Chapter 32 Logan
LOGAN
The countdown to the NFL draft is haunting me at this point. It’s everywhere I seem to look.
Two weeks.
Two weeks until the league decides if I’m an investment or an insurance claim.
Two weeks until my name is either something people clap for…or something they stop saying altogether.
I keep my head down and walk through the facility like I belong here.
Because I do.
Because even when football feels like it’s slipping out of my hands, this place is still stitched into my bones—the smell of turf and disinfectant, the cold bite of the AC, the echo of voices bouncing off concrete and metal.
Still, my chest feels tight. Not nerves.
Guilt.
Because being here feels like a betrayal when Pops is at home fighting for something as small as a full meal. When Sloane is measuring her life in hospice schedules and “good days,” she pretends not to celebrate.
I swipe my badge and step into the training room.
The sports medicine side of the building is bright in a way that makes everything feel exposed—too many lights, too much white, too much clean. The kind of clean that makes you think about hospitals and paperwork and words like prognosis.
This is my first full week back working with the medical trainers at PCU, after finishing up my time with Jason. I’ll miss the guy, but I’m glad I’ve made enough progress to come back here instead.
“Brooks,” an athletic trainer calls, eyes flicking over me like I’m a chart.
“Hey,” I reply.
Mara, our head athletic trainer, permanently unimpressed, appears with a clipboard and a roll of tape.
“How’s the knee?” she asks.
I give her the same answer I’ve been giving for months. “It exists.”
“Thrilling,” she says without looking up. “Pain scale?”
“Four.”
She lifts a brow.
“Point five,” I amend.
“Uh-huh.” She crouches, checks the swelling around my patellar tendon, presses in a couple spots that make my jaw lock. “Any buckling?”
“No.”
“Any giving way?”
“No.”
“Any ‘I thought I was fine until I wasn’t’ moments?”
I stare at the ceiling. “Not since last week.”
Mara snorts. “Honesty. Love that for you.”
She wraps a compression sleeve on my knee, not a brace, not bulky—just support. Practical. Like a seatbelt.
“Light field today,” she says. “Footwork, routes at sixty. No overdoing it, or you’ll be back at square one.”
“I’m offended you think I lack self-control,” I mutter.
“You don’t,” she replies. “That’s why I’m comfortable letting you on the turf.”
I should laugh.
I almost do.
But then my phone buzzes in my pocket, and my brain jumps like it’s been living on edge too long.
I don’t pull it out yet. I just breathe.
Handle one minute, I remind myself.
Mara claps my shoulder like she’s closing a file. “Go. And if you come back limping, I’m sending you home with a coloring book instead of cleats.”
“Deal,” I say, and it comes out rougher than I want.
I grab my gloves from my locker and head toward the tunnel.
—
The field is too perfect.
Spring green turf under a clear California sky. That soft early-April warmth that isn’t hot yet, just sun on your skin and a breeze that smells faintly like cut grass.
It’s unfair how normal everything looks.
Like the world hasn’t been cracking open one day at a time.
Beck is already out here, stretching like a psycho, legs too long and shoulders too wide, built like he was designed in a lab to ruin quarterbacks’ days.
He spots me and grins.
“Look who decided to flirt with employment again.”
I flip him off. “You’re annoying as fuck, dude.”
“You’re alive,” he says brightly. “That’s more important.”
Beck jogs over, claps my shoulder once, careful, because he’s learned what careful means around my knee, and then his eyes drop to the sleeve.
“Ooo,” he says. “Cute. Accessorizing.”
“Shut up.”
He leans closer. “How’s it feel?”
“Like I’m walking around with a target on my leg.”
Beck’s grin softens a fraction. “Yeah.”
The way he says it, the understanding in his tone, makes my nerves come back.
Beck nods toward the far sideline. “Coach wants to see you move.”
“I figured.”
“Also,” Beck adds, and his voice shifts into something intentionally casual, “we’ve got visitors.”
My gaze follows his.
Coach Harding is on the sideline near the 40-yard line, hands on his hips, talking to two people I recognize instantly.
Carter Hayes.
Even in sweats, he carries himself like the field belongs to him. Like he still hears the crowd in his head no matter where he goes. There’s an easy confidence in the way he stands—shoulders loose, chin up, smile lazy.
Next to him is Lyla Harding, Coach’s daughter.
She’s got her hair pulled up, sunglasses perched on top of her head, a PCU hoodie on. She looks older than she did when she was around the facility more often, even if it was just a year ago. Like she’s learned how to stand in sports spaces without shrinking.
She’s also glaring at something on her phone like it personally offended her.
Coach Harding says something, and Lyla’s mouth twitches into a smile.
Carter laughs, throwing his head back like he’s not worried about anyone watching him.
