Finds me.
And just like that, I know where I’m supposed to be.
Not because I lost something and now live inside his spotlight.
Because this is what we do now.
We carry each other through the bright parts and the empty ones.
He drops thirty-one that night.
Campus loses its mind.
The sports pages go feral.
Student media post side-by-side graphics.
Someone edits a clip of him looking up into the stands after a made three and zooms in on me laughing like an idiot in his sweatshirt.
I should be embarrassed.
I’m not.
Because when he comes through the tunnel after the game, sweaty and wrecked and incandescent with adrenaline, his eyes find me before they find anybody else.
Always.
And I understand then—really understand—that this is how the HEA begins for people like us.
Not in one perfect night.
Not in one win.
In the aftermath.
In the transfer of weight.
In the way he held me when my season died and the way I can stand up now and cheer when his catches fire.
He meets me just outside the tunnel, hands finding my waist, forehead brushing mine while the arena still roars behind him.
“Hey,” he says, breathless.
“Hey.”
His smile breaks slow and lethal.
“You okay?”
I laugh softly.
“You just dropped thirty-one and you’re asking if I’m okay?”
His hands tighten just a little.
“Always.”
There it is again.
The thing that steadies me every time.
Not that he loves me.
That he keeps choosing the ordinary shape of it.
So I kiss him once, quick and smiling, and whisper against his mouth?—
“Yeah, Tristan. I’m okay. Now take me, home.”
And for the first time since the season ended, I know I mean it.
