“Tanner.” I pressed my lips to the top of his head. Not quite a kiss. Close enough. “We have time.”
He was quiet for a long moment. Then his arm tightened around me, and he pressed closer, and I felt something in him finally let go.
“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay.”
I fell asleep with Tanner in my arms, his warmth solid against me, his breath evening out into something slow and deep. My shoulder ached and my ribs protested, but none of it mattered because he was here. He’d stopped running.
Whatever came next—whatever this was becoming—we’d figure it out.
Together.
7
TANNER
Three weeks. Three games. Three Saturday nights spent pressing ice to bruises that bloomed fresh over the ones that hadn’t finished healing.
Seth hissed when I repositioned the pack against his ribs—same spot as last week, hit again before it could heal—and something in me finally cracked.
“This has to stop.”
He went still under my hands. “Tanner?—”
“I’m serious.” I pulled back, leaving the ice pack balanced on his side. “I can’t keep doing this. Patching you up every weekend like some kind of—” I gestured at the supplies spread across the coffee table. Compression wraps. Anti-inflammatory gel. Three different ice packs in rotation because one was never enough anymore. A tube of arnica cream I’d started buying in bulk. “Like this is normal. Like this is sustainable.”
“You know… I never asked you to do any of this.” His voice was careful, measured. “I can take care of myself.”
That was the worst part. He was right. He’d never once asked me to wait up for him after games. Never asked me to have the ice packs ready, the couch cleared, the first-aid supplies organized in order of what I’d need first. I’d done all of it on my own, unable to stop myself, unable to sit in my room and listen to him limp through the door and not come out to help.
“I know you didn’t ask.” The words scraped out of me. “That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point? Because from where I’m sitting, you’re mad at me for something I never asked you to do.”
“I’m not mad at you.” I pressed the heel of my hand against my chest, where something had gone tight and painful. “I’m mad at myself. Because I can’t stop. You walk through that door hurt, and I can’t just— I don’t know how to not take care of you.”
Something shifted in his expression. “Tanner… It’s almost over. Six more games, and then?—”
“Six more games of watching you come home looking like this?” I stood, needing distance, and paced to the window. The glass was cold against my palm when I braced myself against it. “The bruise on your shoulder from the Tennessee game still hasn’t faded. Now you’ve got fresh ones layered on top. Your ribs are so tender that you flinch when you breathe. And you want me to just keep icing you down and pretending it’s fine?”
“What do you want me to do? Quit mid-season?”
“I don’t know what I want.” The words came out raw, honest in a way I hadn’t intended. “I just know I can’t keep being the one who puts you back together every week. And I can’t figure out how to stop. It’s too close to?—”
I stopped. Pressed my forehead against the cold glass.
“To what?” Seth’s voice had gone quiet. I heard the couch creak as he shifted. “To your dad?”
My throat closed around his name.
Three weeks ago, after the Auburn game, we’d fallen asleep on this couch together. I’d let myself believe that was the hard part. Admitting I cared, letting him hold me, waking up with his arm around my waist and not running. But that had been the easy part. The hard part was everything after.
The hard part was watching him leave for the Tennessee game and spending four hours unable to breathe. Tracking his stats on three different apps, refreshing the injury report obsessively, texting Hunter at halftime because I needed someone to tell me I wasn’t losing my mind. When Seth finally walked through the door at one a.m.—limping, his shoulder already swelling, a cut above his eyebrow held together with butterfly bandages—I’d pulled him onto the couch and spent two hours icing every injury I could find. He’d fallen asleep there with his head in my lap, and I’d stayed awake watching him breathe until my own exhaustion won.
We’d been dancing around it ever since. Sharing meals, studying together, falling asleep together on the couch more nights than either of us would admit. His hand on my lower back when we walked to class. My fingers in his hair when he dozed off during movie nights. This strange, intimate limbo where we touched constantly and never talked about what it meant.
“Before I left for college, I was the one who took care of him,” I said, still facing the window. My breath fogged the glass. “When he forgot where he was. When he couldn’t remember my name.When he got angry because he knew his brain was failing, but he couldn’t stop it. It killed me to see my mom hurting, so I stepped in when I could.”
“Tanner, you don’t have to?—”
