CHAPTER 168

**WINTER**

“You remember, don’t you?” he continued, his voice thick with a mix of longing and pain.

I nodded unconsciously, the memories rushing back.

I remembered the way Zion used to worry that his dad didn’t care, that he was somehow invisible to him.

I’d see it in his eyes—the desperation, the silent plea for validation—and I’d try to take his mind away from it. I’d crack jokes, tell him ridiculous stories, anything to make him laugh.

Anything to make him smile.

Zion paused, rubbing his hand over his face, trying to keep his composure.

“When I used to wait for him, staring at the door, hoping he’d come home, but he never did. Days would go by, sometimes even weeks, and I wouldn’t see him. And you—you always stayed by my side. You’d hold my hand and tell me, ‘He’s probably just busy, Z. That doesn’t mean he’s not thinking about you.’ Always the positive one.”

He swallowed hard, his throat tightening.

“When he would talk to me—when he would look at me like I was the only person in the world—it was like everything else faded away. It was all I wanted, Snowflake. The way he’d play football with me, ask me about school, ruffle my hair, call me champ…”

His breath hitched as he spoke, a tear threatening to fall, but he blinked it away quickly.

“It was everything.”

His eyes remained locked on mine, intense, pleading. His chest rose and fell with each breath, his vulnerability stripping away everything that had once made him so cold.

"But that day... when you told me what you saw..." Zion’s voice faltered, and he squeezed his eyes shut, as if trying to block out the painful memory.

"When you said you saw him with another woman, I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I refused to believe it. I was so angry. How could you say something like that about him? He loved my mom. How dare you accuse him of something like that? He barely had time for me—how the hell could he make time for some stranger?"

He stepped closer, his body trembling with the force of his words. His eyes searched mine like he was desperate for me to understand, to see his side.

"I thought you were lying. No, I needed to believe you were lying. Because the truth... the truth was too much for me to handle. I had to hold on to the idea of him being my hero—my only hero. He was the one person I thought would never let me down, the one person who was supposed to always be there, who was supposed to love me. But if you were right, if what you saw was true… it shattered everything. I couldn’t—no, I wouldn’t—let that reality in."

Zion’s voice broke as he spoke, almost pleading now.

“You have to understand, Snowflake. I was just twelve years old. I was terrified. Terrified of losing him, terrified of the idea that maybe he didn’t care about me the way I thought he did. I couldn’t face that. I couldn’t accept that my whole world might crumble around me. I clung to the belief that he was everything he promised to be, because without that, I didn’t know who I was anymore.”

The words hit like a gut punch. I tried to swallow, but my throat felt like it had closed up. My arms stayed crossed, holding myself together, but inside? I was unraveling.

Because I remembered it all.
The way his eyes had filled with betrayal.
The way I’d wanted so badly to protect him from the truth.

But nothing could have prepared me for the ache in his voice now.

His eyes were searching, desperately trying to convey everything he had been carrying for years. The pain, the regret, the guilt—it was all there, raw and unfiltered.

"I didn’t know you kept your promise,” Zion whispered, his voice cracking under the weight of everything he hadn’t said all these years.

“All I knew was that when you told me, it felt like everything I’d built up inside was shattering. Like you were ripping him away from me, and I couldn’t handle it. I couldn't bear the thought of losing him, of realizing that the man I’d put on a pedestal wasn’t who I thought he was.”

His breath hitched again, and his eyes were wide, pleading.

"I let my fear and my pride take control, and look what it got me. Look what I did to you. I was too blind to see anything but my own anger. Too stupid to understand that I wasn’t just hurting you—I was tearing us both apart."

He ran a hand through his hair, his frustration escalating.

"I wanted to punish you," he admitted, his voice raw with regret.

"I got so consumed by proving I was right that I didn't see how wrong I was—about everything. About you, about my dad, about myself."

Zion’s eyes met mine, filled with a mix of pain and regret.

“I didn’t know how to handle it. I didn’t know how to process it. You were my best friend. My only friend. And when my dad… when everything fell apart....losing you...”

I could feel the walls I had carefully built around myself starting to crack. The anger still burned inside me, but now there was something else—a deep, aching sadness that I didn’t know how to deal with.

