Chapter 2 Seth #2
I met his eyes. He’d set his coffee down, both hands wrapped around the mug like he needed something to hold on to. His gaze moved across my face the way it moved across data points—careful, cataloging.
“My family doesn’t like that I play football.” The words came out before I could stop them. I leaned back against the couch cushions, putting distance between myself and the dead phone. “They think it’s a waste of time. Think I should be doing something more respectable.”
Tanner’s eyebrows drew together. “More respectable than being a college athlete? Your athleticism got you a full-ride scholarship at a great school. They should be over the moon.”
“Their words, not mine. They’ve never been to a game. Not one. They probably heard about yesterday’s hit, and now they want to lecture me about quitting.”
Tanner’s face did something tangled. “They want you to quit?”
“Via medical withdrawal, yeah. They’ve been pushing for it since I got my first concussion sophomore year.”
“Did you—” He stopped. Started again. “Is that something you’re considering?”
The question landed heavier than it should have.
I thought about yesterday, about the way the world had tilted sideways for a few seconds after that hit.
About waking up on the ground with the team doctor’s face swimming above me, asking me what day it was.
I’d go to my grave before admitting to anyone that I was pretty sure I’d been out for at least a few seconds.
And none of my teammates would say a word about it either.
Not when we were on track for a bowl game bid this year.
“No,” I said. “I’m finishing the season. Three more games and a bowl game if we’re lucky. Then I’m done.”
“By choice?”
“Yeah. I’m not going pro. I know my limits.” I gestured at the laptop. “This is what I actually want to do. Athletic training, sports medicine, working with equipment designers like you to keep players safer. I like playing, but I don’t love it enough to destroy my body for it.”
Tanner was quiet for a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough. “That’s probably the smartest thing I’ve heard anyone say about football.”
“My family doesn’t think so. They think any connection to the sport is stupid.”
“And you’re doing it anyway.”
“Yeah. I am.”
Something shifted in his expression, something I couldn’t quite read. He turned back to his laptop, but I felt the weight of whatever he wasn’t saying.
We worked for another hour before I had to admit my ribs needed ice and probably some ibuprofen. Tanner disappeared into the kitchen and came back with both, plus a heating pad I hadn’t known we owned.
“You didn’t have to—”
“Lie down,” he said, not quite looking at me. “Heat first, then ice. Twenty minutes each.”
I stretched out on the couch, and Tanner arranged the heating pad against my ribs with measured hands. His fingers brushed my side through my T-shirt, clinical and impersonal, and I had to close my eyes against the surge of want that hit me.
This was a bad idea. Wanting Tanner McBride was possibly the worst idea I’d ever had, and I’d made plenty of questionable decisions in my life.
He was Hunter’s best friend. He was still grieving his father. He had visible trauma responses to the sport I played, the sport that defined most of my college experience.
And he looked at me sometimes like I was the answer to a question he was too scared to ask.
“I’m going to do some reading,” Tanner said, settling into the armchair across from the couch. He pulled out his phone, but I caught him glancing at me every few minutes, monitoring.
I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the way my chest went warm every time I felt his attention land on me.
When I’d moved in at the end of the spring semester, I’d been desperate enough to take any roommate situation that wasn’t my family’s house. My previous roommate had graduated, and I’d been scrambling to find a place when Hunter mentioned Tanner needed someone to split rent.
“He can’t afford the apartment alone,” Hunter said. “And you need a place that isn’t a random Craigslist situation.”
“Will he care that I play football?”
Hunter’s pause told me everything. “His dad died from CTE last year. So probably yeah, he’ll care. But he’s not going to make it your problem.”
I should have said no. Should have found literally anyone else.
But I’d met Tanner a few times before—at Hunter’s place, at a party once, brief interactions that shouldn’t have added up to anything.
Then Patrick died, and I’d shown up at the funeral without really understanding why.
Stood in the back row because I didn’t know his family, didn’t know him, not really.
I’d watched Tanner hold himself together at the graveside, shoulders rigid, face blank, and something about that stillness had cracked me open.
Afterward, Hunter had asked me to check on him. I’d found Tanner on his kitchen floor, unable to move, and I’d sat beside him without asking permission. We’d stayed there for over an hour. He never said a word, and neither did I.
I hadn’t thought much about it at the time—just seemed like the right thing to do. But something about him had hooked under my ribs and refused to let go.
We’d met at a coffee shop to discuss the roommate logistics. Tanner had shown up fifteen minutes early, already jittery from what was clearly his second or third coffee of the day.
He looked me straight in the eye and said, “I won’t go to your games. I won’t watch them. I can’t.”
“That’s fine.”
“And I’m particular about the apartment. I like things clean and organized. I have systems for how everything goes.”
“I can work with that.”
“I have nightmares sometimes. About my dad. I might wake you up.”
“Okay.”
He studied me like he was trying to figure out if I was lying. “Why do you want to live with me?”
I could have said something practical. Something about rent, location, or convenience. Instead, I told him the truth. “Hunter says you’re a good person. I trust Hunter’s judgment.”
Tanner blinked, something vulnerable crossing his face before he hid it. “Okay. Yeah. Let’s do this.”
We’d moved our stuff in two weeks later, and I’d spent the first month trying to figure out how to share space with someone who carried grief like a second skin.
The answer, I’d discovered, was to just be there. Made coffee in the morning. Leave food within reach when he forgot to eat. Touch his shoulder when he got too far into his own head. Give him space when he needed it and presence when he didn’t want to be alone.
It wasn’t complicated. It wasn’t enough.
But it was what I had.
As soon as I turned my phone back on, it came to life with messages.
You alive?
Mostly. Tanner’s making me ice my ribs.
Of course he is. You two are disgustingly domestic.
Fuck off.
Come to Wilmington for fall break. John wants to see you.
I glanced at Tanner, who was absorbed in whatever he was reading.
Maybe. I’ll ask Tanner. The guy needs to take a fucking break.
Jesus Christ. You’ve got it bad.
I didn’t answer. Didn’t need to. Hunter knew.
When the timer went off, Tanner swapped the heating pad for the ice pack, his movements efficient and gentle. This time, his fingers lingered a second longer than necessary against my ribs.
“Better?” he asked.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
He nodded and retreated back to the armchair, but something had shifted. The air felt heavier, charged with all the things we weren’t saying.
I watched him read, memorizing the way he bit his lower lip when he was concentrating, the way his hair fell across his forehead. The way he looked small and lost in the oversized chair, like he was trying to take up as little space as possible.
I wanted to cross the room and pull him onto my lap. Wanted to feel him relax against me, wanted to tuck his head under my chin and breathe him in.
Wanted things I had no right to want.
“Seth?”
I blinked. Tanner was watching me, something measured in his expression.
“You good?”
“Yeah,” I lied. “Just sore.”
He didn’t believe me. I could see it in his face. But he let it go, turned back to his phone, and I was grateful for the reprieve.
The problem with living with Tanner McBride was that every day made it harder to remember why wanting him was a terrible idea. Every casual touch, every quiet morning, every time he said my name like it meant something, all added up to a feeling I couldn’t afford.
I was a football player. The embodiment of everything that had destroyed his family.
But I was also the person who made him coffee in the morning, made sure he ate, and noticed when the grief got too heavy.
And I didn’t know which part of me would win.
My phone buzzed one more time. I ignored it and closed my eyes, listening to Tanner breathe across the room. The ache in my ribs had nothing on the ache building in my chest—the slow accumulation of mornings like this one, of wanting something I couldn’t name and couldn’t have.
For now, this was what we had. I told myself it could be enough.
I was already starting to doubt it.