Instead, you lit the match.
I could see it all playing out—the photos, the headlines, the team scrambling to do damage control. Her name next to mine, her reputation burning just as fast as mine ever had.
I scrubbed a hand over my face, exhaling hard. The sound filled the room, too loud in the quiet.
So now you take the burn.
That felt right. It was the only thing left to do. Let the league fine me, let the sponsors pull deals, let the team bench me for the rest of the damn season. I’d take it all if it meant she could breathe without my shadow crowding her.
The fluorescent lights flickered once, humming low like the building itself was tired of me.
I closed my eyes, head still tipped back against the locker. All I could see was her standing on that stage—chin high, words steady, pretending her world wasn’t splintering underneath her heels.
I’d thought I was the one who’d ruined her peace. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe all I’d done was show her what it looked like to stop pretending.
Still, the silence pressed down harder. The kind of silence that felt earned.
And in it, I sat—letting the burn do what it was meant to do.
By the time I stepped outside, the noise was already waiting for me.
The sound of it hit first—the sharp pop of camera shutters, the low hum of reporters calling my name, the high edge of microphones scraping against one another. It sounded like static, like the world had turned into white noise with my name buried somewhere in the middle of it.
I pulled my hoodie up, kept my head down, and shouldered my bag. The concrete under my feet felt too solid, the air too cold. For a second, I almost laughed. It was ridiculous—how fast it all moved, how a game, a look, a moment could turn into a headline before you even caught your breath.
“Beckett! Is it true you?—?”
“Did you and Reynolds?—?”
“Was Ellery James?—?”
I didn’t answer any of them. I didn’t even slow down.
My cleats hit the pavement with a rhythm that matched my heartbeat. One step, then another. Every shout behind me got fainter, swallowed by the hum of engines and the blur of flashbulbs.
If they’re going to call me the villain, I thought, I’ll at least be one who tells the truth.
I’d spent my whole career trying to be the version of myself everyone else could stomach—the reformed player, the redemption story, the guy who learned his lesson. But the truth? The truth was I never cared what the league thought, or what sponsors thought, or what the papers printed.
The only thing I cared about was her.
And if that made me the bad guy, fine. I could live with that. What I couldn’t live with was pretending I didn’t care.
The gates loomed ahead, the crowd thick near the exit. Someone shouted my name again, closer this time, but I didn’t look up. Didn’t give them the satisfaction of a soundbite or a photo they could twist into another lie.
I just kept walking. Past the flashes, past the noise, past the chaos that had already decided what kind of man I was.
The hoodie shadowed my face. The air smelled like rain and asphalt and something close to freedom.
Whatever waited on the other side of that gate—suspension, headlines, fallout—I’d face it.
Because for once, there was nothing left to hide behind.
Just the truth, and the choice I’d already made.
I kept walking.
Chapter 29
