“Talia.” Voice low, rough from disuse and cold air. “What are you doing here?”
I swallow. Throat too tight. “Couldn’t sleep.”
His gaze sweeps over my face, down to my hands shoved in my pockets, back up again. Assessing. Checking for cracks.
“You walked here alone?”
“I walk a lot of places alone.”
He doesn’t smile. But some of the tension around his mouth eases.
“Door was locked,” he says.
“No it wasn’t.” I lift a shoulder. “You just have to know the code.”
Eyes narrow slightly. “You shouldn’t know the code.”
“Perks of being the Coach’s daughter,” I say. “He never changes his passwords.”
A corner of his mouth tucks in. “Of course.”
Silence stretches between us, full and heavy. It feels different than my dorm room. Less like pressure, more like space.
“I can go,” I say, even though every part of me screamsdon't.
He stands.
The movement is fluid. One second he’s hunched on the bench, the next he’s a full wall of height in the players’ box, hands loose at his sides. For all that size, he doesn’t feel big in the way that men in crowded rooms do.
He feels… solid. Like a structure you lean against, not a threat bearing down.
“Don’t,” he says.
Not a command. Soft. It lands in my chest anyway.
He hooks a leg over the low wall of the box and steps out onto the concrete, crossing the few yards between us in long, easy strides. He stops close enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes, not so close that we’re touching.
His gaze flickers over my shoulder, up the tunnel, making sure we’re alone. Then it comes back to me. Steady. Intent.
“You should text someone when you do that,” he says. “Walk around at night.”
“I texted you,” I say before I can stop myself.
The truth hits the air between us and hangs there. It’s not technically a lie—my thumb hovered over his name, the message unsent—but he doesn’t know that.
Something flickers in his eyes. “Did you?”
“I thought about it,” I amend. “Same thing.”
He huffs out a breath that might almost be a laugh. “It’s not.”
We stand there, on the threshold between ice and concrete, like neither of us is totally sure where to go next.
This is stupid, the sensible part of my brain says.Go back to your room. Pretend you never came. Pretend the office was a fluke.
The other part—the one that walked across campus instead of hiding under a blanket—pushes words out of my mouth.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about earlier,” I say quietly.
