"But you ate them anyway,” she smiled at me.
I kissed the top of her head. "Because you made them for me. That mattered more than how they tasted.”
She was quiet for a moment, snuggling closer to me, before saying. "I'm going to make you better cupcakes. I've been practicing my baking skills."
“You pan ai chocolates were pretty good,” I agreed with a grin.
“Want to know a secret?” she giggled into my chest. “Those were frozen ones from the Café, I just put them in the oven. I’mnot a baker, but I really want to learn how to bake from scratch. No pre-made mixes or frozen food.”
"I'll eat anything you bake, Thorn. Good or bad, if you make them, I want them."
"That's a dangerous promise. I might test that,” she smiled.
"Test away. I'm not going anywhere."
And I meant it. This right here, with the two of us building something real, was exactly where I wanted to be.
Forever.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ROSALIE
December arrived with a cold snap and the promise of winter break. But before we could leave for the holidays, Derek and I had one more important thing to do.
We'd rented a small event space in downtown San Matjo, nothing fancy, just a room with good lighting and enough space for what we had planned.
"Are you sure about this?" Derek asked for the hundredth time as we set up chairs. "It's a lot of people."
"I'm sure." I arranged the last chair in the semicircle we'd created. "This is important."
We'd invited everyone. The soccer team, the girlfriends, some of my Pilates students, Derek's therapy group members who'd agreed to participate. About thirty people total.
The idea had come from Dr. Morrison during one of Derek's sessions. He'd suggested that sharing our stories publicly might help others struggling with similar issues. So Derek and I had decided to host a panel discussion: "Life After Injury: Redefining Success When Your Body Doesn't Cooperate."
People started arriving, and my nerves kicked in. This was more public than anything I'd done since my surgery. But Derek squeezed my hand, and I remembered why we were doing this.
Aaron arrived with Oliver, taking seats in the front row. Max, Ivy and Maddox came next, followed by Nova, Daisy, and a stream of curious students who'd seen the flyers.
When everyone was seated, Derek and I sat at the front table with Dr. Morrison, who'd agreed to moderate.
"Thank you all for coming," Dr. Morrison started. "Tonight, we're going to talk about something that doesn't get discussed enough in athletics: what happens when your body can't do what you've trained it to do? What happens when injury forces you to redefine your identity?"
He turned to us. "Derek, Rosalie, thank you for being willing to share your experiences."
"Thanks for being here," Derek said, though his voice was tight with nerves. "I'm going to start by saying this isn't easy to talk about. A year ago, I had a severe knee injury that could have ended my career. And for a long time, I thought it had."
He talked about the injury, the surgery, and the months of recovery. But more importantly, he talked about the fear. The panic attacks. The PTSD that made stepping onto a field terrifying.
"I spent so long trying to be who I was before," he said. "Trying to ignore the fear, push through the anxiety, pretend I was fine. But pretending doesn't work. It just makes everything worse."
"What changed?" Dr. Morrison prompted.
Derek looked at me. "I started being honest. About how scared I was. About how much I was struggling. And I found people who didn't see that as weakness."
"Including Rosalie?"
"Especially Rosalie." He took my hand. "She understood what it was like to lose something you built your whole identityaround. She didn't try to fix me or rush my healing. She just... showed up. Every day. Even when I was at my worst."
