“I know what you do.”
“Yeah. I just…” He ran a hand through his damp hair. “I don’t want it to be weird between us. If me talking about games or coming home banged up is going to be a problem?—”
“It’s not.” The words came out sharper than I intended. I made myself take a breath. “I mean, it’s your life. I’m not so emotionally fragile that I need you to tiptoe around me.”
Seth studied me for a long moment. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
“Okay,” he said finally. “But if it ever is a problem, you can tell me.”
“Sure.”
Thankfully, Seth dropped it after that. He picked up his fork and went back to eating, and I told myself I was grateful for the silence.
After dinner, I washed the dishes while Seth dried. Our shoulders brushed once, reaching for the same towel, and I stepped back faster than I needed to.
“I’m gonna crash early,” Seth said when the kitchen was clean. “Long day.”
“Yeah. Good idea.”
He headed for the hallway, then paused. “Thanks for dinner.”
“You offered first.”
“Still.” He gave me a small smile, tired around the edges. “Night, Tanner.”
“Night.”
I grabbed my laptop and settled on the couch, pulling up the test data again. The numbers blurred in front of me.
Six more Saturdays until the regular season ended. Longer if they made a bowl game.
I could do this. I could put on the headphones and disappear into games that had nothing to do with real life. I could spend game days in the lab, building padding that might save someone someday. I could share an apartment with a football player without letting it get under my skin.
Seth was my roommate. Hunter’s friend. Nothing more complicated than that.
I focused on the data and pretended I believed it.
2
SETH
I woke up Sunday morning with my ribs on fire.
The first breath came out shallow, catching hard against the bruising along my left side. I lay still, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the worst of it to pass. When it didn’t, I gritted my teeth and pushed myself upright. The movement sent sharp, insistent pain radiating through my torso. My mouth opened before I could stop it, and I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek to keep the sound from escaping.
Tanner’s room was just down the hall, and he couldn’t know how bad this was.
I’d learned that lesson early. The first time I’d come home limping, he’d gone pale in a way that had nothing to do with me and everything to do with his father. Patrick McBride had spent fifteen years in the NFL before CTE hollowed him out from the inside.
So I’d gotten good at hiding it. Downplaying the hits, brushing off the bruises, pretending my body wasn’t keeping score of every collision.
I rolled out of bed slowly, testing each breath to see how much the defensive end had actually done when he’d blindsided me yesterday. Nothing broken—I’d know if something was broken. Just deep tissue bruising, the kind that would take a week to fade and hurt like hell every time I moved wrong.
I pressed my palm flat against my ribs and breathed through it.
Fine. I was fine.
The apartment was quiet. I checked my phone out of habit—six thirty-eight a.m. Three missed calls from my father last night after I’d passed out, and two texts I didn’t bother reading. I silenced the notifications and tossed the phone onto my nightstand.
