I watch him take the mound in the seventh, the game tied, and the noise of fifty-two thousand people rises to something physical.
He doesn’t look toward section 214.
He doesn’t need to.
We both know I’m here.
The first batter sees three pitches and hits none of them. The second takes two and then watches the third clip the corner with the resigned expression of someone who already knew the outcome before they stepped to the plate. The third batter works the count to three and two, and the stadium breathes like one organism, held, waiting, and then Reece throws a curveball that breaks so late and so precisely it looks less like physics and morelike intention made visible, and the umpire’s arm goes up, and the place comes apart.
The Wildcats take the lead in the eighth on a two-run double by Martinez.
They hold it in the ninth.
When the final out is recorded, the crowd becomes something enormous and uncontained, and I’m on my feet with everyone else because I have been on my feet since the seventh inning and, at some point, stopped pretending otherwise.
I watch Reece come off the mound and see his teammates meet him, the hands on his back, the brief and genuine celebration of men who trust each other with something real. I watch him look toward the dugout, and then I watch him look toward section 214.
He finds me immediately.
He’s too far away to read his expression clearly, but I’ve learned his face well enough by now to know certainty when I see it.
He breaks from the post-game gathering on the field and starts toward the first base line, toward the stands, and the crowd notices. Of course, the crowd notices Reece Steele walking purposefully anywhere post-game while cameras roll is the kind of thing fifty-two thousand people pay attention to.
He reaches the railing and starts climbing.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I don’t check it.
Because I’m already moving.
Not waiting. Not calculating the exposure, mapping the fallout, or listening for the sound of every shoe I’ve been waiting to drop since the night he kissed me outside my studio on a dark street. I kissed him back and called it a mistake.
I run down the stairs.
We meet in the middle, him climbing from the field side, me coming down from the seats, and the exact moment we reacheach other, the stadium figures out what it’s watching, and the roar that goes up is the kind that starts in your chest before you hear it.
“Hi,” he says, slightly breathless, and the smile on his face is the real one, the one without performance.
“Hi, yourself,” I say.
He cups my face in both hands.
I reach up, grip the front of his jersey, and neither of us hesitates.
He kisses me in the middle of Wildcat Stadium, in front of fifty-two thousand people, and by morning, however many cameras are currently making this the lead story on every sports broadcast. The crowd goes absolutely feral, and I don’t hear any of it.
He makes a quiet and completely undone sound against my lips.
My own heartbeat pounds in my ears.
Reece’s hands cradle my face, steady and warm with the particular care of someone handling something precious. I feel the solid certainty of him, the real weight of a person who has been here through every version of my fear and stayed anyway, and is still here, right now, mid-celebration, in front of the entire city, choosing this with the same deliberate intention he brings to everything that matters.
I press closer.
His arms slide around me.
And for the first time in longer than I can account for, I am not waiting for theother shoe to drop.
I’m not mapping the exit.
