Now it’s a question mark strapped to my knee.
I shift carefully, unlocking the brace just enough to move. The click is loud in the quiet cab. Embarrassing. I hate that sound, but at least I can drive myself starting tomorrow. Don’tget me wrong, Cam’s a good driver, but it’s been a minute since I’ve had the freedom that driving gives you.
Cameron opens his door and hops out. “Come on. Pops made chili.”
I hesitate, then grab my crutches and follow.
The house feels exactly like I remember when the front door opens.
Warm, but not in temperature. Warm in the way that love and the feeling of being wanted and welcomed feed your soul when it’s starving. I was craving any sort of that when I first walked through this door as a ten-year-old kid, and it immediately eases a fraction of the tension in my shoulders walking through it today.
Andrew Rhodes stands there in his favorite gray hoodie, coffee mug already in hand, like this is just another afternoon and not the return of a kid he helped raise with a busted knee and a future in limbo.
“About time,” he says, smiling. “You look like hell.”
“Recovery’s going great,” I deadpan.
He hugs me anyway, quick, careful, solid. No pity. No questions. Just…normal.
“Your room’s ready,” he says, like it never wasn’t. “Want me to help grab your stuff?”
My chest tightens, guilt for throwing myself into their space once again threatening to eat me alive. “You didn’t have to?—”
“I know,” he says simply. “But I did.”
That’s how Coach Rhodes has always been. No speeches. No guilt. Just space.
Too much space, sometimes. Space I don’t know how to accept without bracing for it to disappear.
Inside, the house creaks in all the familiar places. The photo wall in the hallway still holds Cameron in his first jersey, Sloanemissing a front tooth, Coach with his arm around both of them like nothing bad could ever touch his family.
I’m in some of the pictures too.
That still feels unreal.
We don’t get far before the front door opens again.
Footsteps. A gym bag dropped hard on the floor.
“Great,” she mutters. “The infestation’s back.”
I freeze.
Sloane Rhodes stands in the entryway, flushed from practice, hair pulled back tight, a few loose strands framing her dark brown eyes, irritation written all over her face. She takes in my crutches, my brace, the boxes on the floor, while I take inher.
My best friend’s little sister. The one girl I always knew I should never want inthatway, but my heart still picks up the pace any time we’re in the same room. Her legs are long, toned, and tanned from hours spent in the sun. If her hair was down, it would be slightly wavy, but you could never guess the length consistently. She had a little habit of taking the scissors to it at every minor inconvenience, which often had to do with me.
Any time she needed something, anything, to control, I always knew she’d come out of the bathroom with a new style, ranging from a slight little trim to bangs to the time she cut a whole eight inches off when Pops was first diagnosed with cancer five years ago.
My eyes finally meet hers, and just like that, I’m nineteen again. A lot less injured, but a fuck ton more stupid. Standing in a crowded room. Watching her laugh with someone else. Feeling something ugly crawl up my throat.
Two years ago. A party. A moment I handled badly.
I said what I did out of jealousy, and she never forgave me for it. Can’t really blame her for it either.
This house has always been a constant. A place where people stayed. Where things were fixed instead of abandoned.
I want to believe that’s still true.
