Eli throws a pillow at him. “He’s trying!”
“You ran me off the track!” Colton yells at no one in particular.
“It was the cows!” Quinn protests, panicked.
“Oh,nowit’s the cows,” Micah says, mimicking him. “Classic Yoshi behavior.”
Will suddenly shrieks, “Max is camping the item boxes again!”
“Istrategize!” Max shouts, holding up the controller like it’s a sword. “This is my birthright.”
“Your birthright is losing,” I mutter as I slide past him on the screen and hurl a red shell directly at his kart. “Suck it, Waluigi.”
The entire room erupts into a chorus of groans and yells. Eli falls dramatically to the floor like he’s been mortally wounded.
“Is it weird that I’m turned on?” Will asks, voice entirely too casual.
“Nope,” Ty answers. “On brand.”
Daniel rolls his eyes. “This is why we can’t have normal game nights.”
Eli nods solemnly. “Thisisnormal.”
And just like that, someone kicks over the popcorn bowl. Eli shrieks again. Quinn panics and presses every button at once, launching a banana directly in his own path. Colton flops back on the couch like he’s just been eliminated fromSurvivor.Micah swears he was “cheated by lag,” and Will starts quotingFast & Furiousfor some reason.
I lean back on my elbows, smiling as chaos swirls around me. It’s loud. Messy. Ridiculous.
Perfect.
I’m laughing again. And it feels good.
THIRTY-TWO
SILAS
A few monthscan feel like a lifetime when your identity’s been stripped down to its bones. When you’ve burned everything you thought defined you, and there’s nothing left but smoke and silence and a question no one else can answer.
What now?
It started in therapy. That single, brutal truth named out loud—that I equated love with danger, control with safety, and that the worst thing I ever did was believe I didn’t deserve anything better.
So I made a choice. Not to win him back. Not to fix the past. Although, if I were brave enough, I would do both.
Instead, I choose to build something that doesn’t rely on power to be worth something.
I applied for a Sports Psychology certification program.
It’s virtual, flexible, built for people like me—burnt out, broken, and clawing their way toward usefulness without a whistle in their hand. It won’t give me back my job.Won’t fix the headlines. Won’t erase what happened to Xavier or the damage I left behind with Luke.
But it’s something.
I don’t tell anyone. Not even Cella, though I know she’s probably guessed something's changed. She always seems to know.
Instead, I study late at night, in between bar shifts, headphones in as I highlight notes on cognitive resilience, athletic burnout, and the psychology of belonging. I think about how many athletes I've coached who needed more than conditioning. Who needed what I never gave them.
Sometimes, I wonder if hewould’vestayed—if I’d given him the choice. If I hadn’t decided for him and sent that message, drawing the line in the sand, pretending I was doing it for his sake when I know that’s not the truth anymore.
Because it’s easier to walk away on your own terms than to stay and risk the heartbreak.
