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Episode 33: Grayson's Freefall

Author: Sarie Writes
last update Last Updated: 2026-03-09 21:12:14

POV: Grayson Hayes

The party was Nico's idea. End of season, the win that didn't feel like winning, the celebration that felt like obligation. Grayson went because not going would be noticed, would be commented on, would be another data point in the narrative of Grayson Hayes losing control, becoming his father, falling apart.

He was falling apart. Just quietly. Privately. The way he'd learned to do everything that mattered.

The party was loud, crowded, the kind of space that demanded performan
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    POV: Avery BlakeFive years later.The house smelled of old wood and coffee that had been sitting too long. Small, cramped, the kind of place graduate students rotate through, leaving behind half-forgotten mugs, crooked picture frames, and that faint, permanent scent of ambition mixed with instant ramen. I stood in the kitchen, spooning sugar into a cup I didn’t intend to drink. The ritual made my hands busy, my mind quiet—until I remembered the car that should have been here fifteen minutes ago.Grayson was in Seattle. Two years. Two years of distance that felt like a living, breathing thing. Stretch it too far, and it might snap. But it hadn’t snapped. Not yet. Not when the love between us had always been as much persistence as passion, as much patience as desire. We wrote, not often. But when we did, it mattered. The 2 a.m. confessions, the tiny victories over our own fear, the debates about everything and nothing, all held in words that needed no witness. The love that survived ac

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  • The Person You Choose   Episode 33: Grayson's Freefall

    POV: Grayson HayesThe party was Nico's idea. End of season, the win that didn't feel like winning, the celebration that felt like obligation. Grayson went because not going would be noticed, would be commented on, would be another data point in the narrative of Grayson Hayes losing control, becoming his father, falling apart.He was falling apart. Just quietly. Privately. The way he'd learned to do everything that mattered.The party was loud, crowded, the kind of space that demanded performance. Grayson performed. The ease, the charm, the quarterback who had everything and wanted nothing. He drank enough to make it convincing, not enough to lose control. The balance he'd learned, the inheritance managed, the temper locked down.Nico found him at midnight. Behind the house, vomiting into the bushes. The body betraying what the face had hidden."She's not worth this," Nico said. The easy diagnosis, the friend who saw symptoms and missed disease.Grayson wiped his mouth. Straightened.

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