Chapter 171

Micah

So… hi. I’m Micah.

Yeah, that Micah.

I know. You don’t have to look at me like that—I already know I’m not the fan favorite. Trust me, my comments section would probably light up like a Christmas tree if anyone knew I was talking right now.

But just—before you decide what box to put me in—let me explain myself. Not to excuse anything. Just to tell the truth.

There was a time when Aiden was my whole world.

And I was his.

Not in the way people assume. I was never his student, never his player, never anything that could get him fired. I was his submissive. Voluntarily. Willingly. Joyfully. And what we had—whatever else anyone wants to call it—was real. It wasn’t about ownership or control or status. It was about belonging. About safety. About finally being seen in a world that kept telling me I was too much, too dramatic, too intense, too needy.

Aiden didn’t just steady me. He anchored me.

And I like to think I gave him something too—quiet, steadiness, someone who listened when the walls of his past got heavy and he didn’t want to admit he was tired. I held him when his mind shook loose in the middle of the night. I gave him my trust, my body, my loyalty, my heart. All of it. Freely. Completely.

But I was young.

And restless.

And I thought I needed more.

Not more sex or excitement—I had that.

Not more attention or security—I had those too.

He made sure of it. He always made sure I was safe.

What I needed was simpler—and more impossible.

I needed him to love me.

But Aiden… Aiden didn’t know how to give himself fully to anyone back then. He could protect. He could guide. He could care. He could make you feel like the center of his universe when he looked at you. But the closer we got, the more scared he became. The higher his walls grew. He stayed just one step out of reach, always. I kept telling myself that being near him was enough. That loving him was enough. That if I was patient, he would meet me halfway.

But the day he told me he couldn’t love—not me, not anyone—not like I loved him, something in me cracked.

And I made the worst decision of my life.

I told myself that if I left, he would realize his feelings. That the threat of losing me would make him cross the line he was too afraid to step over.

God, I really believed that.

I said I wanted bigger cities, brighter lights, music and crowds and places where people didn’t sleep. I told him I needed to feel like I mattered beyond his apartment, his arms, his bed. But the truth was so much smaller and so much sadder:

I wanted him to say, Stay.

But he didn’t.

And I didn’t understand why.

I didn’t know about the grief he carried. The guilt over his brother. The way loving too hard once had destroyed him. I didn’t know that every time I said be mine, he heard lose everything again.

So I left.

Not because I didn’t love him—

but because I loved him too much to keep begging for something he was terrified to give.

I thought if I went first, he would follow. But he let me go.

And the distance broke us both.

I tried to build a life after that. I really did. But when you’ve known what it feels like to be held in a way that makes the world quiet, you can’t just replace that. So I tried to recreate it. With someone else.

Someone who liked control without care.

Discipline without devotion.

Punishment without protection.

Someone who hurt me and broke me completely.

I stayed until I didn’t recognize myself anymore—bruised, ashamed, empty. And by the time I realized what I had lost, what I had thrown away, I didn’t know how to come back without collapsing at his feet.

I came back anyway.

Not to steal him.

Not to win him.

Just to breathe again, near the person who once felt like home.

And I truly, honestly didn’t understand until I saw Noah—really saw him—that the story had already moved forward without me.

That Aiden had learned how to love.

Just… not me.

So no, I’m not the villain. I’m just the person who stayed too long in a memory.

And maybe that makes me stupid. Or selfish. Or tragic.

I swear, I never knew how much chaos would follow me home.

And yes, I was bratty.

Self-centered.

Needy.

I could be dramatic enough to power a small theater production.

But loving someone the way I loved Aiden?

That wasn’t performance.

When I walked back into his life, I thought I was just reclaiming a part of myself. I thought maybe there was still something here for me. I didn’t think I was detonating the life he had built in my absence. But I did. And I regretted that—not as his former submissive, not as the boy who once slept at his feet and felt safe there, but as the man who had loved him before either of us even understood what love was supposed to look like.

If I hadn’t come back, none of this would have happened. He wouldn’t have been shattered. Noah wouldn’t have been breaking in half in the middle of his season. Their future wouldn’t have been crumbling because I stepped into the wrong room at the wrong time.

In my defense, I honestly hadn’t believed Aiden loved him.

I mean—Noah. A football player. A walking ego with impulses like a puppy that hadn’t been trained yet. A brat, if I’d ever seen one. (And yah, yah, I recognized the irony.)

But then I saw it. Not the way Aiden looked at him, but the way Aiden softened around him—like armor that had finally found a reason to come off. Like he had been holding his breath for years and Noah was the first person he had ever exhaled with.

Once I realized what I had stepped into—that I wasn’t just haunting an old life, but standing in the middle of someone else’s love story—everything in me twisted. I wanted to hate Noah. I really tried. God, I tried. But how do you hate someone who loved him the same way you did? How do you resent the person who finally gave him the thing you couldn’t?

People say if you love someone, you should let them go. I always thought that was total bullshit—something people say to make heartbreak sound poetic instead of catastrophic. But it’s true. Hold on too tightly, and love slips away. I held on too tightly once, and I ruined everything. I wasn’t going to repeat that mistake. Not to him. Not to Noah. Not to myself.

So this time, loving Aiden meant seeing him happy, even if it was without me.

And that was the last real thing I had left to give him.

I hadn’t slept worth a shit. Though, to be fair, every tragedy I’d ever heard of started with some sleep-deprived character. Or, in this case, probably three.

I just drove around town for hours—empty parking lots, quiet streets, gas stations starting their morning deliveries—watching the sky lighten through a windshield smudged with bad decisions. At some point, the exhaustion didn’t even register anymore. Just the knowing. The knowing of what I had to do next.

I knew the team was leaving this morning. The whole town knew. Banners were already hanging from shop windows, people posting well-wishes online, students wearing jerseys before sunrise. The Wolves were moving out soon. If I was going to say anything—to fix even part of what I broke—it had to be now.

So I drove to campus.

Parked.

Sat there for a minute with my hands on the steering wheel, because stepping out of the car made everything real.

Finding Noah Blake’s dorm wasn’t hard. Everybody knew where he lived. He was practically campus folklore at this point, but standing outside his door—that was something else entirely.

The hallway felt too quiet. Like it was holding its breath. Like it knew what I was about to do would change everything again.

My hand hovered. Knocking shouldn’t have been the hard part, but it was. Not because I was afraid of what he’d say. But because I knew what I needed to say.

Then I knocked. Firm. Steady.

Because if I loved Aiden at all, this was where I proved it.