Not yet?
Not officially?
Not until I got back and stopped running and finally did this the way I should have done it years ago?
All of those answers sounded weak.
And worse, false.
Jalen read my face and grinned.
“Ah. So, yes.”
I looked back at the stream.
Stella rose for another swing, body arching clean and violent through the air, and put the ball away cross-court like she had a grudge against gravity itself.
Kane dropped onto the other bed.
“She plays like she’s pissed at God.”
I watched her land, jaw set, eyes blazing, teammates crashing into her.
“She plays like she means it.”
That shut both of them up for a second.
The whole rest of the match, I sat there with my forearms on my thighs and my heart beating too hard for a man who was supposed to have his own game to worry about.
Every serve she hit, I felt low in my gut.
Every jump made something in me tighten.
Every point she won felt personal.
And somewhere in the middle of the fourth set, watching her blaze through exhaustion like her body had turned into a weapon and her will had stopped being negotiable, something clicked hard and clean inside me.
All this time, I had been treating Stella like a threat. Keeping her at arms length felt safer for my game—the disciplined, locked-in version of myself I’d been trying to build out of all the worst parts of being me.
But watching her then—sweaty, ruthless, burning through a playoff match like she had fire stitched under her skin—I saw the truth.
She wasn’t pulling me off my path.
She made me want to deserve the damn thing.
That’s different.
Dangerously different.
Because distraction makes you smaller.
Stella did the opposite.
She made every part of me feel more awake.
More honest.
More hungry.
