Held the line.
But that didn’t mean I wasn’t burning underneath it.
By the end of practice, my muscles were screaming, my shirt was soaked, and my patience was damn near gone. I waited until the locker room was loud again—banter, slamming lockers, a round of trash talk starting up between the rookies.
That’s when I reached into my bag, grabbed my phone, and finally opened the message thread with her name on it.
Still blank.
Still silent.
Still hers.
You okay?
I typed it. Deleted it.
Tough day. Let me know if you need anything.
Deleted that, too.
Finally, I typed something else.
Keep your head down. We’ve got you.
I stared at it.
Simple. Unassuming. Safe. Yet still way too close to something that wasn’t supposed to exist.
I hit send anyway.
Ten minutes and one shower later, the message still sat on my screen.
Unseen. Unread.
The locker room had settled just enough to be dangerous again—quiet enough that anything could ignite it. Towelssnapped. Gear hit the benches. Cold water hissed through pipes and cracked open soda cans. The tension hadn’t gone anywhere. It had just slipped beneath the surface like a shark.
Rhett stalked back in five minutes after I got back to my locker. Hoodie halfway off, face flushed, curls wild like he’d been running a loop of the arena—or pacing the fucking roof. His phone was in his hand, but he wasn’t looking at it.
Not yet.
He headed straight to his locker, stripping the hoodie the rest of the way off before he dropped it on the bench. Sat. Didn’t speak. Then he unlocked his screen. And it was like watching a bomb go live.
First, the silence. Then the inhale. Too slow. Too sharp.
Then the snap of his locker door slamming back against the hinge.
“She’sgone?” His voice cracked against the tile.
Jay, still pulling on socks a few feet away, didn’t look up. “I told you.”
“You said she left,” Rhett snarled, turning on him. “You didn’t say sheleft-left.”
“She didn’t tell me where she was going, Rhett. You think she’s sending postcards now?”
I rose. “Cool it.”
But it was too late.
