Then Declan gave her a piece of his mind, and declared his love for me.
When my mother drove away, leaving me in a puddle of mascara and humiliation with an arena roaring in the distance, he turned to me and said three words that rewrote every bad thing I'd ever believed about myself.
Damn him. He beat me to it.
I love you.
I flinch when the phone buzzes in my hand again. "Shit, Rose. How bad is it?"
"Bad?" Rose straightens up, and she's—wait. She'sgrinning. "Josie… It's not bad. It's the opposite of bad. Look!"
She grabs my wrist and opens the first video herself. I hold the phone at arm's length like it might bite me.
"Rose… What—what is this? This is from last night. The boardwalk. That's the hot mic." I shove the phone back intoRose's chest, shaking my head. "I don't want to watch that again. I already lived it once."
Declan's glove squeezes my hand, but Rose forces me to look at the screen.
"Iknowyou have," she says, tilting her head. "But please. Just listen to this."
She cranks the volume until Declan's deep voice comes through the speaker, and I hate how it sounds.I'm done carrying it alone.
I spent the entire night last night pacing my hotel room all alone trying to figure this out. Trying to find a way to spin what happened at the pier into something good.
I came up with nothing.
The entire thing was a disaster. But Rose is here, vibrating with excitement, which means the public reaction might be different than I expected.
"Oh my God. Sweetheart…" Declan squeezes my hand again. "Read the screen."
I don't want to. But the tenderness in his voice makes me look.
And suddenly, I can't breathe.
The screen shows my own face, frozen mid-sob, and below it, a tsunami of comments flooding in.
And the comments aren't dragging us down. They're lifting us up.
Underneath it, someone's captioned the clipthe most human thing I've ever heard an athlete say.It's at one point one million views. Sincelast night.
"Okay, next one," Rose says, swiping before I can. "Oh, yes! This one's my favorite."
It's a badly put-together clip of the winning goal, spliced with Declan sprinting off the ice in full gear. There's a text caption layered over the video:HE LEFT HIS OWN CELEBRATION TO FIND HER. I'M UNWELL.
"Rose, there's more?"
"Josie. There'sso muchmore."
She swipes again, showing dozens of videos of the party at the pier, the game that literallyjusthappened, and—
"Oh my God!Look what someone just uploaded!" She squeezes the phone and does a little bounce on the spot. "Someone was in the parking lot! Oh,you guys!"
Declan shuffles in closer, his warmth surrounding me as we gather around the screen. The video's grainy, shaky, but the audio's crystal clear.
"I'm the captain. And I'm in love with her."
"Read the comments," Rose says. "No, actually—I'll read them. Oh wow… Crying emojis. Keyboard smashing. Oh, look at this one!" She starts laughing and points, delighted. "Somebody just wroteI'mselling my house and moving to Beachside."
I stare at the phone in Rose's hand, the influx of glowing comments a blur of hearts and fire emojis. Declan's gloved hand slides over my back, pulling me tighter.
