~~~~~ Emery’s Pov ~~~~~
I walked toward the rink with that same nervous, hopeful energy I had been carrying since her text that morning.
My sneakers crunched against the gravel path behind the athletic complex, the cold air doing nothing to slow the small, stubborn flutter in my chest.
The afternoon light had gone thin and gray, clouds rolling in low over the arena roof, and my breath came out in short white puffs as I hurried the last stretch toward the door, already rehearsing, without meaning to, what I might say when I saw her.
I was close enough to the side entrance to see the door propped slightly open when I heard a voice I didn’t recognize.
“Calloway, I heard what happened.” A female voice, unfamiliar, carrying a little too loudly through the gap in the door.
“And how does any of it concern you, Novera?” Calloway’s voice, quiet in a way I hadn’t heard from her before, careful and controlled in a manner that made my stomach tighten before I had even processed why.
Silence.
I got closer, my hand already reaching for the door, and walked in.
I froze.
Calloway and the girl were kissing.
The girl’s hand cupped the side of Calloway’s neck, her fingers curled gently against her jaw, while Calloway’s own hands hung motionless at her sides, not pulling away, not pushing closer, just still.
I stood there watching them, something sharp and stinging rising fast behind my eyes, struggling to spill over before I managed, barely, to hold it back.
After a few seconds that felt endless, Calloway pulled back with a frown, some flicker of confusion crossing her face like she was only now processing what had just happened.
She turned, and the moment her eyes landed on me, they went wide.
“Looks like I’m not supposed to be here,” I said, and turned to leave.
“Emery, stop.” Calloway’s voice cracked through the space, sharp enough to freeze me mid-step, but I didn’t turn around.
The other girl laughed softly behind me.
“So this is the girl you’re dating now?” she asked, amusement threaded through every word.
“Novera.” Calloway’s voice came out low, warning.
“You’re not who I usually know, Cally,” the girl said, softer now, almost fond, like the nickname belonged to her in a way it never had to me.
*Cally.*
I hadn’t heard anyone call her that before.
Something about the easy familiarity of it, the casual ownership packed into two syllables, told me more than the kiss itself had—a history I knew nothing about, one apparently deep enough to earn a nickname I had never once heard.
Not in three weeks of dinners and worksheets and a confession on a sidewalk that I had believed, foolishly, meant something.
I lowered my head, smiled to myself, and walked away.
Something bitter rose in my throat along with the smile.
The particular, useless humor of realizing exactly how much I had let myself believe in the space of a single weekend.
A mother finally told.
All of it collapsing now into something that felt, in this exact moment, like it had been foolish to trust in the first place.
The tears came before I made it out the door, slipping free down my cheeks despite everything in me trying to hold them back.
“I think I’m stupid,” I muttered under my breath, wiping at the corner of my eyes with the sleeve of my hoodie, but the tears kept coming anyway, faster now, blurring the gravel path in front of me into something I could barely see through.
I walked out of the athletic complex without any real sense of direction.
My feet carried me forward on autopilot while the rest of me tried to catch up with what I’d just seen.
Calloway’s hands still at her sides, that girl’s fingers against her jaw, the easy way she had said *Cally* like she had earned the right to it long before I ever showed up asking to tutor a hockey captain for rent money.
Priya spotted me before I even registered she was there, jogging over with a teasing grin already halfway formed.
“Emery Hale, where are you off to in such a hurry?” she asked, nudging my shoulder.
I didn’t respond.
I didn’t smile.
I just looked up at her, and whatever she saw on my face wiped the grin away instantly.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Jordan arrived a beat later, out of breath, glancing between the two of us.
“Priya, Emery—where have you both been?
I’ve been texting—” She stopped mid-sentence the second she actually looked at me.
“Emery.
Are you okay?”
I couldn’t hold myself together any longer.
Whatever composure I had managed to scrape together on the walk out of the rink collapsed entirely, and I broke down right there on the sidewalk in front of both of them.
The cold air did nothing to stop the sob that finally tore loose from somewhere deep in my chest.
“Hey—hey, okay, come here.” Priya pulled me into a hug immediately, one hand rubbing slow circles against my back while Jordan hovered close, her phone forgotten entirely for once, genuine worry replacing all the earlier teasing.
“What happened?” Jordan asked, gentler than I’d ever heard her.
I tried to answer and couldn’t, the words tangling somewhere behind the tears, and Priya just held on tighter, steering me a few steps off the main path toward a bench near the quad, sitting me down between the two of them like they were building a wall against whatever had done this to me.
“Take your time,” Priya said quietly.
“We’re not going anywhere.”
I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, trying to steady my breathing the way I had taught myself in that restaurant bathroom just days ago.
In for four, hold for four, out for four, except this time the counting didn’t seem to be working at all.
The bench felt cold beneath me, the metal armrest biting into my elbow, the whole quad blurred and distant through the wet haze still clinging to my eyes.
“I saw her,” I finally managed, my voice thick and unsteady.
“At the rink.
They were—” I couldn’t finish the sentence, the image still burned bright behind my eyes, Calloway’s hands at her sides, not pulling away.
“Oh my God.” Priya’s arm tightened around my shoulders.
“Emery.”
“The girl called her Cally,” I said, the detail somehow the one that hurt worst to say out loud.
“Like it was normal.
Like it was something she had said a hundred times before.
I’ve never once heard anyone call her that.”
Jordan’s jaw tightened, something protective flashing across her face.
“Did Calloway say anything?
Explain, deny it, anything?”
“She told me to stop.
I didn’t.” I wiped uselessly at my cheeks, the tears still coming despite my best efforts.
“I don’t even know what I would’ve wanted her to say.
There’s nothing that makes what I saw not what I saw.”
Neither of them had an answer for that, and for a while we just sat there on the bench in the cold, Priya’s arm still around me, Jordan’s hand resting on my knee.
The two of them offered the only thing they could in that moment—steady, silent company while I fell apart in the middle of an ordinary Monday afternoon that had started, just hours ago, with a text that made me smile so hard I’d had to pinch myself to stop.
My phone buzzed once in my pocket, and all three of us went still.
I didn’t need to look at the screen to know who it was.
Priya’s hand found mine before I could reach for it.
“You don’t have to answer that,” she said quietly.
“Not right now.
Not until you’re ready.”
I let it buzz twice more before it finally went silent, and something in my chest twisted tighter at the sudden quiet, some traitorous part of me already wondering what she might have said, already hating myself a little for wondering at all.
I should have known better than that.
I should have remembered, the way I always eventually remembered, that hoping for too much only ever left more room to fall.
Our second book is contracted.
I want to really thank and appreciate all of your efforts because without it my book is nothing.
Thank you all so much