cheated, and if there was a snowball’s chance in hell I’d ever reconsider, the fact you touched me in anger sealed the deal.”
Another pause, and his tone shifts slightly—not quite angry, but something underneath it tightens. “You moved a thousand miles away, Livia. I think that’s a little extreme, don’t you? Like, at some point, don’t we deserve a conversation about what happened between us?”
“We had that conversation. Once is enough.”
“You talked and I listened. That’s not the same thing.”
I close my eyes briefly. This is the thing about Grant that I spent almost two years not seeing clearly enough—the way he twists everything between us to portray himself as the reasonable one and me as the unfair half. I caught him cheating, ended the relationship, and somehow the narrative became about how I hadn’t given him enough space to explain himself.
I think back to that one and only conversation. He grabbed me hard enough to leave bruises and somehow that became about how I’d pushed him to that place. Every version of that altercation has him at the center of a different reality wherein he was justified.
“I’m not doing this,” I say. “Don’t text me again.”
I hang up before he can answer, but he immediately calls me back. I let the voicemail pick up and fortunately, he doesn’t call again after that.
I stand in the hallway, knowing in my gut the conversation accomplished nothing and I shouldn’t have called, but that’s what happens when anger gets the best of me. It’s been two months since we broke up and he won’t let it go. I’m grateful that I have those miles between us now so he can’t just show up on my doorstep the way he did back in LA. I can’t recall how many times he’d knock on my door, and I’d pretend not to be there to avoid the confrontation.