Page 154 of Hometown Halftime

“GO, GO, GO!”

Megan tears down the field with defenders chasing her hard before diving across the try line with enough force to send grass spraying everywhere. The whistle blows a second later, and for one suspended moment, the entire field seems to freeze.

Then mayhem detonates around us.

The team goes crazy. Girls scream, parents leap out of the bleachers, and Darren launches himself over the sideline barrier to tackle Riley sideways in celebration. Paige crashes into me next, sobbing dramatically into my shoulder while yelling, “We’re going to the playoffs!”

And suddenly I’m crying too.

I’m laughing, crying, and hugging sweaty teenagers while the crowd dissolves into absolute madness around us. Riley appears beside me a second later with bright eyes before wrapping an arm around my waist and lifting me clean off the ground.

“We did it!” he shouts over the noise.

I laugh helplessly against him while the girls continue screaming and celebrating around us, and somewhere in the middle of all the madness, it hits me that this season stopped being just about rugby a long time ago. These girls found confidence here, friendship, and a place to belong. And I’m so thankful that Riley and I were lucky enough to be part of it.

Chapter sixty-one

Riley

The drive home from Friday’s practice is quieter than usual.

The girls have been riding high all week after clinching playoffs. Group chat notifications are still blowing up both our phones every thirty seconds, and Megan already made a terrible hype video set to early 2000s rap music. Paige keeps threatening to throw up from nerves before tomorrow’s game.

But sitting beside me in the truck, Kinsey keeps twisting the sleeve of her hoodie around her fingers while staring out the passenger window. And I know her well enough now to recognize when something’s wrong.

Streetlights blur across the windshield while I pull into the driveway of the duplex. Kinsey’s already unbuckling before the engine fully shuts off. The second we step inside, she turns toward me.

“So,” she says quickly.

Uh oh. That tone never means anything good is coming. I close the door slowly behind us while she drops her bag beside the couch.

“My landlord called this week,” she blurts out. “The apartment will officially be ready January first.”

Some of the words disappear beneath the rush of blood in my ears. It’s the countdown that neither of us has talked about nearly enough.

Kinsey keeps talking quickly afterward, like if she slows down even slightly, she might lose the nerve to finish the conversation.

“So, it works perfectly timing-wise because you’ll probably be getting ready to head back for combine prep and everything after the holiday break anyway,” she says in one rushed breath. “And this way we both have time to settle back into normal life before your semester starts, and I can recover from the holidays.”

Normal life.

Something twists sharply in my stomach because suddenly I hate the sound of that.

Kinsey finally looks up at me then, her expression careful in a way that tells me she’s nervous too. I shove my hands into the pockets of my hoodie.

“Yeah.”

The word comes out flatter than I intended, and her face falls.

“Riley—”

“No.” I shake my head once, forcing something close to a smile onto my face. “Yeah, it’s good. Great timing.”

The silence afterward feels awful because neither of us says the thing sitting between us. Neither of us admits that we don’t want this to end.

Kinsey swallows hard before slowly stepping closer. “I just thought we should talk about it.”

“I know.”