Security is waiting by the exit.
They don’t say much. They don’t have to. One of them holds the door, the other watches me like I might break something on the way out.
As I pass through the doors—each one slamming shut behind me—I finally feel it settle in my chest. The weight. Not the loss of my job. Not even the way everything I built here just evaporated in the span of one afternoon.
It’s the certainty.
I can’t go to him.
Every instinct I have is screaming to get in my car and follow the ambulance. To sit beside his bed and hold his hand and tell him it’s going to be okay. That I’m here. That I’m not going anywhere.
But that’s the problem.
I’m the reason this happened. Not the hit. Not the play. Me.
If I show up—if I hover, if I cling, if I let anyone see how deep this runs—I don’t just lose my job. I put a target on his back. I turn him into a headline. A scandal. A story that never lets him just be a player again.
Luke deserves better than that.
He deserves a clean slate. A future that isn’t tangled up in my past mistakes, my grief, my inability to let go.
So I do the only thing I have left.
I choose him.
I pull my phone out of my pocket. My hands shake just enough to piss me off.
One message. That’s all I allow myself.
Me: You’re going to be okay, Luke. You don’t need me anymore. Please find love again someday.
I stare at the screen for a long time before I hit send. Then I delete my profile and remove the app from my phone, before going into my contacts and blocking his actual phone number too. It’s the only way I’m going to be strong enough to protect him in the only way I know how. I cut the threads that connect us before I can unravel them and run straight back to him.
It feels like tearing something out of my chest with my bare hands. The same as lighting myself on fire and letting the fire take me. But loving him means walking away. Even if it destroys me.
I step into the afternoon sun, the noise of the stadium still echoing behind me, and keep walking. Because this time—I won’t let history repeat itself.
TWENTY-NINE
LUKE
Three days.I’ve been in the hospital for three days.
No clue where my phone is. It’s probably still in my locker, shoved into my duffel under my clothes. No contact with the outside world unless it walks through the damn door.
And Silas hasn’t.
Which, yeah. Secret relationship. Assistant coach. Bad optics. I get it.
But he hasn’t even called the useless phone next to my bed.
And that’s what’s driving me insane.
Coach Harris came by yesterday. He stood awkwardly at the foot of my bed and told me I scared the hell out of everyone. Said I’d probably have a couple weeks of light work ahead. No practice. No lifting. Just rest. His voice was steady, but his eyes—his eyes were too kind.
He knows something.
He didn’t say anything, but… he knows. And it scares me a little.
