She leans back on her hands, close enough where I feel the warmth of her through the blanket. I think about how long it must’ve taken to get back here. How much patience that kind of healing requires. It makes my shoulder injury feel like a papercut.
“How’s the shoulder feeling?” she asks.
I stretch my neck, side to side, and then roll both shoulders. “Much better. Needed a little more time for it to heal. But, it didn’t really matter after all.”
In this moment—when she looks at me without saying a single word—I know I’m going to tell her everything. She’s going to be the first person who gets the full story. Given how she told me about her failed engagement, it almost feels like I owe her a little more of myself. Fuck, maybe I even owe it to myself.
“So… the shoulder,” I start. “That’s part of why I was dismissed from the team.” I pause, trying to get my nerves under control, then keep going. “The head athletic trainer wanted me back sooner than I was comfortable with. And I don’t mean mostly healed. I mean—” I take a breath, swallow it, and force myself forward. “He wanted injections. Pain meds that we don’t talk about. Enough that I wouldn’t feel it during the game and could deal with whatever came after.”
Her eyes soften immediately. “Oh no.”
I nod. “Yeah. He didn’t care about the long term. We were finishing the season strong, talking postseason. That was all that mattered to him.”
I stare out at the water for a second, grounding myself. “I told him no. More than once. And he made it clear it wasn’t something I was supposed to talk about, so I didn’t. I kept it to myself.”
My stomach drops as the memory surfaces—us in the training room, the way he’d assumed he had leverage. Like I’d fold.
But I wasn’t a rookie. I knew my body. I still had years left on my contract and every intention of seeing it through. I was thinking big picture.
He wasn’t.
“It was the right call,” I say quietly. “I wasn’t even close to ready. I could barely lift my arm high enough to brush my teeth. Being on the court wasn’t anywhere on my radar.”
Sadie doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t rush to fix it. She listens.
“That must have been hard,” she says softly.
“It was.”
“So, he got sick of you telling him no? Is that what happened at the game?” She asks this with honesty, like she’s trying to understand.
Sadie may be the first person to do that. No agenda. No news outlet to report to. Simply trying to understand what happened during the viral video clip that seemed to take my reputation down in a matter of seconds.
“One of our second-year players pulled his hamstring,” I reveal. “It had been lingering for a couple months, but he tweaked it again during the game. We were tied going into the fourth quarter, and it was basically a must-win.”
I shake my head. “I overheard the trainer leaning on him. Telling him to keep going. Not to give up on the team. Not to let anyone down.”
Sadie drops her head into her hands, and something in my chest tightens—like she already knows where this is headed.
“He’s a kid,” I continue. “Can’t even legally drink yet. And here’s this grown man, someone in a position of power, trying to bully him intoplaying through it. I could see it on his face—how badly he didn’t want to go back in. But he started to agree anyway.”
I swallow. “That’s when I lost it.”
I glance down at my hands, then back up at her. “What happened at the end of the bench—that was me stepping in. Standing up for someone who didn’t feel like he could do it himself. A player who was legitimately injured and had no business being back on the floor.”
I exhale slowly, the weight of it still there.
“And I’d do it again.”
Sadie loops her arm around my bicep, easy and sure, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. She leans her head toward my shoulder, her warmth radiating through the thin fabric of my shirt.
Something in me gives. Melts. Like I’ve been bracing for impact and suddenly realize it’s not coming.
“Colson,” she says quietly. “I’m so sorry.”
There’s no judgment in it. No attempt to smooth it over or reframe it into something easier to swallow. Only understanding. Space.
Her thumb presses lightly into my arm, grounding, steady. It tells me she believes me. That she sees what it cost me to do the right thing—and how unfair it feels to be the one carrying the consequences.
