The Girl’s Exit Was Louder Than Silence Chapter 10
“Why aren’t you at the hospital taking care of your Madison?”
“Why go through all this trouble to find my house?”
Dylan reached toward me.
Then, as though remembering something, he quickly pulled his hand back.
“Madison and I aren’t what you think.”
“She promised me something.”
“If I got her the team manager position and took her to Miami, she’d withdraw from the competition and give you the fellowship spot.”
“I… I knew how upset you were after missing the application deadline.”
“I was only trying to help you.”
I couldn’t hold it in anymore.
I laughed.
“You think I need her to give it to me?”
“If I hadn’t accidentally missed the deadline, she wouldn’t even have been qualified to compete with me.”
“Dylan, you never actually knew me.”
“Madison lying about me hurt.”
“Being excluded by the team hurt too.”
“But neither hurt as much as your self-righteous idea of ‘helping’ me.”
“Every time I actually needed you, you looked the other way.”
“Sometimes, when other people were humiliating me, you even joined in.”
I took a deep breath and forced my emotions back under control.
“You’ve said what you came here to say.”
“And I’ve said everything I needed to get off my chest.”
“You can leave now.”
I glanced at the clock on the wall.
“Your game is tomorrow morning, right?”
“You need to leave this afternoon.”
“If you don’t go now, you’ll miss it.”
Dylan’s eyes immediately brightened.
“You still care about me.”
“Does that mean—”
I knew exactly what he was about to say.
I cut him off.
“I just don’t want everyone else’s hard work to go to waste because of whatever happened between us.”
“If I did that, I’d be no different from you or Madison.”
“Dylan.”
“Don’t make me hate you more than I already do.”
In the end, it took a barrage of calls from Coach Anderson to finally get Dylan to leave.
The next day, after the game, Dylan learned that the Miami trip had been canceled.
“This suddenly?”
Logan looked at him calmly.
“It wasn’t sudden.”
“Ava’s father was sponsoring the trip for her.”
“She’s not on the team anymore.”
“So naturally, the trip was canceled.”
Dylan froze.
Only then did he finally understand what I’d meant when I told him he’d never truly known me.
He knew nothing about my family.
He knew nothing about what I actually wanted.
By then, I was already on a plane to London.
When Mom found out I was coming to London for grad school, she called me several times, urging me to hurry over.
When she heard I’d just broken up with Dylan, she didn’t bother sugarcoating her opinion.
“You haven’t even seen the world yet.”
“How could you possibly know he was the best man for you?”
She was right.
I was still so young.
I’d barely met enough men to know what else was out there.
Dylan had never been my only choice.