I pull her into my arms, and she wraps hers around my neck, pressing her forehead against my neck.
“Have you talked to your mom since everything came out?” I ask.
She tenses beneath me, but I try to calm her by running my hand along her thighs.
“No,” she says quietly. “Not yet.”
“Maybe you should.”
She lifts her head to look at me.
“I don’t even know what I’d say. Where I’d even start.”
She exhales slowly. She brushes her finger along the collar of my shirt, as if she’s absentmindedly thinking about how the conversation would play out.
“I keep thinking about the money,” she says. “About how my father paid her years ago.”
I stay quiet, letting her keep talking.
“And we lived like we had nothing,” she says. “We moved constantly. She struggled my whole life. I wore the same coat for three winters, even after there was a hole torn under the arm and the sleeves barely passed my wrists.”
Her voice doesn’t crack despite the frustration I can hear in her tone. It just stays even in a way that tells me she’s said these things in her head a hundred times before.
“I just don’t understand it,” she continues. “If he gave her money, why did it always feel like we had none?”
I slide my thumb slowly along her hip.
“Maybe there’s more to it than you know,” I suggest quietly. “Maybe that’s why you should talk to her about it.”
She exhales through her nose.
“I’m just still so upset. That she never told me,” she murmurs. “About any of it.”
Her eyes lift back to mine.
“You deserve answers,” I tell her.
She looks at me for a moment, like she’s weighing what the price those answers could come with.
“There’s something I need to tell you too,” I say after a second.
Her attention shifts fully to me.
“When Coach benched me… it wasn’t just about my shoulder.”
Her body goes still.
“He brought you up,” I say. “Told me he couldn’t afford distractions. Warned me my future would be at risk if I couldn’t keep my head on straight.”
Her fingers curl slightly into my shirt.
“He made it clear that if I wanted a shot at playing professionally, I needed to stay away from anything that would complicate things.”
Tears fill the brim of her eyes, but she doesn’t interrupt.
“I thought I was being smart,” I admit. “I told myself I was protecting everything I’d worked for.”
My thumb slides slowly along her back, grounding myself as much as her.
