Page 144 of Colliding with Ten

“Anyone inside?”

I hesitated, wanting to keep my personal life personal. Instead, I said. “My girl was there.”

I replayed it the same way I replay a throw in my head, checking the mechanics and verifying if what I thought I did was what really happened.

My girl.

My first instinct was to dismiss it as an accident. Then, I started to process. Three men were in my house, and I wanted to put myself between her and them.

My girl.

Maybe I had known this for a while and hadn’t had a reason to see it. Tonight made it impossible not to. I wasn’t one to label people. Labeling Ayla sounded reckless and possessive. It also sounded right.

I straightened. “My girl, Ayla, was there.”

Coach nodded. “She okay?”

“The police caught them.”

He didn’t miss that I hadn’t answered. “Is she okay?”

“She’s shaken.” My jaw tensed. “She was alone.”

My chest squeezed. She was still alone.

Coach stepped closer. “Do you need to go?”

No. Nothing pulled me off the field. Football had always been the answer. But was it the answer now?

I rubbed the back of my neck and looked up at the stadium lights peering through the tunnel opening. The scoreboard showed I was losing to a defense that had been eating me alive for two quarters. The second half needed me. Yet, my mind circled back to one thought.

My girl.

Coach saw the shift. “Monroe.” His voice had dropped another register. “We need you on that field.”

He was right. They needed me, but she needed me too.

Coach shifted his clipboard back to his hands. “You good to play?”

I opened my mouth to say yes. Yes meant nothing could disrupt me, but that wasn’t true anymore. Coach’s eyes narrowed, watching something solid rearrange itself.

“No.” I shook my head. “I need a personal.”

He gritted his teeth as the crowd noise swelled. “You sure?”

I nodded, holding his gaze. This wasn’t negotiable. “I almost lost her.”

Coach looked pissed, exhaling with frustration. Then he nodded, understanding or acceptance. “Make it quick.”

We both knew I wasn’t coming back for this game. I turned and jogged, not toward the tunnel and the lights, but toward the exit. Toward home. Toward Ayla.

Police cars surrounded my house. Their flashing lights turned my street into a crime procedural. An EMS truck was parked sideways across my driveway with its back doors open. As it pulled up, I was out of my truck before the engine cut. Cops were everywhere. Yellow tape stretched across the entrance of the house I’d spent the last three years making mine.

My eyes scanned, skipping over uniforms and equipment, looking for the only person that mattered. I found her sitting at the back of the EMS truck, with a blood pressure cuff on her arm and a blanket over her shoulders. A paramedic talked to her as she stared into the distance with a bleak expression. I called for her, and she looked up, searching.

Our eyes met across thirty feet of driveway, and the composure she’d been holding crumpled. She yanked the cuff off her arm, pushed past the paramedic, and ran, slamming into me at full speed. Her arms locked around my torso. There was no air between us, her heartbeat rapid against my abs.

“You’re okay,” I said into her hair. “I’m here.”