She stopped just inside the field, taking in the mess of stray balls around the net, the damp grass under her shoes, me standing there like I didn’t know whether to run or reach for her.
For a long beat, neither of us moved.
The silence pressed in—thick, alive. The hum of the lights, the soft patter of distant rain, the faint click of her heel as she shifted her weight.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said finally, because it was the only thing that made it past my throat.
A ghost of a smile flickered across her lips. “You say that a lot.”
I almost laughed—almost—but it came out as a breath instead.
She started walking toward me, slow and certain, each step deliberate. The sound of her heels against the turf was softer than it should’ve been, but somehow louder than everything else.
I stood rooted in place, every muscle wound tight.
When she stopped a few feet away, the space between us felt electric—like if either of us spoke too loudly, the whole field would snap apart.
She looked up at me then, eyes steady, clear despite everything she must’ve gone through these past few days.
I didn’t know what I expected—anger, exhaustion, maybe even regret. But there was none of that. Just something quiet. Unflinching.
The kind of look that said she’d made up her mind about something, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what.
“Ellery…” I started, but her name felt foreign on my tongue, like saying it might shatter whatever was holding us both upright.
She tilted her head, the faintest curve at the corner of her mouth. “You don’t have to explain,” she said softly.
But that wasn’t what I’d been about to do. I didn’t even know what I wanted to say—only that every word in my head felt too small for the sight of her standing there in the rain, looking at me like she still saw the person underneath the headline.
The air between us was thick with everything we hadn’t said—everything we’d both lost trying to do the right thing.
And for the first time in weeks, the field didn’t feel empty anymore.
She stopped right in front of me, close enough that I could smell the rain on her hair, the faint trace of perfume that hadn’t faded even after the storm. Her voice came out quiet but steady—so calm it almost hurt.
“Thank you,” she said. “For what you said at the conference.”
I shook my head before I could stop myself. “You don’t need to thank me. It was my mess.”
She gave a small, disbelieving smile, the kind people use when they’re too tired to argue but do it, anyway. “It wasn’t just yours. And you didn’t have to protect me.”
I looked down, shoving my hands into my pockets, because if I met her eyes, I’d say something I couldn’t take back. “Yeah, I did,” I said quietly. “I’d do it again.”
That pulled a soft laugh out of her—half exhale, half disbelief. She shook her head, a drop of water falling from the edge of her hair to the grass between us. “You don’t make anything easy, you know that?”
I finally looked at her then, and for the first time since the world fell apart, she was smiling. Small, fragile, but real. It caught me completely off guard.
“Wasn’t trying to,” I said. “Just trying to make it right.”
She looked up at me for a long moment, her eyes searching my face like she was trying to decide whether to trust the words or the man saying them. The wind picked up a little, pushing a strand of hair across her cheek. I had to clench my fists to stop myself from brushing it away.
“Right,” she repeated softly, like she was testing how the word felt in her mouth. “You think that’s what this is? Right?”
I didn’t answer right away. My throat felt too tight for honesty, and lies were the one thing I couldn’t give her.
“I think it’s the first time it’s ever been close,” I said finally.
Her gaze softened then, the sharpness fading into something else—something that made my chest ache.
