Page 167 of Fighting Chance

He gives me a small, sad smile. “You’re doing that and more, my friend. Trust me when I say she’s happy.” He flicks his chin over to the ice. “Every time she smiles she looks over at you. You’re building that little girl up after her mother destroyed her.”

He takes Bambi’s lead from my hand. “Go, be with her. She keeps looking over here any time she smiles, she wants you there beside her. She wants her dad.”

Pushing off the boards on wobbly legs, I clap my best friend on the shoulder as I lay my heart bare. “I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for you. And neither would she…so thank you.”

That’s the second time tonight I’ve stunned someone with a confession.

Before Grayson can ask any questions about that time in my life, before I’m forced to lay my bleeding heart in his palm and confess that he pulled me back from a cliff more times than I can count, I step onto the ice and skate.

Because I never told him about the nights I’d lie awake contemplating ending it, only for his name to flash across myphone screen or his face to come up in my mind moments before I tried to end it all.

Emmy may have rekindled my spirit, may have shown me the role I was always meant to fulfill in my life, but Grayson made my life worth living when all I wanted to do some days was die.

Chapter 36

Layla

KIERAN

*picture of Emmy*

*missed FaceTime call*

earth to Layla

Emmy wants to show you the matching costumes she picked out for you two

My eyes are heavy as two gentle hands grasp my shoulders and shake me awake. My mouth feels like it’s full of cotton.

“Layla, sweetie.”

“Mom?”

She sighs, sinking beside me on the bed. “My god Layla, I thought you were dead.”

I’m slow to sit up, my mind a groggy mess, slow to realize my hands ache. “What time is it?”

“Eleven.” I look up at my mom, the worry on her face evident. “Layla, you slept through all your alarms.”

That has my eyes snapping wide open.

“I—what?”

The last time I slept through my alarms, I wasat the peak of a lupus flare-up. That hasn’t happened since I left for Berlin, before the trial drugs began to work miracles on my immune system.

She reaches over, feeling my cheeks. “Sweetie, you’re burning up. You have a fever.”

My dad comes into the room then, his ears a supersonic radar for anything medical. “What’s wrong?”

My mom doesn’t let me answer. She turns to him, panic in her voice. “She slept through her alarms and has a fever.”

His brows furrow. “Did you have a late night?”

My mind is a messy fog, but I’m aware enough to realize that it takes me far too long to remember where I was last night. The pieces come back to me one by one. The chicken noodle soup. Kieran and his lingering touches. Bella andThe Vampire Diaries.

I want to tell my parents I slept in because I was acting like a regular adult, that I stayed up partying or was out watching Kieran play and that we went for celebratory drinks after. That Cindy, Bella, and I went to Totti’s and had a late night, but the answer is no.

My voice is croaky as I whisper, “No, we had an early night. I fell asleep watching TV with Bella.”