“What’s Mason's problem?”
I stopped just out of sight, hand still on the doorframe, pulse spiking so fast I could feel it in my jaw.
Adam’s answer came a second later, light and unbothered. “Touchy subject. We were just messing around about Ellery.”
The pause that followed was small, but it was enough.
Then Kyle laughed — that easy, practiced sound that always made cameras love him and teammates forgive him. “Seriously? Beckett and Ellery? That’s funny.”
The laughter hit me harder than the words.
No one else said anything. Even Adam went quiet. I could picture the look on his face — that oh, shit expression he got when he realized someone had crossed a line.
“No offense,” he went on, still half-laughing, “but she’s not really his type. He usually goes for… you know. Flashier.”
My grip on the doorframe tightened until my knuckles cracked.
Flashier.
Girls who wore less clothing, who slept around on the first date. That was what that meant.
I could feel the blood pounding in my ears, drowning out everything else.
Not my type?
You don’t even see her. You don’t know the difference between the woman who runs herself into the ground to keep kids in cleats and the one you kiss on autopilot before running off to your next headline.
You don’t get to define her like that.
I took a breath, slow and careful, because if I didn’t, I was going to walk back in there and say something I couldn’t take back.
The smart move was to leave. Let it roll off. Pretend it didn’t get under my skin.
But I couldn’t shake it.
Ellery wasn’t some prop in his story — she wasn’t the supportive girlfriend waiting on the sidelines while he chased another round of applause. She was the one building something real, something that mattered, while the rest of us were out here breaking bones and egos.
And yeah, maybe she wasn’t “flashy.” Maybe she didn’t walk into a room and demand attention. She didn’t have to.
When Ellery looked at you — really looked — it made you stand still. Made you want to earn it.
That kind of woman didn’t need to shine loud. She just was.
Kyle never saw it.
That was the problem.
So, instead of leaving I turned around. I headed for the locker room. I stepped back into the doorway before I could talk myself out of it. The room went dead quiet.
Kyle turned first, surprise flickering across his face, then smoothing into that calm, polished expression he wore like armor.
“You got something to say, Reynolds?” I asked.
He didn’t flinch. Kyle Reynolds never flinched — not on the field, not in front of cameras, not when he was wrong. “Just that you’ve been spending a lot of time with my girlfriend.”
I crossed my arms, keeping my tone flat. “Maybe because your girlfriend’s doing more for this town than half this team combined.”
That got a few low murmurs from the benches, the kind that said everyone wished they weren’t in the room for this but also weren’t about to miss it.
