Chapter 17 #2
“It’s Bellamy, dickhead,” Lola snorts. “Try not to choke on your own ego. Although... honestly, you might be doing us all a favor.”
Jace smirks, eyes locked on her with a quiet, cocky intensity that makes the air around them tighten. He says nothing, but his gaze isn’t casual. It’s the look guys get when they’ve already decided something’s theirs.
I glance at Lola. She’s rolling her eyes and muttering something under her breath, but there’s a faint flush on her cheeks that wasn’t there before.
And I can’t help but wonder if she’s about to become his next conquest.
Third quarter drags into the fourth, and Reece remains a relentless machine. His defense never pauses. His legs keep pushing, body tense and fierce, hunting anything foolish enough to cross his path. He appears unstoppable.
And then, the world snaps.
One second, he’s tearing downfield, all cocky power and sharp precision, focus locked in as if the world doesn’t exist beyond the end zone. A damn weapon in motion.
Next, he’s blindsided. Helmet to ribs, full force, savage and sudden. No time to brace or roll. Just a sickening thud as his body twists, all that power suddenly helpless.
He hits the ground and the world shifts.
Everything goes silent, brutal, and wrong. There are no whistles, no cheers—just this fucked-up quiet that amplifies the panic.
Reece is down.
Not moving. Not even a twitch.
My lungs can’t function. My throat feels like a clenched fist, and my chest caves in. I can’t breathe, think, or do anything except stare at where he’s sprawled, motionless.
Liz’s nails bite into my arm. “Shit,” she says, barely a whisper, but it cuts across my nerves like a blade.
Jace jumps to his feet immediately. Lola grabs his arm, with knuckles white and eyes riveted to the field.
Reece still hasn’t moved.
A medic rushes off the sideline, with two more following. Coaches shout, and players kneel.
And I’m sitting here, waiting for him to get up. For him to shake it off, flash that cocky grin, and go back to being the reckless asshole I can’t stop watching.
But he doesn’t.
He lies there. Still. Silent.
And it fucking guts me.
Get up.
Please get the fuck up.
He finally moves.
Barely.
One slow twitch of his boot against the turf. The crowd holds its breath as if that will help. It doesn’t.
Two teammates lift him up, each slinging an arm over their shoulders. His helmet’s gone, and even from up here, I can see the blood on his lip.
He’s fucked. Broken in ways that make my stomach turn.
But he’s on his feet. He’s standing.
He’s battered, torn open, and held together by sheer fuck-you energy.
But he’s up.
He’s walking, and it costs him everything he has.
From the sidelines, the coaches swarm, holding clipboards and ice packs, panicking.
The roar of the crowd swells all around, chaotic and endless, none of them seeing what I see.
The shake in his knees. The way his lip is split.
How his gaze never lifts from the ground.
It’s as if he looks up, the whole world might open up beneath him.
The whistle pierces through the chaos.
Players move and the game picks up again. Reece goes to the bench.
The team is holding the line. Just barely.
Every play now feels desperate, with each movement driven by the momentum Reece left behind.
They push.
They fight, and somehow, they come out on top.
The stadium erupts.
Thunder cracks from the stands. The final score flashes on the screen, forty-two to thirty-four.
Students jump out of the bleachers, cheering, arms raised high, jerseys flying as they flood onto the field.
It’s chaos. Flags whip in the wind. The band goes wild, drums booming, brass blaring, cymbals crashing so loudly that the sound vibrates in my ribs.
A guy in a letterman jacket slides to his knees on the turf like it’s a damn movie.
It’s a war zone transformed into a victory parade.
But I don’t move.
I can’t.
My eyes won’t leave the bench.
He’s still sitting there.
The boy who played every part of this game until his body wore out.
Now he’s at the heart of the chaos.
Students swarm around him, everyone trying to touch him, celebrate him, and shower him with glory.
Nicole tries to make it her moment—hand on his chest, hips angled, wanting to be the next thing he touches. He shoves her off without a word. Doesn’t spare her a glance.
Half of the student section cheers his name as if he’s their king.
But Reece?
There’s no grin. No cocky swagger. None of that usual bullshit confidence he wears when he’s untouchable. He barely reacts at all. He just stands there and lets the noise crash around him.
They don’t realize what it costs.
They didn’t notice him until he refused to quit. Didn’t feel the weight of every hit stacking up until sheer fucking willpower was the only thing keeping him upright.
