I shook my head, smiling despite myself.
He pushed off the doorway, heading for the back of the room where the donation boxes were stacked, muttering something about finding the missing shipment forms. But I just stood there, watching him move — methodical, focused, all that restless energy turned toward something other than proving himself.
It took me a moment to realize my heart was still beating too fast.
The last hour had been a blur of panic and plans I couldn’t make work, the familiar pressure of carrying something too big for one person. And now, just like that, he’d cut through it with a single offer. Tell me what you need.
It was so simple. So foreign.
For months, I’d been surrounded by people who praised what I did but never saw how much it cost. Donors loved the mission, sponsors loved the headlines, Kyle loved the idea of what I was building — but Beckett… he looked past the surface. Saw the cracks. And instead of asking me to hide them, he just quietly stepped closer.
I turned back to my desk, grabbed a notepad, and started jotting names. Alumni, old sponsors, potential contacts — people who might help fill the gap if we moved fast enough.
But even as I wrote, I found myself smiling again — not the brittle, press-ready kind, but something softer.
Maybe it was because, for the first time all day, the weight didn’t feel so crushing.
Maybe it was because someone like Beckett Mason — the player everyone called impossible — had just reminded me that I didn’t have to keep holding the world up on my own.
Whatever it was, I decided not to question it.
Not yet.
After Beckett left, the room felt strangely louder—like the air hadn’t decided whether to settle or hum. I was still standing where he’d been a minute ago when Naomi came around the corner, coffee cup in hand and a grin that spelled trouble.
“He’s smitten,” she said, her voice sing-song.
I blinked, still halfway between disbelief and exhaustion. “He’s helpful.”
Naomi arched a brow. “Right. Helpful. With arms like that and the attitude of a man in deep denial.”
“Naomi.” My warning came out weaker than I wanted it to.
She only laughed, unbothered, leaning against a table littered with donation flyers and half-taped boxes. “I’m just saying—you should let someone help you for once. Even if it’s a brooding soccer player with a martyr complex.”
I rolled my eyes, but my lips betrayed me with the smallest curve of a smile. “You’re incorrigible.”
“Admit it, though. He’s different with you.”
“He’s… trying,” I said finally, not sure if I was talking about him or myself.
Naomi tilted her head, studying me the way she always did when she saw too much. I busied myself with rearranging papers, pretending I didn’t feel my pulse thrumming too fast.
Because she was wrong.
He wasn’t smitten. He was just being decent.
That was all this was—decency. A good deed to balance whatever chaos followed him around like a shadow.
But as I tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear and tried to get back to work, I realized I didn’t quite believe myself.
Hours later, the building had gone still.
The volunteers were gone. The laughter, the chatter, even Naomi’s teasing—all of it had faded into the quiet hum of the lights.
I sat alone in the main office, the glow of my laptop screen washing the room in pale blue. My eyes burned from staring too long at spreadsheets, at emails, at numbers that didn’t add up no matter how many times I reworked them.
Every message in my inbox was another polite no.
