Beck’s face appears above me, eyes wide. “Don’t move, man. You hear me? Stay down.”
The trainers rush in. Someone cuts my glove off, pressing a hand to my chest.
“You with me, Logan?”
I nod. At least, I think I do.
The lights blur overhead. My knee’s throbbing, swelling under the brace. Every pulse feels like fire.
I’ve taken hits before. Broken fingers, dislocated shoulder, cracked ribs—I’ve played through all of it. But this…this feels different.
They call for the cart.
The crowd starts clapping, but it sounds wrong, like it’s echoing for someone else.
Coach Harding crouches beside me, voice rough. “Hang in there, son. We’ve got you.”
The wordsonalmost undoes me. Nobody’s called me that in ten years.
They lift me onto the board. The movement sends another bolt of pain through me, stealing what little breath I have left.
The cart rolls forward. The stadium slides past. Lights, noises, faces blend together. I’ve dreamed of being carried off this field, but not like this.
Not like this.
My chest tightens. I blink up at the sky—cold, endless, merciless.
If this is it…if this is the last time I wear this uniform…
Then everything I fought for, every ounce of pain, every night I went hungry just to make it here, ends under these lights.
The crowd claps as they drive me through the tunnel, the crowd fading behind us.
And for the first time in my life, I have no idea what comes next.
1
LOGAN
The first thing I lose when I tear my knee is my future.
The second is the illusion that I can do this on my own.
Everything after that is just damage control.
The California sun in early January is still warm as Cameron pulls into the driveway of his childhood home, the house that became my home before heading off to PCU.
I don’t look over at my best friend. If I do, he’ll see my brain spinning, the part of me already calculating how long I can stay here before I become a burden. A problem.
“You’re staying with us,” he says finally, tone flat like this was decided weeks ago and I’m the only one catching up.
“Temporarily,” I reply automatically.
“That’s what you said the last three times,” Cameron shoots back. “And you were wrong on every one of them.”
I swallow and stare out the windshield at the Rhodes’ house. The kind of place people live when someone shows up for them every day. When groceries get bought. When bills get paid on time.
The kind of place my mom never managed to keep.
