Her giggles slow, and the ruined swing lies beside us as her expression shifts. Still warm, but careful.
“Scotty?”
“Yeah?” My chest is still heaving from kissing and laughing and almost dying via porch furniture.
She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, suddenly shy in a way she never is when she’s in a tiara and sparkles and center stage for a room full of five-year-olds. “W-What is this?”
“Whatever you want it to be.”
I can’t help but sound desperately eager when she asks me a question like that.
She bites her bottom lip and steps back.
There it is.
She’s going to let me down gently, isn’t she?
“I like you, Scotty. I really do.”
“But?” I ask with a raised brow. It’s killing me to even say, but I have to keep my cool when it comes to her.
“Can we… keep this between us for now?”
“Like a secret?”
She rushes on before I can react.
“It’s not because I don’t—” She stops, rewinds, steadies herself. “I just want to be able to stand on my own before the world sees me next to you. I don’t want them reducing me to ‘the girl who distracts Scotty Hendricks.’” Her voice dips. “I need to know I’m not stepping into someone else’s spotlight. I want to earn my own first. Does that make sense?”
Of course it does.
She’s not asking to hide me. She’s asking not to disappear.
I swallow, nod slowly. “Yeah. It makes sense.”
Relief softens her shoulders, but I step a little closer anyway, hands in my pockets so I don’treach for her again.
“You want to build your thing without me overshadowing it,” I say evenly. “I get that. I don’t want to be the reason you feel small in your own story.”
Her breath catches, like that hit something deep.
“So… you’re okay with it?”
I shrug once, not casual, just honest. “We keep this ours for now. No cameras. No teammates. No commentary from the internet. Just you and me.”
She exhales like someone just gave her back air she didn’t know she’d been holding.
“Thank you,” she murmurs.
Her lips twitch like she wants to kiss me again, but instead she nudges my arm with hers.
“You should go before Lyss wakes up and thinks I’m having a midnight porch fight with a linebacker.”
“Rude. I am a graceful athlete.”
“You are a walking dent to outdoor furniture.”
I huff a laugh. “Fair.”
