Page 14
Jace looked up first. “How was day one?”
“Good,” I said, slipping off my shoes and discarding my bag on a chair.
Grandpa squinted at me. “You’re late.”
“I told you I’d be late.”
He considered that. “Did you bring pie?”
I blinked. “No?”
Jace gave an exaggerated sigh. “Rookie mistake.”
Grandpa grinned. “We’ll train you.”
For a few minutes, it felt almost normal, like we’d lived here forever, as they recounted their day with Helen and how she’d taken them to get pie at the diner. According to Jace, the pie was life-changing, so they must still make it from scratch. I laughed at their antics as they began arguing over which pie was better. I shook my head, smiling as my phone vibrated again. I froze when I reached for it in my pocket—an email reply.
Thursday at 4:15 works. I’ll see you then.
–Lane
The name slammed into me like a collision. Lane. Not Coach or Coach Massey. Lane.
The kitchen canted, the edges of the room blurring as heat climbed my neck. Of course it was him. Beneath the noise of Grandpa and Jace arguing over plastic silos, years of thoughtfully buried memories clawed their way to the surface. Friday night lights. Whispered promises beneath a blanket of stars. The focus in his forest green eyes that made me believe I was worth fighting for. His arms wrapped around me when I finally gave him everything. Soft kisses and whispered declarations of forever against my skin. Months of waiting until I trusted him enough to give him that part of me. Trusting him more than I’d ever trusted anyone—and then I left. I lost him and let myself believe I’d never mattered to him at all.
“Cal?” Jace’s voice cut through the noise in my head. None of the panic reached my face.
“Yeah?”
“Are you okay?” Jace watched me.
“Yeah.” The word scraped. “Just work stuff.”
Kennedy wasn’t big enough for both of us, and yet here we were. Thursday was two days away, and there was nowhere left to run. I stared at the email until the letters blurred. Fifteen years ago, I’d run. This time, I would stay. I slid my phone into my scrubs pocket and forced a smile.
“Alright,” I said. “Who’s winning the farm war?”
Grandpa quickly raised his hand. Jace scoffed. And somewhere under the noise and our history, a single unwelcome truth became impossible to ignore. The embers I deemed long dead still remained. Would they ever burn out when it came to him? Would I be able to move past the one who held my heart in the palms of his reckless hands in high school? When would I forget the future we’d planned together? When would it not hurt to just hear his name?
Ten
Lane
The words refused to change, no matter how many times I went over them. I stared at the cinder block wall of my office at Kennedy High School. Framed team photos lined up in careful rows behind my desk, each one holding a piece of a life that seemed simpler the farther away I got from it. The glass on the frames had dulled over the years, collecting a thin layer of dust around the edges, but the faces behind it were still sharp enough to pull me back. State semifinalists. District champions. Boys caught in the kind of moments they never realized they were living through, their smiles wide, their shoulders squared, their eyes carrying the certainty that there would always be another season, another game, another chance to get it right until there wasn’t.
I knew every face on that wall. I knew the names, the stories, the ones who went on to play at the next level and the ones who left Kennedy behind the moment they crossed the graduation stage. I remembered the nearly palpable excitement under Friday night lights, the way an entire town could hold its breath together for the last few seconds of a close game. Back then, winning felt permanent, and the people around me felt even more permanent. The pictures had stayed, while most of the people hadn’t. All of the frames faded as I thought about the email again.
Cali Walton. Back in Kennedy.
A name I hadn’t seen written down in years, suddenly sitting there on my screen like it belonged. Like she hadn’t been a part of a chapter I’d spent years trying not to reread. Like she hadn’t been someone I still remembered far too often—the sound of her laugh, the way she could walk into a room and make everything else feel quieter, the version of myself I could be with only her.
Forty-eight hours.
That was all the time I had before she walked back into this building, through these same doors, down these same halls, and into this office.
Into my life. My jaw locked so tightly there was a dull ache beneath my ears. Until Landry came barreling into the gym last week, I hadn’t even known Cali was back in town.
The announcement came with the force of a line drive straight to the ribs, knocking the air from my lungs before I had the chance to brace for it. The kind of blow every ballplayer knows—sharp enough to make your vision blur for a second, deep enough to leave a bruise blooming beneath the surface long after everyone else has forgotten it happened. You straighten your shoulders, wave off the coach, and pretend it didn’t hurt like hell. I should’ve done the same and shrugged it off. Gone back to sparring. Let the name drift past like every other piece of small-town gossip—except this wasn’t like everything else.