“You didn’t lose me, Zion,” I said, my voice shaking as I struggled to keep my emotions in check.

“You pushed me away. You never thought of me as your friend. You thought the worst of me. I promised you I wouldn’t say anything. I kept that promise because you were my best friend. My only friend.”

Zion took a step back, as if my words had knocked the breath out of him. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words didn’t come. Instead, he stood there, his hands clenched at his sides, his body tense as if every part of him was at war with the other.

“I don’t know how to fix this, Snowflake,” Zion said finally, his voice so low it was almost lost to the wind. But I heard it—every broken, desperate syllable.

“I don’t even know if I can fix it. Maybe I’m too late. Maybe I’ve already burned it all to the ground.”

He exhaled shakily, dragging a hand through his hair, his eyes glinting with unshed tears.

“But seeing you like this… seeing you hurt because of me—it’s killing me. You have no idea what it does to me, knowing that I’m the reason you stopped smiling. That I’m the reason your eyes don’t light up the way they used to.”

His gaze met mine, raw and unflinching, and for a second, I saw the boy I used to know—the one who would’ve done anything to protect me.

“I was selfish and blind. I let my anger dictate everything, and I pushed away the one person who mattered most. I lost you, and I lost myself somewhere along the way, too. But I swear to you—I’ve been trying. I am trying. Not just to feel better about what I did, but to become someone who won’t ever hurt you again.”

He took a step closer, his voice softening.

“I want to be someone you can trust again, someone who can stand by you like you once stood by me. I know I don’t deserve it—not yet. But I’m not asking for forgiveness right now. I’m just asking for a chance to prove that I’m not the same broken, angry boy you walked away from.”

His voice faltered, but he kept going, because this mattered. I could feel it.

“I want to be your friend again, Snowflake. If nothing else… I just want that.”

As Zion spoke, each word landed like a blow, chipping away at the armor I had built around myself.

I tried to hold on to the anger, to the betrayal that had kept me safe all these years. But the more he spoke, the harder it became.

I clenched my jaw, forcing myself not to look away from him. Not to let the tears I could feel burning behind my eyes spill out.

God, why did he still have this effect on me?

I wanted to scream, to lash out, to make him understand that no amount of regret could heal the damage he’d done—that it wouldn’t erase the years of betrayal or rebuild the trust he’d shattered.

But my heart… god, my heart, still tangled with memories and longing, betrayed me. It squeezed tight at the sound of his voice.

And there he stood, no longer the boy I’d known—proud, defiant, cold—but broken.

Cracked open in front of me, his anger replaced with something much worse: vulnerability.

I hugged my arms tighter around myself, trying to hold the flood of emotions inside, but they were threatening to spill out. My resolve was slipping, fraying at the edges, like a dam weakening under too much pressure.

I hated how easy it was to still feel something for him.

I hated that some part of me… still wanted to forgive him.

God, how badly I wanted to forgive him.

I exhaled shakily, trying to steady myself.

And then, before I could stop it, the words slipped out—quiet, raw, and laced with the kind of vulnerability I hadn’t allowed myself to feel in years.

“I don’t know if I can forgive you, Zion,” I said, my voice trembling as the storm inside me swirled louder.

“But…”

He froze.

That word—but—hung in the air like fragile glass.

“But maybe…” I swallowed hard, my arms tightening around myself.

“Maybe I can give him a chance. The twelve-year-old boy who was scared and broken and didn’t know how to ask for love. The boy who was my best friend before everything went to hell.”

Zion’s breath hitched, and for a second, he didn’t move.

Didn’t speak. Just listened.

“I’m not promising anything. I don’t know if we’ll ever be what we were,” I added softly,

“but maybe… maybe we could try to be something. Just friends. Start there.”

For a long moment, he didn’t speak. Then he let out a shaky breath and nodded, a small, disbelieving smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

A single tear slid down his cheek, but he didn’t wipe it away.

“Just friends,” he repeated, voice rough.

“I can live with that.”

And somehow, that one smile—broken, grateful, real—made my chest ache in the worst, most confusing way.