Good.
Pain is simple. It doesn’t ask questions.
I push into the first lap, edges biting, legs burning, the familiar violence of it settling my shoulders even as my head stays loud.
Adrian slides in beside me without asking, matching pace like it’s instinct. He doesn’t talk the whole time.
Good.
That’s him. That’s the captain I trust—present, pressure, not commentary.
We run drills. Contact. Breath. Bodies colliding. Enough structure to look normal from the outside. Enough friction to keep my hands from shaking.
It should burn the noise out.
It doesn’t.
Every pass, every pivot, the same calculation keeps running in the background, sharp and unavoidable.
Reach.
Where it reaches next.
Who it stains.
And the worst part—the part I refuse to give a name—is that Zoë keeps showing up in the math like she belongs there.
Not as a move.
As a pull.
I hate it.
I use it anyway.
Practice ends hard and fast. Whistle. Noise rushes back in. We peel off toward the locker room, and I can feel it now—the attention, the quiet tracking. Nobody asks outright. They don’t need to. This kind of pressure spreads without words.
Inside, the air is thick with sweat and metal. Lockers slam.
I pop mine and pull my phone out where I left it, the screen already lit with notifications I didn’t ask for.
Dante’s on the bench, phone loose in his hand, eyes flicking up when I reach my stall. “That account posted again,” he says. “Just added another hashtag.”
Of course it did. It’s a gossip column. It lives on speed.
“I know,” I say.
Cole’s voice comes from my right, flat and unamused. “You gonna keep pretending this is nothing, or do we start adjusting for fallout?”
“I’m not pretending.”
Dante’s mouth twitches. “You are. You just do it better than most.”
My phone vibrates in my hand before I can shove it away.
Unknown number. No context.
You’re quieter than you used to be. That’s how people start connecting dots.
