CHAPTER 12 #3
I smile before I can stop myself.
“Good kid,” I say.
“Good defender.”
“Both.”
“Yes.”
Emily shifts her bag to the other shoulder.
I want to take it.
Of course I do.
I want it so badly my hand almost moves.
It does not.
Because she did not ask.
Because bags can be symbolic, apparently, and I now live in a world where even luggage requires emotional intelligence.
Emily notices my hand not moving.
Her eyes narrow.
“What?” I ask.
“You looked like you were about to fight my bag.”
“I decided your bag has autonomy.”
“That may be the strangest thing anyone has said to me this week.”
“I spend time with Colton. My standards are damaged.”
She laughs.
Small.
Real.
It hits me straight in the chest.
For one second, the shuttle lane, the practice complex, the injury, all of it drops away. There is only Emily laughing under late sun, tired and guarded and still somehow letting me stand here.
It feels like getting something back.
No.
Not back.
That is the wrong word.
Back suggests ownership.
This is something new being offered in a hand I should not grab.
My throat tightens.
“It’s not guilt,” I say.
Emily’s smile fades.
The words are already out.
I should have waited.
I should have chosen a better place.
But the sentence from last night has been burning behind my teeth since the field, since the lobby, since every version of me almost moved.
Emily turns fully toward me. “What?”
I take one breath.
Careful.
“The way I notice,” I say. “The way I’m trying not to move when I want to. It’s not guilt.”
Her eyes sharpen.
No cameras.
No reporters.
No stadium.
Just shuttle engines, humid air, and Emily watching me decide whether I am brave enough to say something that does not ask for comfort.
I look down at my hands, then make myself look back at her.
“It’s because I...” I start.
The words jam.
Not because I don't mean them.
Because meaning them changes the ground.
Emily’s expression shifts.
Not soft.
Careful.
That is more dangerous.
The shuttle door hisses open wider.
A staffer calls from the steps. “Captain Smith, we’re rolling in two.”
Emily does not turn immediately.
Her eyes stay on mine.
The unfinished sentence sits between us.
It’s because I...
Because I still see you.
Because I never stopped.
Because I loved you then, and I think I am falling toward the same truth now, only this time I know better than to make the choice for both of us.
Too much.
Not here.
Not half-said beside a shuttle with staff waiting and her body aching and a national team depending on her.
Emily reads enough of it on my face.
Of course she does.
“Don’t finish that unless you mean it,” she says.
Quiet.
Clear.
No anger in it.
Which somehow makes it hit harder.
I close my mouth.
Nod once.
“I won’t.”
Her hand tightens around the bag strap.
She looks like she might say something else.
Then Ava calls from inside the shuttle, “Captain, Coach says if you miss the shuttle, she’s making me responsible for your time management.”
Emily turns her head. “Tell Coach that’s poor delegation.”
Ava’s voice comes through the open door. “I said that, and she said I need growth opportunities.”
Despite everything, Emily smiles.
Then she looks back at me.
“Company was acceptable,” she says.
It is the most Emily Smith review imaginable.
I will take it like a trophy.
“Medium acceptable or fully acceptable?”
“Don’t get ambitious.”
“Emotionally humble,” I say.
Her eyes flicker.
Then she steps toward the shuttle.
This time, I don't move with her.
At the door, she pauses with one hand on the rail.
Not because of pain.
Maybe because of pain.
Maybe because of me.
I don't get to know unless she tells me.
She looks over her shoulder. “Nathan.”
My name.
Not Bellows.
My chest goes tight.
“Yeah?”
Her gaze holds mine for one long second.
Then she says, “Good job not fighting my bag.”
The laugh leaves me before I can stop it.
She climbs onto the shuttle.
The door closes behind her.
I stand in the hot shuttle lane with exhaust in the air, grass on my shoes, and an unfinished sentence lodged somewhere behind my ribs.
Darius steps up beside me.
I do not look at him.
“Don’t,” I say.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was going to say that went better than expected.”
I watch the shuttle pull away.
Emily is not visible through the tinted glass.
That is probably for the best.
“Did it?” I ask.
Darius is quiet long enough that I know he is choosing the useful answer over the easy one.
“You didn’t rush the field,” he says. “You didn’t ask the wrong question. You didn’t touch the bag. You didn’t finish the sentence.”
I stare at the disappearing shuttle.
“That sounds like a list of things I didn’t do.”
“Sometimes that’s the whole match.”
The shuttle turns out of the facility lane and disappears behind the privacy screens.
My hands hang empty at my sides.
For once, empty doesn't feel useless.
It feels like space.
Hard space.
Chosen space.
The kind I should have given her years ago.
I breathe in hot pavement, exhaust, cut grass, and everything I did not say.
Then I follow Darius back inside.
***