Beck leans in. “Yeah. Maybe you should’ve replied to the group text.”
I’m already walking toward them before Beck finishes his sentence.
Because I’m not a coward.
Not today.
—
Coach Harding looks up as I approach, his gaze flicking to my knee sleeve, then my face.
“Brooks.”
“Coach,” I say, voice steady, as my eyes flick over to Carter.
Carter’s smile turns into a smirk—one of those easy, infuriating expressions that used to make the entire locker room want to both fight him and follow him into battle.
“Hey there, pretty boy,” Carter says. “Do I know you?”
Lyla’s eyes brighten when she sees me. “Logan.”
“Lyla,” I reply. “Didn’t think you’d be back in town.”
She shrugs. “Off-season for Carter, and Dad missed me.”
Coach Harding makes a sound that might be a scoff if he wasn’t smiling. “She misses my credit card.”
Lyla rolls her eyes. “That’s not true.”
“It’s a little true.” Carter’s grin widens before waggling his brows. “But mine’s better.”
She elbows him without looking, and he takes it like he’s happy to be hit.
The familiarity is…strange.
It makes me feel like time is moving too fast.
Coach Harding gestures between them. “Carter and Lyla were in town for a visit, and someone wanted to stop by and chat with you.”
Carter looks me over, slow and deliberate, and I hate how much it feels like being evaluated.
Then he nods once, almost approving.
“Been hearing good things,” he says.
My brows lift. “Like what?”
Carter’s smirk deepens. “Like that you’re not being a complete shithead anymore.”
Beck makes a choking noise behind me.
Coach Harding’s mouth twitches like he’s trying his absolute best not to laugh.
I roll my eyes. “I was never a complete shithead.”
Carter’s eyes go wide in fake surprise. “Oh, my bad. Just a partial shithead.”
Lyla snorts and shakes her head. “He was awful last year.”
“Traitors,” I mutter.
Coach Harding points at me like he’s calling a play. “Don’t act brand new. You had a mouth and made some very questionable decisions.”
“I still do,” I say.
Carter grins. “Yeah. But now it’s…less destructive. I’ll give you that.”
The words land heavier than the joke.
Because he’s right.
Last year I was angry at everything. At Jaxon taking my starting spot and a good chunk of my yards. At him being happy with Madison. At the world. At myself. Angry in that way that makes you pick fights and start shit just to feel like you’re in control of something.
It’s not like I woke up one day and decided to be better.
It’s more like life kept ripping things out of my hands until I ran out of energy to be cruel about it.
Pops getting sick did that. Sloane’s face did that. My knee snapping did that.
But I don’t say any of those things; I just lift a brow. “Should I be honored you noticed?”
Carter’s grin shifts into something more real. “It’s been…good to watch. Even with everything.”
Even with the injury. Even with the draft clock winding down. Even with whatever the hell my life is right now.
Coach Harding clears his throat like he’s bringing us back to business. “All right. Brooks has light work today. Carter, you wanna watch him move?”
“I’d like to throw him a bone or two.” Carter’s gaze flicks to mine. “If you don’t mind.”
My pulse ticks up.
“Sure,” I say, like it’s nothing.
Beck leans closer to my ear as I turn away. “You’re sweating, and you haven’t started yet.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Beck.”
He laughs under his breath and jogs away to grab a ball.
I walk to the starting spot, flex my fingers in my gloves, and try to ignore the way my ribs feel like they’re full of bees.
“Sixty percent,” Mara calls from the sideline. She’s out here now, too, arms crossed, unimpressed as always.
Coach Harding points at the cones. “We’re not chasing pretty, Brooks. We’re chasing controlled movements and no overextensions.”
I nod once.
The route is simple. Ten yards. Break. Come back. Hands.
My body remembers it before my brain finishes thinking.
I quickly head out, controlled, and plant.
The knee holds.
I turn, hands up.
Carter’s spiral hits my palms clean.
It thuds against my chest like a heartbeat.
Again. Another rep. Another break.
The turf grips my cleats. My quad burns. My lungs warm. My knee stays quiet enough to let me exist.
On rep four, Carter throws it slightly off target, testing me like he always does. I adjust, catch it clean, and shoot him a glare.
He grins, unrepentant.
Lyla’s voice carries from the sideline. “Hands are still good.”
Coach Harding answers without looking away. “Always were.”
That makes my chest do something stupid.
I run another route. Then another. Footwork between reps, quick steps through the ladder, hips square.
Mara watches my knee like she’s waiting for it to betray me.
I’m waiting too.
But it doesn’t.
After fifteen minutes, Coach Harding lifts a hand. “That’s enough.”
Mara nods immediately. “Cool down. Ice after.”