Page 156 of Made Better Together

“I have like three seconds, but I needed to do this…”

I plant a kiss on his lips, hard and swift. His arms wrap around me, and he lifts me off the ground as he returns for another firm kiss.

I really need to get back to the field, so I break the embrace. “I gotta go.”

“Call me when you’re home.” He talks quickly, getting the picture. “Your dad?”

“He left. You should be safe to head out without being seen.”

“Cool. Go, have fun with your team.”

When I’m back in the mix on the field sixty seconds later, it’s still chaotic enough that no one has noticed me missing for three minutes.

We did it. Connor was able to see me win without blowing our secret.

A second victory of the day.

Three hours into the bus ride back from Atlanta, my adrenaline finally starts to taper. The loud chatter that marked the early part of our six-hour trip has also faded, as we’re all engrossed in our phones, many listening to music with earbuds in.

“You ready to party tomorrow night?” Bree asks. It’ll be the early hours of Tuesday morning when we’re back, so the celebration will be delayed to the next night. “We should figure out a place for the team to go.”

“Definitely, how about⁠—”

“Hey Cap,” Chloe says, leaning over the back of our seats. “What’s going on here?”

Her voice is light and teasing, and I’m confused until she shoves her phone in our faces.

It’s an Instagram post, with—SHIT—a picture of Connor and me kissing in the hallway. I look at who posted it, and it’s SoccerQueens.

“Oh no,” I gasp, grabbing her phone. I scroll quickly and see it’s the fifth photo of a multi-picture dump captioned, “Tolliver celebrates! Congrats Queens! ”

Bree’s already pulling it up on her phone. “She has a bunch of photos in the post. It’ll hopefully get lost in the shuffle.”

“But wait, who’s that guy you’re kissing?” Chloe asks.

“Not now,” Bree says to her dismissively, as I hand back her phone.

Bringing up the post on my own, I take a second to see if any of the comments mention the kiss. Luckily, no, though now I notice I’m tagged in the photo. I quickly undo that.

Checking again, Connor isn’t tagged.

“This is so weird,” I whisper to Bree, Chloe having gotten the memo and plopped back down in her seat. “There were a few people around when I saw him, but I would’ve recognized her.”

“She probably saw the photo somewhere else and reposted it. She’s notorious for that.”

That thought sends me into a new panic, but I double-check my nine million notifications since the win, and I’m not tagged in that photo anywhere else on Instagram. So maybe it’s a random account no one will see?

Twenty minutes of acute anxiety later, staring at my Instagram notifications that keep rolling in from all the celebration posts, there are no new callouts of that picture.

Maybe we’re safe. I know I need to alert Connor anyway, so I switch over to my texts. Opening up my chat with him, I start to type out a message.

EDEN: Hi, don’t worry, I

BUZZ.

A notification interrupts my message, and—it’s Tina? What?

I go over to read her text.