The house is loud in the way that only Hunter’s parties ever are—music thumping through the floorboards, laughter spilling out of the kitchen, the clink of bottles and the low roar of too many Bruins players in one place. I stand just inside the doorway, coat still on, letting the heat and the noise wash over me like a tide I’m not sure I want to swim in.

Eight months. Eight months since I told Callum I needed space, needed to focus, needed to finish the short film that was eating me alive. I said it calmly, like I was reading from a script I’d rehearsed in the mirror. He begged. Not on his knees—Callum would never—but in the way he looked at me, the way his voice cracked when he said my name. I was cold. Deliberately. I told him I couldn’t be the girl he came home to anymore. That I didn’t have room for both of us in my life right now. He fought so hard I almost took it all back. Almost.

I kept Mal. Callum’s schedule is brutal—road trips, practices, games—and I told myself it was kinder. Mal still sleeps on Callum’s old Bruins hoodie that I never managed to throw away. Every time Olivia and Hunter bring him back after a weekend visit, he spends the next day staring at the door, refusing his food. Like he’s waiting for the person who actually belongs to him. Like he knows I broke something that wasn’t just between me and Callum.

I made the film in the weeks after. Poured every raw, ugly feeling into it. It won awards. People called it “devastatingly honest.” I stood on stages in dresses I didn’t care about and thanked teams and mentors and pretended the applause filled the hole. It didn’t. Every trophy felt like evidence. Proof that I’d traded the best thing I’d ever had for something that glittered but didn’t warm.

I spot him across the living room before he sees me.

He’s leaning against the far wall, talking to Hunter, beer dangling from his fingers. His hair is shorter now—cropped close the way he used to wear it in college, before he let it grow out because I liked running my fingers through it. His shoulders are broader, arms thicker under the sleeves of his black T-shirt. He looks harder. Older. The easy, sunshine smile that used to follow me around rooms like a loyal dog is gone tonight. His mouth is set in a line that feels unfamiliar. He laughs at something Hunter says, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

Thank God there’s no girl draped on his arm. But there might as well be. Three different women have drifted over already, touching his forearm, tilting their heads, smiling like they’ve been waiting their whole lives for this exact moment. He’s polite. Nods. Doesn’t lean in. But he doesn’t move away either.

My stomach twists so violently I have to press a hand to it.

I wonder if he’s slept with any of them. I wonder if he’s let someone else trace the scar on his ribs or kiss the spot behind his ear that makes him shiver. The thought is acid. I deserve it. I chose this. I told him to go live his life.

He looks up then. Across the crowded room, his eyes find mine.

For a second, everything else falls away. The music, the voices, the smell of pizza and beer. It’s just us, the way it used to be. His face doesn’t change, but something flickers in his eyes—recognition, maybe. Pain. Or nothing at all.

I can’t tell anymore.

I look away first.

My chest aches like someone’s parked a car on it. I miss him so much it feels like a physical thing, a bruise that never heals. I want to cross the room and say I’m sorry. I want to say I was wrong. I want to say come home. But I don’t move. I just stand here, coat still on, letting the party happen around me like I’m not really in it.

Like I haven’t been really in anything since the day I let him walk out the door.