Chapter 39
~BLAIR
I didn’t let him settle even though I’d just asked him to explain why he wanted to see me.
“Why did you suddenly need to meet me?” I asked again, fingers wrapped around the water glass I still hadn’ t touched. “You spent weeks acting like I was a problem to manage or a rumor to disprove. Now you’re flooding my phone like the building is on tee. What changed?”.
Chase sat forward in the booth, elbows on the table, looking like a man who had been carrying the answer too long and still didn’t know how to say it to me clearly.
“I spoke to someone,” he said. “In the organization. I asked how I actually got onto the team. How the captaincy conversation started. They told me Monroe influence moved my name. That someone from the company opened doors I thought I had opened myself.” His throat worked. “They told me it was because of you.”
I folded my arms and leaned back, so that was what this was about. He’d finally learned that everything he had today was because of me. I was the one who’d gotten him to reach so far and become this successful. My father and brother had asked to get him removed more than once, but I refused. I didn’t want to be the reason someone’s future was destroyed.
The glare came easily.
“And why is that important now?”
“Because I needed to know if it was true.”
“What will that change, Chase?” The question came out flatter than the anger underneath it. “You already made every decision that changed your life for good. You married Sophie. You let her and her father take the credit. You stood in a hallway after a game and accused me of feeding your plays to Grayson like I was some kind of spy. What exactly does the truth do for you at this point?”
He flinched, but he didn’t look away. “Please. I just want to know the truth. From you. Not from another person. From you.”
I held his gaze for a long moment. The diner noise around us felt too normal for the weight of what he was asking.
“You want the truth,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Okay.” I snapped. “The truth is that I asked my father for help when you needed it. Quietly. More than once. When you were trying to get seen, Monroe Athletics made calls. When the captaincy spot opened, interest was expressed at a level the organization listens to. You got opportunities because I loved you and because I could make them happen without turning it into a transaction you had to feel small about. I did it all behind your back. I wanted you to feel like you’d done it all on your own.”
Chase’s face tightened like every word was landing in a place already bruised. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I wanted you to want me,” I said simply. “Not because of my last name. Not the knowledge that your career had my family’s fingerprints on it. I wanted the version of us where you chose me without knowing what I’d done or how rich my family was.”
“That’s not fair.”
“What wasn’t fair,” I replied, voice sharpening, “was finding out you were married from reporters. What wasn’ t fair was watching you dance with her to successfully unlocked fair was spending years steadying your life while you decided I was the part of it that didn’t match the image you wanted.”
His hands curled into fists on the table, then flattened again. “Sophie told me her father pushed for the
Chapter 39
captaincy because of her. I believed her.”
I know.”
“I used that story to leave.”
“I know that too.”
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Silence stretched between us. What remained on his face was guilt and a kind of panicked clarity arriving far too late. There was nothing he could do now that would change how I felt about him.
“I need to hear you say it,” he said quietly. “That it was you. That the help came from you.”
I exhaled through my nose, tired of the demand and the way it still tried to center his need for resolution over the damage already done.
“It was me,” I said. “The help came from me. Through my family. Because I thought we were building a life, not a ladder you would climb and then kick away.”
His eyes closed briefly. When he opened them, they were sad.
“Blair-”
“No.” I shook my head once. “You don’t get to say my name like that and turn this into a reunion. You wanted the truth. You have it. I supported you. My family opened doors. You never knew because I didn’t want the truth to become the only reason you stayed. And then you left anyway, for a woman that had nothing to do with your success.”
He sat with that, breathing unevenly, the coffee the waitress had dropped off untouched between us.
Around the diner, people continued ordinary conversations. In our booth, the six years we once shared was finally falling apart between us.
“I made a mistake,” he said.
“Yes,” I answered. “You did.”
I stood before he could reach for the next sentence the apology, the plea, the attempt to rebuild something from materials that no longer existed. The truth was out. It didn’t restore anything. It only confirmed what I had already survived without him.
“We’re done here,” I said.
Chase looked up at me like he wanted to argue, to keep the conversation open until it gave him relief. I didn’
t give him the chance. I walked out of the diner with the bell sounding behind me.
In the car I checked my phone one more time on instinct.
Still nothing from Grayson. I felt disappointed. I thought by now he would have said something to me.
I set it face down on the passenger seat and pulled into traffic, it felt good to finally tell Chase the truth and see the horror on his face. He was finally realizing what he’d lost. But it was too late now. Too late.
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Dex Morgan
Dex works to elevate each story with clean writing, emotional balance, and thoughtful flow for readers.