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I end the call, deciding his concern is just another attempt to manage the quarterback everyone expects me to be. I get less than a second of peace before my phone vibrates with another notification.

SLOANE MERCER’S EX TRADED AFTER CAREER-WORST SEASON

I swipe it away without opening the article, my fingers itching to open the text thread I haven’t touched in more than a year. The last message she sent is burned into my memory as though enough time might eventually change what it says.

I hope someday you understand why I had to go.

I understood the day she left. Sloane didn’t choose me because I was Jubal Duvall. She chose the life that came with standing beside a franchise quarterback, and the moment football stopped giving her everything she wanted, she stopped choosing us.

I slip my phone into my pocket and head up the hallway, unwilling to give another stranger's opinion of my life any more attention. The framed pictures on the wall offer their own version of the story. Mom chose most of them before she died, insisting a house needed proof that people lived inside it. In one, I’m seventeen with my arm wrapped around her shoulder and holding the state championship trophy. My father is standing on my other side, his face turned toward a reporter beyond the frame. Even then, Mom was always looking at me while he was looking for the next person who might notice him.

The photograph used to feel like proof they were both proud, and I know now that they were. Dad just had a different way of showing it. He arranged the interviews after my games, chose which camps I attended, and reminded me whenever I questioned him how much work it had taken both of us to get there. He drove me to practices before sunrise, found trainers when I needed something more than my high school coaches could give me, and refused to let me waste what he had recognized before anyone else. By the time I started wondering which parts of my career belonged only to me, neither of us knew how to talk about football without talking about everything he had done to help me get there.

I move farther down the hall, but the evidence follows me. There’s almost nothing here from the hours when nobody was watching. No photograph of the mornings my mother and I ate breakfast before school. No reminder of the nights Sloane and I ordered takeout and argued over which movie neither of us would finish. No proof of the people I loved unless the quarterback had made the moment worth preserving. Every room in this house is crowded with versions of Jubal Duvall that belonged to somebody else. My father’s investment. Sloane’s future. Houston’s franchise player. Charlotte’s latest gamble.

Coach Quinn believes there’s something valuable beneath all of that, but his certainty cannot compete with a lifetime of learning that what I could provide was the easiest part of me for people to value. I walk into my room and stare at my reflection, surrounded by furniture chosen by a designer because Sloane was filming in Vancouver and my father thought bare walls made athletes look irresponsible in magazine profiles.

They’re both gone from this house now, but I’m not sure I was ever really here.

I look around the room, where everything waiting to be packed feels less like a life than inventory. I cannot stay here with the voices of strangers floating through my head, debating whether Charlotte can save me. I cross to the closet and trade my training clothes for jeans and a dark sweatshirt. The baseball cap I use when I don’t want to be recognized hangs from a hook near the door, and I pull it low enough to shadow my face before leaving my watch on the dresser. Tonight, I don’t have enough left to perform for anyone.

I take my keys from the entryway table and head for the garage without deciding where I’m going. The garage door closes behind my truck, cutting off the last view of the house before I turn onto the road and drive toward the part of Houston where nobody expects to find me.

I pass the restaurants near the stadium and keep driving until the streets narrow and the buildings stop advertising themselves from the highway. A neighborhood bar appears between a laundromat and a closed insurance office; its sign is small enough to miss unless someone is already looking for a place that doesn’t want to be found.

A man steps through the front door while I pull into a space near the edge of the lot. He fastens his jacket, walks past my truck, and never glances through the windshield.

For the first time all day, being overlooked feels like an invitation. I turn off the engine and get out before another notification can reach me. Nobody here knows I was traded this afternoon or is trying to decide whether I’m finished or worth the risk Charlotte took.

Tonight, I just want my name to belong to me.

Chapter Two

Calliope

Packing has always made sense to me. There’s something comforting about reducing an entire chapter of your life into carefully labeled boxes. Everything in my apartment has slowly disappeared over the last week because I’ve never understood the people who throw everything into random boxes and hope they’ll figure it out later. The dishes are wrapped individually, my textbooks are organized by subject, and every storage container has been labeled on all four sides because there is no logical reason to make future me work any harder than present me. Dad likes to call it overthinking. I prefer to call it having a system.

My gaze drifts around the apartment, searching for what else needs to be added to the box in front of me, before settling on the framed diploma leaning against the wall. Four years ago, I stood in this same room surrounded by unopened boxes, convinced the hardest part of becoming a doctor was getting into college. Now my apartment is disappearing back into cardboard again, except this time, every packed box feels like another step toward the future I’ve spent half my life chasing.

Graduate.

Move home to Charlotte.

Work for a year.

Medical school.

My plan has been the same for so long that I can’t remember a version of my life that looked any different. It survived impossible chemistry exams, anatomy practicals that left half my class questioning their career choices, and a first MCAT score that forced me to admit determination wasn’t always enough to reach the finish line. Failing that exam hurt, but it never changed my final destination. It simply meant taking the longer road to get there.

My fingers curl around the black marker lying beside the box before I write a single word across the top.

Future.

The label makes me smile because it’s embarrassingly optimistic, but optimism has always felt more productive than worrying about things I can’t control. Mom used to tell me people wasted far too much time grieving futures they hadn’t lost yet, and even after all these years, I still catch myself measuring difficult moments against the advice she somehow managed to turn into a joke. She could make almost anyone laugh, including nurses on twelve-hour shifts and strangers she’d only met five minutes earlier. Dad always said Birdie had never met someone who stayed a stranger for long.

The familiar weight resting against my right pinky finger draws my attention before the thought can carry me any further. My thumb brushes absentmindedly across the smooth amethyst set in the silver band, the motion so practiced that I don’t notice I’m doing it. I smile to myself, give the ring one last turn, and reach for another strip of packing tape just as my laptop chimes from the dining table.

Every muscle in my body goes still as I slowly lift my head toward the screen sitting open across the room. The notification is too small to read from where I’m standing, but it doesn’t need to be. I’ve refreshed the AAMC portal often enough today to recognize exactly what that sound might mean.