I saw it arrive.
His face changed before he moved. Coach. Player. Vanessa. Olivia. The season. The room. The door.
He stepped back so abruptly his shoulder hit the shelving again.
I let go.
That mattered. I made myself let go.
Jace looked at my hand like it had left a mark.
Maybe it had.
Neither of us spoke.
Outside, a cart rolled down the hallway. Someone laughed too loudly, distant and normal. The building had continued existing while we committed ourselves to something that could not be undone.
Jace bent and picked up his helmet with hands that were not steady.
“I have to go back,” he said.
His voice was rough.
“Yes.”
He swallowed and looked at me then. Really looked.
There was no triumph in him. No relief that lasted. Want still lived there, unmistakable, but now it had consequences wrapped around it.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he said.
The honest answer was that I didn’t either.
But standing there with his taste still on my tongue, I knew I could not give him a lie dressed as certainty.
“Neither do I.”
That seemed to scare him more than any order could have.
He nodded once, too fast, and reached for the door.
“Jace.”
He stopped with his hand on the knob.
I should have said something useful. Something clear. Something that returned us to safe ground.
There was no safe ground.
“Get through practice,” I said.
His shoulders rose and fell on one controlled breath.
“Okay.”
Then he opened the door and left.
I stayed in the equipment room alone.
