“About us?” he said, rumbling behind me. “No chance.”
“Because you’re super obvious about being obsessed with me?”
A hiccupped laugh jostled me in his arms. “I—” he started, clearly not expecting that. “Is it a problem if I am obsessed?”
The sun was warm, but that wasn’t the reason I felt my entire body notch up a few degrees. I tilted my head needing to see his face. “Do I really have that much power to get you addictedandobsessed, Connor O’Riley?”
The depth of his expression knocked the humor out of the question faster than I’d intended. “Sunshine,” he purred, his voice somehow not drifting away in the breeze but sticking to my skin, my lips, my cheek, as though it was a caress. “You’ve had that power for a while.”
I hadn’t expected him to answer like that. The joke I’d started felt a lot more important, especially with the way he was looking at me.
That four-letter word whispered in my mind, and I wanted to know if he heard it too.
41
Connor
I stood near the railing, arms folded, watching the Valkyries close the game out. Being here would never get old.
Teddy was everywhere in those final minutes. Her voice carried even up into the stands, cutting clean through the chaos. She moved with purpose, pointing, directing, demanding. When the whistle went, she pulled her team in tight, and memories of that high assaulted me from my own wins. Though, this felt like more. These teams were making history, and I got to witness it.
The fans surged toward the barriers almost immediately. Kids leaning over the railings, signs waving, phones raised. Teddy usually went straight there once the formalities were done. She always made time.
So when Micah got to her first, I noticed.
Micah wasn’t celebrating with her team. She took Teddy by the arm and leaned in, close enough that whatever she said wasn’t for anyone else. Teddy’s posture shifted instantly. A subtle collapse through her shoulders, like something had dropped out from under her.
She nodded once and turned away from the fans without a backward glance. Micah kept hold of her, steering her off the pitch and straight toward the tunnel.
Something was wrong.
My feet carried me inside, needing to find her. Micah was at the tunnel entrance, phone in her hand, jaw set. She ended the call the second she saw me.
“No,” she said immediately.
I stopped short. “What?”
“She needs a minute,” Micah said. “Go back to your seat.”
“Micah, come on,” I said, verging on begging as my heart beat harder. “Has something happened?”
She glanced down the corridor, then back at me, lowering her voice. “Her dad’s been reported missing in action.”
Her dad. I remembered what she’d said about him at the diner, about his career, but the reality of what he does, the risks he takes, never occurred to me or how it would affect Teddy.
“When?” I asked.
“Yesterday,” Micah said. “We just found out. That’s all we’ve been told.”
“Is she okay?” I knew she wouldn’t be, but a part of me needed confirmation. It was the same part that was thrashing against my ribs right now.
Her mouth opened, then closed again, like she was choosing between answers. “No,” she shared with a sad shake of her head. “She’s not.”
That was it. Whatever restraint I’d been clinging to slipped. “I need to see her.”
Micah’s brow furrowed, her head tilting as she assessed me. I didn’t know if Teddy had the chance to speak to her since yesterday, but I wasn’t about to take that from her either. But the urgency was there in my voice that would betray me. The exposure of it, the way my clear desperation carried more weightthan concern or courtesy ever could. That wasn’t how you talked about a teammate’s captain. That wasn’t even how you talked about a friend.
She moved to block me. “Don’t.”
