“It’s not a lot of money or anything. And it might be nothing. But?—”
“Stop.” He set down his coffee and came around the counter, spinning my barstool until I faced him. His hands settled on my thighs, warm and solid. “It’s not nothing. Your work matters. And Holloway saw that, which means other people will too.”
I looked away, uncomfortable with the sincerity in his eyes. “Lincoln did most of the talking. I just nodded and tried not to throw up.”
“Bullshit.” Seth caught my chin, tilted my face back toward his. “You walked into a meeting with a VP of R&D and showed him something worth investing in. That was all you.”
The praise settled somewhere in my chest, warm and unfamiliar. For years, people had looked at me and seen Patrick McBride's son, the kid holding his family together, the one who needed to be strong. Seth looked at me and saw something else entirely. “Thanks,” I said quietly.
He kissed me, soft and unhurried, tasting like coffee. “I’m proud of you.”
I pulled him closer, hooking my fingers in the waistband of his sweats. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He smiled against my mouth. “Now eat your breakfast. I have to leave in an hour.”
I let him go reluctantly, watching him disappear into the bedroom to start getting ready. The apartment felt different when he was about to leave for a game—charged, somehow, with all the things that could go wrong. I’d gotten better at managing it. Better at reminding myself that anxiety wasn’t prophecy, that my fear didn’t create the outcomes I dreaded.
Better. Not cured.
I finished my eggs, washed the dishes, and tried to lose myself in a book I’d been meaning to read for months. But my mind kept drifting back to something that had been building for days, ever since I got back from Huntsville.
I wanted to go to the game. My mom hadn’t made it to all of Dad’s games, but she was there as often as she could be. She hated seeing him go down, but that didn’t stop her from showing up to support him.
The thought terrified me. I'd avoided stadiums since Dad got bad, had barely watched a game until Seth became impossible to ignore. Even then, I kept it at a distance—screens where I could control the volume, mute the commentary, look away when I needed to. Going in person meant surrendering that control. Putting myself inside the noise instead of observing it from safety.
But this was Seth’s second-to-last regular-season game. His last season, period, because I believed him when he said he wasn’t going pro despite the scouts sniffing around, despite the coaches pushing him to reconsider. He’d chosen this. Chosen us,chosen a future that didn’t involve grinding his brain down for strangers’ entertainment.
And I wanted to see him play. Really see him, not through a screen that sanitized the violence into something almost palatable. I wanted to be there when his team won the division. I wanted to be part of it, even if being part of it meant facing everything I’d been running from.
Seth emerged from the bedroom in his warm-up gear, duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He stopped when he saw my face.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I stood, crossed to him, smoothed my hands over the front of his jacket even though it didn’t need smoothing. “I want to come today.”
He went very still. “To the game?”
“Yeah.”
“Tanner—” He searched my face, looking for something. The cracks, maybe. The places where I might shatter. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know I don’t have to. I want to.”
“Are you sure? Because if you’re doing this for me?—”
“I’m doing it for me.” The words came out steadier than I felt. “I can’t keep hiding from it forever. And I don’t want your last season to be something I only experienced through a screen.”
He was quiet for a long moment, his hands coming up to bracket my face. I could see him warring with himself—the part that wanted me there, the part that knew what it would cost me.
“If it gets to be too much,” he said finally, “you leave. Don’t stay and white-knuckle it to prove something. Just go.”
“I know.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
He kissed me, harder than the gentle morning kiss in the kitchen. When he pulled back, his eyes were bright. He grabbed his phone from the counter and typed quickly.
