That got another round of laughter, this time directed at him, and Adam threw up his hands in mock surrender.
“All right, boys,” Coach Lawson called, voice flat but firm. “Wrap it up. Hydrate and hit the locker room. Same time tomorrow.”
The whistle blew. Everyone started peeling off the field, still laughing, tossing jokes back and forth. The kind of banter that came easy when you were winning—or when you weren’t the one the league had labeled a liability.
I stayed behind.
The others’ voices faded as they jogged toward the tunnel. I stood at midfield, hands on my hips, breathing hard. The chill in the air bit at my skin, but my blood ran hot.
I dragged another ball from the rack, set it down, and hit it—hard. The shot rocketed into the crossbar and ricocheted high, slamming into the fence behind the goal with a metallic clang.
The sound echoed across the empty field.
For a second, I just stood there, chest heaving, jaw tight enough to ache.
They thought I was a joke.
A PR puppet.
The league’s problem child doing charity work to look like a good guy.
I kicked another ball, this one skimming wide.
You didn’t fix your reputation by pretending to care. You fixed it by reminding people why they were afraid of you in the first place. By proving you don’t need their forgiveness.
I reached for another ball, ready to drive it harder, farther—anything to shake the frustration out of my veins. But then, mid-motion, something flickered through my head.
Ellery. Her hair pulled back, a smudge of dust on her cheek, hands moving fast as she rebuilt that display board. The quiet focus in her eyes. The way she didn’t look at me like a headline, or a mess to manage—just… a person trying to do something right.
It threw me.
The next shot came off my boot wrong, slicing low and skidding uselessly into the grass.
I stood there, staring at it, annoyed at myself for letting the thought slip in at all.
Ellery James had nothing to do with this field. Nothing to do with who I was when the whistle blew.
I didn’t need her in my head.
But somehow, she was there anyway—steady, calm, impossible to ignore.
And for the first time in a long while, it wasn’t anger that kept me from walking off the field. It was something I didn’t have a name for yet.
The gym smelled like turf and new paint when I walked in—same place as yesterday’s shoot, just louder, messier. The PR team was already setting up again, dragging lights and banners across the floor while someone argued about color temperature like it mattered.
I was still half-drenched from practice, sweat cooling on my skin, towel slung around my neck. I hadn’t even bothered to change. Coach had dismissed us late, and Cam had sent one of his charming don’t be late this time, Mason texts.
So yeah, I came straight from the field.
The chaos hit me the second I stepped inside. Tech crew adjusting cables, volunteers stacking boxes, someone yelling about missing extension cords. It looked less like an event setup and more like a hurricane made of good intentions.
And in the middle of it all was Ellery.
She stood near the bleachers, juggling a clipboard, her phone wedged between her ear and shoulder, and two volunteers firing questions at her like rapid fire.
“Do you want the sponsor board here or near the backdrop?” one asked.
“The caterer needs someone to sign the invoice,” said the other.
