PRESENT DAY
It always started with the sound of cleats.
That metallicclickagainst the concrete…steady, unhurried, impossible to mistake. It sliced through the quiet parking lot like a warning bell, bouncing off car doors and metal bleachers until it felt like it was echoing inside my chest.
I froze. Then swore under my breath.
Shit.
The sound was getting closer.
I slouched lower in the driver’s seat, fingers gripping the steering wheel, even though the engine wasn’t on. Through the windshield, I saw them spill out of the athletic building exit one by one, jerseys half off, helmets dangling from their hands. And then there he was.
Matthew Adler.
His name felt dangerous even in my head.
He was laughing at something one of his teammates said, head tipped back, sun catching in his black hair. He looked too good, too perfect, too everything I wasn’t supposed to want.
When his gaze flicked toward the parking lot—towardmycar—I ducked so fast I hit my knee on the steering column.
“Damn it,” I hissed, wincing, sinking lower until only my eyes cleared the edge of the dashboard. My pulse was a drum in my throat.
He couldn’t see me. He couldn’tpossiblysee me.
But for a second, it felt like he had.
I stayed like that until his voice faded into the noise of the team, until the cleats scattered and the lot emptied out again, leaving nothing but echoes and the quiet pressing in around me.
Only then did I breathe.
I was in the same parking spot as always—third row from the back, tucked between a dented pickup and a rusted-out sedan that hadn’t moved all semester. I twisted the fraying hem of my sweatshirt between my fingers, pulling it tighter until the edge rubbed my skin raw.
MatthewMattyAdler.
I knew his nickname now. And what a tight end actually did.
I knew his stats. His schedule. The way his voice dropped when he was annoyed. The slight roll of his shoulder every time he caught a pass.
I knew the sound of his laugh, the slope of his handwriting, the scent of his laundry detergent when the wind caught it just right.
All of it—catalogued. Memorized.Worshiped.
And he still didn’t even know my name.
I’d first seen him on my laptop screen. Back then, I’d thought that moment had ruined me.
But it was nothing compared to the first time I saw him in real life.
The heat clung to my skin as I walked past the row of off-campus houses, each one old and sagging but full of loudmusic. My shirt stuck to my back, and the air shimmered off the pavement, making everything feel slightly unreal.
I shouldn’t have been there.
But I’d looked it up.
Weeks after my acceptance letter came, I couldn’t sleep for three nights in a row…so I’d done some searching.
It didn’t take much, just a couple deep dives into social media. A post from a party last spring that tagged the address, a zoomed-in photo of a porch with a jersey draped over the railing, and one of those stupid “house tour” TikToks his best friend and roommate, Jace Thatcher, had posted last semester.
