I didn’t go down. I kept pushing, arms tight around the ball.
But the light shifted.
Everything slowed. My legs were moving, but the ground felt soft beneath my cleats. My chest squeezed—no sharp pain, just pressure. Weight. I blinked hard, but my vision narrowed anyway. My arms felt cold. Not weak. Cold.
I heard yelling. Not names. Just voices.
Three more steps.
I tried to plant. My foot slid. Not from contact—from something else.
Then I wasn’t upright anymore.
I didn’t feel the turf.
I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew it was bad. My gut twisted, my lungs heaved…then everything went dark.
35
SLOANE
Iheard the change in the crowd before I saw it.
It wasn’t a cheer. It wasn’t a groan. It was a full-body shift in sound that prickled across my skin and hit the base of my neck. I lifted my head from the tablet, eyes already searching.
Oliver was down.
Not slow to get up. Not crouched. Flat.
Flat on the turf. Motionless.
I froze for half a second. Then I moved.
My headset dropped to the bench. I stepped over the sideline before Ivy even spoke. She yelled for William. I didn’t wait. My shoes hit the turf, and I didn’t stop running. The field shifted under each stride. I felt the weight in my limbs. My chest was already tight.
He hadn’t moved. He wasn’t moving.
Why wasn’t he fucking moving?
Get up. Oliver. Get up!
My heart lodged in my throat as I stared at his still body. The roar of the stadium dulled to static. Everything else went muffled, like the world had been dunked underwater. My pulsehammered in my ears, louder than the crowd, louder than the refs—louder than reason.
Every training drill, every worst-case scenario I’d rehearsed in sterile meeting rooms evaporated. Nothing prepared me for this.
I couldn’t feel my feet hit the ground anymore. I was momentum and terror, sprinting toward the one thing I couldn’t lose.
Please. Please move. God, just breathe. I’ll take a twitch, a curse, anything. Just—move.
I reached him first. I dropped to my knees. My gloves were on but useless. I didn’t need to palpate vitals to know something was wrong.
“Oliver,” I said, loud, sharp. “Oliver. Look at me.”
No response. No blink. No shift in breathing.
William dropped beside me, and we took off his helmet. Ivy came in next. Booth barked into his headset behind us. The cart was already being waved in. The stadium noise was gone. It had dropped out completely. I couldn’t hear anything but the rush of blood in my ears.
“Pulse is elevated,” I said. My voice cracked. “Chest is barely rising.”
