Everything will change. New city, new team, new rhythm. There will be contracts and sponsors and scrutiny—all the things that used to be dreams before Noah. All the things that suddenly seem so much less important than the boy breathing steady and soft against my skin.
He makes a soft, muffled sound, turning blindly until he finds me, pressing his face into my chest with a sleepy sort of desperation.
“Mien…” His voice is a thread, sleep-soft and scratchy. He blinks at me, trying to find his bearings, and then a slow, sleepy smile spreads across his lips. “You’re home.”
“I’m home, baby,” I whisper back, tightening my hold around him, hand slipping under the edge of my shirt where it rides up over his hip. “Missed you.”
He hums, content, and buries his face in my neck, his arms sliding around my waist. “Missed you too,” he mumbles, words muffled by my skin. “Hate when you’re not here.”
“Not going anywhere,” I promise, even as the truth of it cracks something open in me. Because I’m not sure what happens next, or where home will be.
I hold him tighter, letting my hand wander up and down his back, tracing the curve of his spine, the soft cotton of my shirt against his skin. I feel him shiver a little, the last of the day’s tension easing out of him.
He presses closer, thigh sliding over mine, all boneless and clingy. His eyes blink open, blue and brown meeting mine in the dark. “You look tired,” he says, and there’s a little smile, a private joke just for me.
“I am tired,” I admit. “But I’d drive a thousand miles for this.”
He smiles wider, the first real one I’ve seen from him in days, and presses a kiss to my jaw. “Did you win?”
I huff a laugh, but I don’t want to talk about the game. I don’t want to talk about anything except this, this quiet moment with nothing in it except the thrum of his heartbeat and the steady pull of his breath. But I answer, anyway. “Yeah. Smashed them.”
He sighs, half-asleep, a smile twitching across his mouth. “Proud of you,” he mumbles, like it’s the simplest, most obvious thing in the world.
A lump rises in my throat. “Thanks, Blue. Means more than you know.”
And it does. There are a hundred things I want to say—about the call, about the draft, about the future that’s suddenly rushing up to meet me. But he’s falling back into sleep, and I knowtonight isn’t the night for big conversations, for what-ifs and maybes. Tonight is for this—quiet, warm skin, steady.
Still, the questions won’t leave me alone. What happens now? What if I get picked by a team across the country? What if this is the moment I always dreamed of, and it means leaving him behind? My stomach twists at the thought, but I remind myself: not tonight. He needs me here, now, not already gone in my head.
I lie there, staring at the ceiling, running through every possible scenario—teams, cities, press conferences, contracts, long-distance, starting over. My phone is still in my jeans pocket on the floor, a hundred missed texts and calls from agents, coaches, reporters, all fighting for space.
But I don’t care right now. I care about this—about the boy in my arms, the life I fought so hard to get back.
He’s moving in with my dad and starting therapy; there will be long talks and harder days. But will I even be there for all of that? Will I be there, figuring out how to keep him safe, how to keep myself sane while doing it? There’s no guidebook for this. No play-by-play. All I know is that I’ll keep showing up, keep loving him as hard as I know how.
The world is moving under our feet faster than I can process. I don’t want to lose this—don’t want to lose him to my own ambition, or the chaos that always follows the kind of success I’ve just been handed.
Tomorrow, I’ll tell him. Tomorrow I’ll say the words, and we’ll figure it out. Tonight, I just hold him, letting the steady rise and fall of his chest anchor me to the only thing that feels solid.
I wake up to Noah lying sprawled between my legs, arms crossed over my chest, and chin propped on his hands.
My first thought is that I’m still dreaming because the boy in my bed—the one looking at me with a grin so bright it practically cracks open the morning—can’t possibly be real. But then he’s burying his face in my chest, letting out this little huff of contentment, and I know it’s real because nothing in my dreams ever felt this fucking good.
My hands find his back without thinking, fingers tracing lazy lines along the warm skin beneath my shirt—his shirt now, really, because it looks better on him. I watch him for a while, just letting myself have this. There’s this look on his face—huge, open-mouthed smile, the kind that makes his cheeks round and his eyes squint, all teeth and happiness. It floors me, honestly.
I stretch under him, muscles popping, and rub the sleep from my eyes. “Morning, Blue.” My voice is a gravel scrape, but I can’t bring myself to care. Not with him looking at me like that. “You been up long?”
He shakes his head, smile not faltering. “No. I woke up, and you were snoring, so I watched you for a bit.” He nudges my chest with his chin teasingly.
I rest my hands on his back, dragging them up beneath the soft cotton of my old shirt, tracing the ridges of his spine.
“What’s with the smile, huh? Not that I’m complaining, but you look like you won the fucking lottery.”
Noah ducks his head, but he can’t hide the happiness—he practically radiates it, as if the sun’s gotten stuck under his skin.
“I just… I don’t know. I feel good.Reallygood. Happier than I have in… I don’t know, years.” He lets out a shaky breath, the grin faltering just enough to show me the truth underneath. “It scares me a little. Is it stupid that I keep thinking something’s going to come and take it away?”
God, it’s a knife in my chest—because I know that feeling, the creeping fear that happiness is just the start of another disaster. But there’s nothing I can say to make that fear disappear, not really. All I can do is hold him tighter, let my hands speak where words can’t.
