“Yeah.” I pulled him closer, thinking about Thanksgiving, about the phone calls I’d been ignoring, about the family who didn’t want to know me. “We need to figure out the details for the holidays.”
“We should.” His hand found mine, squeezed. “But not tonight.”
“No?”
“Tonight I just want this.” He pressed a kiss over my heart. “Tomorrow we can figure out the rest.”
He was right. We had time. We had each other. And there were words building in my chest that I wasn’t ready to say yet—words that felt too big for this moment, too important to rush. I’d almost said them earlier, in the heat of the moment, when he was looking at me like I was the answer to every question he’d ever asked. But those words deserved more than a desperate confession in the middle of sex. They deserved daylight. Intention. The certainty that I could back them up with everything I had.
Soon. I’d tell him soon.
13
TANNER
“Landry! Hey, Landry!”
I looked up from my laptop, already knowing what I’d see. Seth had texted twenty minutes ago that he was grabbing coffee on his way to the athletic complex, and I’d deliberately chosen a table in the back corner, hoping he’d have time to sit for at least a few minutes. He hadn’t, but he had swung by to give me a quick shoulder squeeze and a reminder that he’d be home late.
I watched as two guys in Gray Wolves gear flagged him down on his way out. “Dude, that catch against Ole Miss? Insane. My dad can’t stop talking about you going pro.”
The response was muffled, but I caught the familiar cadence of Seth’s laugh—self-deprecating, easy. The sound I usually loved.
“Nah, man. Just got lucky.”
“Lucky my ass. You’re having a career year!”
I turned back to my screen, but my fingers had frozen over the keyboard. The fluid dynamics problem set blurred in front ofme. Before I could stop myself, I was typing Seth’s name into the search bar.
LANDRY’S BREAKOUT SEASON: Gray Wolves Receiver Having Career Year
The headline stared back at me from the campus paper’s sports section. Three days before Thanksgiving, and the algorithm had been trying to show me this for a week. I’d just been avoiding it.
My thumb hovered over the link. I should close the tab. Should go back to the problem set waiting in my bag. Instead, I tapped the headline and watched the article load, my coffee going cold on the table beside me.
Seth Landry has been one of the most pleasant surprises of the Gray Wolves’ season. The senior receiver has posted career-high numbers across every major category, including receptions (58), receiving yards (847), and touchdowns (9). His performance against Ole Miss—7 catches, 112 yards, 2 TDs—drew attention from NFL scouts who attended the game.
I stopped reading.
NFL scouts.
The words sat in my chest like a stone. Seth had told me he wasn’t good enough to go pro. Wasn’t dedicated enough. Didn’t want it. I’d believed him because I’d needed to believe him—because the alternative was loving someone who might choose the thing that had destroyed my father.
But people changed their minds. People got better. People had amazing seasons and drew attention from scouts, and suddenly, the dream they’d dismissed became possible.
I closed the article without finishing it.
The coffee shop buzzed around me—the clatter of dishes, the hiss of the espresso machine, someone laughing too loudly at the counter. Normal sounds. College sounds. The kind of ambient noise I used to find comforting, back when I was just another stressed engineering student instead of someone whose boyfriend’s face was showing up in sports sections.
I pulled up the article again. Scrolled past the statistics I’d already memorized. Found what I was looking for near the bottom.
When asked about his future plans, Landry remained tight-lipped. “I’m focused on the team right now,” he told reporters. “We’ve got a real shot at a bowl game, and that’s all I’m thinking about.” His coach, however, had stronger words: “Seth has the talent to play at the next level. It would be a shame to see that go to waste.”
A shame. Like choosing a different path was a failure. Like walking away from something that could destroy you was a waste.
I thought about my father, about all the people who’d told him how talented he was, how much potential he had, how it would be a shame to quit when he still had good years left. He’d listened to them. He’d stayed in the game. And now he was in the ground, and I was sitting in a coffee shop trying to breathe through the panic clawing at my chest.
My phone buzzed. I silenced it without looking.
