Miguel snorts. I huff out a breath that might be a laugh.
“Agreed,” Dad says after a beat. He squeezes her hand back, then looks at me. Really looks at me. “I am proud of you,” he says again, quieter than he did in the hallway. “For how you played. For… how you spoke.”
“Thanks,” I manage.
Miguel squeezes my hand under the table so hard it nearly hurts.
The food arrives. Conversation slides, a little awkwardly, back toward safer topics. How Anderson almost took out the mascot at one point. Mom’s ongoing feud with the GPS voice. Miguel’s latest nightmare wiring job.
Dad didn’t exactly give us his blessing. Didn’t give us some glowing paternal speech about love being love. This isn’t a tidy acceptance arc. It’s messy and uneven and full of barbed points we’ll still hit.
But he also didn’t pull away.
He didn’t say, “Break up or else.”
He said, “I’m proud of you.”
TWENTY-NINE
MIGUEL
Caleb is quiet the entire walk back to the team hotel. Not withdrawn—just full. Brimming. Holding too many things behind those eyes that go shiny when he feels too much and thinks too hard.
The winter air is cold enough that his breath fogs. He shoves his hands in the pockets of his puffy team jacket, head down, backpack slung over one shoulder, curls still damp from his shower. He looks young and exhausted and stupidly beautiful in the dull yellow light of the parking lot.
I want to kiss him right here.
I want to take his face in both hands and tell him he did everything right.
I want to drag him up against the nearest wall and make him forget every second of that dinner.
But I wait.
I wait until we’re in the elevator where it’s just us. No teammates. No parents.
No one.
He blows out a breath the second the doors close.
“That was…”
I don’t let him finish, because I crowd him back against the mirrored wall, one hand braced beside his head, the other cupping his jaw, my thumb brushing the soft edge of his bottom lip.
He inhales sharply.
I rest my forehead against his, eyes closed. “You were incredible today.”
“On the court or?—”
“All of it,” I growl. “The game, the dinner, the way you talked to him, the way you told the truth without apologizing for it. I’ve never been prouder of you. Ever.”
The elevator dings on the sixth floor.
Caleb barely has time to breathe before I lace our fingers together and pull him down the hall, swift and purposeful.
By the time he gets the keycard out, he’s trembling.
The door clicks open.
