Tanner’s face did something tangled. “They want you to quit?”
“Via medical withdrawal, yeah. They’ve been pushing for it since I got my first concussion sophomore year.”
“Did you—” He stopped. Started again. “Is that something you’re considering?”
The question landed heavier than it should have. I thought about yesterday, about the way the world had tilted sideways for a few seconds after that hit. About waking up on the ground with the team doctor’s face swimming above me, asking me what day it was. I’d go to my grave before admitting to anyone that I was pretty sure I’d beenoutfor at least a few seconds. And none of my teammates would say a word about it either. Not when we were on track for a bowl game bid this year.
“No,” I said. “I’m finishing the season. Three more games and a bowl game if we’re lucky. Then I’m done.”
“By choice?”
“Yeah. I’m not going pro. I know my limits.” I gestured at the laptop. “This is what I actually want to do. Athletic training, sports medicine, working with equipment designers like you to keep players safer. I like playing, but I don’t love it enough to destroy my body for it.”
Tanner was quiet for a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough. “That’s probably the smartest thing I’ve heard anyone say about football.”
“My family doesn’t think so. They think any connection to the sport is stupid.”
“And you’re doing it anyway.”
“Yeah. I am.”
Something shifted in his expression, something I couldn’t quite read. He turned back to his laptop, but I felt the weight of whatever he wasn’t saying.
We worked for another hour before I had to admit my ribs needed ice and probably some ibuprofen. Tanner disappearedinto the kitchen and came back with both, plus a heating pad I hadn’t known we owned.
“You didn’t have to?—”
“Lie down,” he said, not quite looking at me. “Heat first, then ice. Twenty minutes each.”
I stretched out on the couch, and Tanner arranged the heating pad against my ribs with measured hands. His fingers brushed my side through my T-shirt, clinical and impersonal, and I had to close my eyes against the surge of want that hit me.
This was a bad idea. Wanting Tanner McBride was possibly the worst idea I’d ever had, and I’d made plenty of questionable decisions in my life.
He was Hunter’s best friend. He was still grieving his father. He had visible trauma responses to the sport I played, the sport that defined most of my college experience.
And he looked at me sometimes like I was the answer to a question he was too scared to ask.
“I’m going to do some reading,” Tanner said, settling into the armchair across from the couch. He pulled out his phone, but I caught him glancing at me every few minutes, monitoring.
I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the way my chest went warm every time I felt his attention land on me.
When I’d movedin at the end of the spring semester, I’d been desperate enough to take any roommate situation that wasn’t my family’s house. My previous roommate had graduated, andI’d been scrambling to find a place when Hunter mentioned Tanner needed someone to split rent.
“He can’t afford the apartment alone,” Hunter said. “And you need a place that isn’t a random Craigslist situation.”
“Will he care that I play football?”
Hunter’s pause told me everything. “His dad died from CTE last year. So probably yeah, he’ll care. But he’s not going to make it your problem.”
I should have said no. Should have found literally anyone else. But I’d met Tanner a few times before—at Hunter’s place, at a party once, brief interactions that shouldn’t have added up to anything. Then Patrick died, and I’d shown up at the funeral without really understanding why. Stood in the back row because I didn’t know his family, didn’t know him, not really. I’d watched Tanner hold himself together at the graveside, shoulders rigid, face blank, and something about that stillness had cracked me open.
Afterward, Hunter had asked me to check on him. I’d found Tanner on his kitchen floor, unable to move, and I’d sat beside him without asking permission. We’d stayed there for over an hour. He never said a word, and neither did I.
I hadn’t thought much about it at the time—just seemed like the right thing to do. But something about him had hooked under my ribs and refused to let go.
We’d met at a coffee shop to discuss the roommate logistics. Tanner had shown up fifteen minutes early, already jittery from what was clearly his second or third coffee of the day.
He looked me straight in the eye and said, “I won’t go to your games. I won’t watch them. I can’t.”
