“They don’t know for sure yet,” she continues, her voice barely above a whisper. “The doctor said they needed to run more tests to be certain. But the symptoms… my headaches, the vision problems…”

It doesn’t feel fair. Or right. How could something like this even be a possibility for someone so sweet, so selfless? No one deserves to face this kind of uncertainty, but especially not someone like Hannah. My gut twists because I wish like hell I could trade places with her—but I know I can’t, no matter how badly I want to.

Get it together, Murray. She needs you to be strong right now.

An internal voice cuts through the shroud of shock encasing me, and I blink, refocusing on Hannah. She’s staring at me with pain all over her face and fresh tears streaking down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I should’ve told you, but I was scared. I still have so much baggage from watching Casey get sick and die, and I couldn’t stand to put you through that.”

Realization crashes into me like a speeding car—because suddenly everything that made zero sense before makes perfect sense. Hannah didn’t really want to break up with me, she was trying to protect me in her own way.

“That’s why you pulled away, isn’t it? Why you wanted to end things with me?” I ask with my head spinning. I get why she’d feel that way, but she couldn’t be further from the truth. It would’ve killed me not to be here by her side for something like this, so it’s lucky in a dark sort of way that it happened during one of my games. I don’t even want to think about how shitty I’d feel if it happened anywhere else when I wasn’t there.

“You were trying to spare me from what might happen,” I say, the pieces finally falling into place.

Hannah nods, and something powerful rushes through my chest. I grip both her hands in mine and hold her gaze because I don’t want her to miss a single word of what I’m about to say.

“Remember what you told me before about cherishing the good moments when you have them?” She nods again, and my voice turns rougher as I continue. “You were right. It’s not about how long you have them, or a guarantee that things will last forever. It’s about living for today and going after what you want, even if it means you might have your heart broken in the future.”

A tear traces a path down Hannah’s cheek, and it almost breaks me, but I have to keep going. I need her to hear this, to really hear it.