Chapter 53 : I Just Felt Alone
STEPHEN’S POV
Marcus didn’t slam my door when he walked in. He closed it quietly.
I tossed my keys onto my desk and shrugged out of my jacket like none of this mattered. Like I hadn’t felt the shift in him the second he said Tory’s name outside.
He didn’t sit or lean against the wall like he usually does when he’s pretending to be casual.
He just stood there.
“You wanna tell me,” he said evenly, “why does my best friend think he gets to smirk at me like he knows something I don’t?”
I didn’t turn around. “Maybe because you always look confused.”
“Stephen.” There it was….. that tone.
I faced him slowly. “What do you want me to say?”
“The truth would be a great start.”
I huffed out a breath. “It was nothing.”
Marcus laughed once. It wasn’t amusing. “Wow. That’s crazy. Because Tory didn’t look like it was nothing when I saw him leaving your building this morning.”
I felt my jaw lock and he noticed. “You went low,” he continued. “Of all people.”
“It wasn’t planned,” I shot back. “It just happened.”
“That’s worse.”
The words hit harder than I expected.
He finally started pacing, hands running through his hair. “You and I….” He stopped himself, recalibrated. “We’ve been figuring whatever this is out for months. You don’t want labels. Fine. You don’t want people knowing. Fine. But there were lines, Stephen.”
“We’re not official.”
His head snapped toward me. “So that makes it okay?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what you’re implying.”
Silence swelled between us, thick and suffocating. We weren’t official but we weren’t nothing either.
Late nights in his bed. Fingers laced together under blankets. The way he has pressed his forehead to mine when he thought I was asleep. The way I always ended up at his place after practice like it was automatic.
We never called it dating but it felt like it and maybe that was the problem.
“I didn’t do it to hurt you,” I muttered.
Marcus stared at me like I’d just insulted his intelligence. “You think that makes it better?”
I ran a hand through my hair. “I was pissed.”
“At me?”
“No.”
“At Hayden?”
“No.”
He stepped closer. “Then who?”
I opened my mouth and nothing came out.
Because the truth was ugly.
Because the truth was that I’d felt out of control watching Hayden kiss Lilian. Like something inside me was unraveling. And Tory had been there after, running his mouth like he always does, teasing me about looking like I wanted to punch someone.
And I had.
He had said, “You need a distraction.” And I said, “Yeah? From what?”
He just looked at me and then he kissed me and I kissed him back.
It was quick.
I tasted alcohol and made bad decisions. And for a second, it had worked. The noise in my head had gone quiet.
Until it hadn’t.
“You used him,” Marcus said, reading my silence perfectly.
“I didn’t….”
“You did.” His voice didn’t rise. That was the scary part. “You were spiraling about something, and you grabbed the nearest thing that could numb it.”
I flinched. “Don’t psychoanalyze me.”
“You made out with my best friend.”
“You don’t own him.”
“That’s not the point and you know it.”
He was right. I knew it.
Tory wasn’t just some random hookup. He was Marcus’ person. The one who’d been there before me. The one who knew every embarrassing story, every scar.
And I’d crossed that line anyway.
“You could’ve talked to me,” Marcus said quietly. “Instead you chose him.”
I scoffed. “Talk to you about what?”
“Whatever’s eating you alive.”
“It’s not that dramatic.”
“You were shaking yesterday.”
My stomach dropped.
“You think I didn’t notice?” he pressed. “You think I don’t see the way you shut down when Hayden gets close to anyone else? The way you act like you’re fine and then explode over nothing?”
I felt heat crawl up my neck. “This isn’t about him.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.”
“Then say what it’s about.”
“I don’t owe you that.”
His face hardened. “You owe me basic respect.”
“That was one kiss.”
“With Tory.”
“You’re acting like I slept with him.”
Marcus let out a humorless laugh. “Would that have made it clearer for you?”
I stepped back like he’d shoved me.
He closed his eyes briefly, dragging a hand down his face. When he looked at me again, the anger was still there….but so was something else.
“That was low,” he repeated. “You know our history. You know he and I have hooked up before. You know the entire school assumes we’ll end up together eventually. And you still chose him.”
I swallowed. I had known. Maybe that was part of why I’d done it.
Self-sabotage was easier than vulnerability.
“If you wanted out,” Marcus continued, voice roughening slightly, “you could’ve just said that.”
“I don’t want out.” The confession slipped out before I could stop it.
He froze.
“Then what do you want?” he asked.
I stared at him.
I wanted things I didn’t know how to name. I wanted Hayden to stop drifting. I wanted my chest to stop tightening every time I saw him with someone else. I wanted Marcus to look at me like I wasn’t a problem he had to solve.
“I don’t know,” I finally admitted.
Marcus exhaled slowly. “That’s not good enough.”
“I’m trying.”
“Trying what? To implode?”
I let out a shaky laugh. “Maybe.”
He didn’t smile. “You hurt me,” he said plainly. There was no accusation in it. Just a fact and that somehow made it worse.
“I didn’t think….”
“That’s exactly it. You didn’t.”
He moved toward the door, then paused with his hand on the handle. “I can deal with you being confused. I can deal with you not wanting labels. I can even deal with you being scared.” His jaw tightened. “I can’t deal with being collateral damage.”
The words lodged somewhere behind my ribs.
He opened the door.
“Marcus….” He stopped but didn’t turn around. “It didn’t mean anything,” I said again, softer this time.
He finally looked back at me. “Maybe not to you.”
And then he walked out.
The door clicked shut.
I stood there in the middle of my room, the silence pressing in from all sides.
I wanted control. I wanted a distraction.
Instead, I’d managed to fracture the one thing that had felt steady.
I sank onto my bed, elbows on my knees, staring at the floor.
Hayden was distant, Tory was complicated and Marcus was hurt.
And I was stuck in the center of it, pretending like I wasn’t the common denominator.
For the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel angry.
I just felt alone.