CHAPTER FORTY
Tristan
The article goes live at 6:12 a.m.
I know the exact time because I am already awake.
Not out of virtue.
Because in-season sleep is fragile and my body has stopped trusting alarms to drag it into violence on time.
I’m in the kitchen of my dorm suite while Kane’s barefoot, half dressed for lift, making coffee strong enough to qualify as a felony when my phone starts vibrating hard against the counter.
Kane, who is somehow upright this early without looking legally dead, glances over from where he’s eating eggs out of a plastic container.
“That’s either terrible or you got traded.”
I wipe one hand on my sweats, pick up the phone, and see Stella’s name at the top of the notifications.
Then I see the rest.
Leo.
Jade.
Three teammates.
A message from our SID.
One from my mother that just says:
Handle it.
Well.
That’s never attached to anything pleasant.
I open Stella first.
There’s no message.
Just a link.
That’s worse.
I tap it.
And there it is.
One of those thin, poisonous campus-adjacent sports-and-culture sites that likes to pretend it’s journalism when really it’s just prettier gossip with ad revenue.
A photo of Stella and me outside the arena from two nights ago—my hand at her waist, her face turned up toward mine, both of us caught in one of those private little seconds people think the world doesn’t notice until they see it frozen on a screen.
The headline:
From Queen of the Court to Courtside Queen? Inside Stella Cortez’s post-playoff pivot to Stanford Basketball’s hottest fangirl and WAG.
My jaw locks so hard I taste pressure.