He didn’t bleed for them.
I saw it.
I saw something break loose inside him out there. Saw how badly he wanted this. Not the cheers. Not the attention. Proof. A reason. A chance to be more than what the no-hoper people label him without even trying to understand.
Reece wanted to be something.
And tonight, it seems like it took something from him in return.
I sit there long after the cheers fade, long after the last drumbeat dies and the band packs it in.
The crowd thins out, gradually leaving the field in waves. People continue shouting, laughing, and buzzing from the win as if it didn’t just cost Reece everything.
Lola and Liz have already left, taking Jace with them.
The field empties.
I stay rooted to the metal bleacher seat until the last drunk senior tumbles off toward the parking lot and the field finally quiets.
Only then do I move.
Quick steps, careful ones, my head ducked as I slide down the rows. I hit the ground and stay close to the fence, circling behind the goalpost and cutting across to the other side. I already know where he’ll be, and that’s the place I am going.
I wait in the long hallway. The locker room door swings open halfway, voices spilling out. Most of the team has already left, half-dressed, shoving each other around like gods who just saved the world.
None of them look broken.
I wait until the last of them leaves, until I hear no more voices. Until it’s just me and the pounding in my chest. Only then do I slip inside.
The air hits like a fist to the face—sweat, testosterone, damp towels, and blood. The room hums with it.
Lockers line the walls, dented and scratched, some with numbers half peeled off. A couple are still cracked open, gear spilling out. The floor’s a battlefield. Mud prints streak across the tile. A towel lies crumpled in the middle, soaked through and stepped on, abandoned without a second thought.
I see Reece at the far end.
He’s sitting with his elbows on his knees, head lowered, and his jersey is gone, with shoulder pads dumped in a heap at his feet. His chest rises and falls slowly, skin flushed, marked with bruises spreading in angry colors across his body.
White tape is wrapped around his torso.
He’s not moving. Not in the cocky, wired way he usually does.
He looks broken, as if hollowed out by pain alone.
Even so, he’s beautiful in a rough, broken way.
The boy who doesn’t bleed just for show.
He keeps bleeding because he doesn’t know how to stop.
And I don’t believe anyone has ever told him he doesn’t have to.
My chest hurts as I watch him.
I almost turn around, almost let him have this—the quiet, the hurt, the mess. But he lifts his head before I can move, looking right at me.
“Red,” he says. It’s not sharp, smug, or loaded with that usual fire he throws at me when we’re mid-argument, mid-flirt, mid-whatever the fuck we are. It’s quiet. Hoarse. Honest. My name stripped bare on his tongue.
I move toward him before I can talk myself out of it. My footsteps are loud in the silence, but my heart is louder.
“Are you okay?” I ask, even though I already know the answer. It comes out softer than I want. Stupid and small. But that’s all I’ve got.
“I will be,” he says.
I sit down on the bench next to him, close enough that our knees brush. The shock that runs through me is immediate. Electric. Bone-deep. He notices. His breath shifts as his eyes drift down to my mouth before slowly going back up.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” he mutters.
“I know.”
“Don’t tell me the good girl’s finally breaking the rules.”
I smirk, heat rising in my throat. “Guess you’re rubbing off on me.”
A breath of laughter escapes him, but it twists into a wince halfway through. Pain flashes across his face, and I move instinctively. My fingers brush his arm gently. Flesh on flesh.
He stiffens. Every inch of him tenses up, as if I’ve short-circuited something inside him.
Neither of us speaks.
His fingers graze my jaw, gentle enough to undo me, rough enough to remind me why I want him. There’s a tremor in his hand that matches the one low in my stomach. That same ache I thought I had buried after the last time. The same one that left me ruined for anyone but him.
My breath catches on it.
His eyes darken at the sound, and for a moment, neither of us moves. We sit there, suspended in this charged space between memory and what still lingers.
Then he speaks.
“You’re beautiful, Red.”
This isn’t a typical line from him. There’s no smirk, no play behind it. Just truth.
My throat swells, and I have to swallow the lump before I speak.
“Even when I’m pissed at you?” I ask, trying to pull us back into safer territory.
His mouth quirks, pain flickering behind it. “Especially then.”
“You’re not supposed to say shit like that.”
His hand slips from my face and rests on my thigh, claiming the space. The heat radiates instantly from his touch, spreading through me until my thoughts fray.
I have to bite my lip to stop myself from saying what I truly want.