Chapter 9
TANNER
The drive to Wilmington took ten hours, which meant ten hours of Seth behind the wheel of his truck, singing along to every bad country song that came on the radio while I pretended to be annoyed.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” I said somewhere around hour four, when he’d found a station playing nothing but nineties hits and started belting out “Friends in Low Places” like he was auditioning for a dive bar cover band.
“Doing what?” He grinned at me, all innocence. “I’m just enjoying the music.”
“You’re torturing me.”
“Same thing.”
I couldn’t help it, I laughed. The sound surprised me, loose and easy in a way I hadn’t felt in months. Seth’s grin widened, and he turned the volume up.
This was new territory. We’d spent plenty of time together in the apartment, but that was different.
We could retreat to separate rooms, maintain the illusion of space.
Here, in Seth’s truck with Georgia turning into South Carolina outside the windows, there was nowhere to hide.
Just Seth’s off-key singing, his hand resting on my thigh, and no way to pretend I wasn’t exactly where I wanted to be.
“You nervous?” Seth asked during a commercial break, his voice softer now.
“About what?”
“Seeing everyone. Showing Lincoln your work.”
My hands adjusted on the armrest. “A little. It’s solid lab data, but translating that to real-world conditions is a whole different challenge. I want his take on whether the concept holds up.”
“From what you’ve shown me, the concept’s sound.”
“The physics works. Whether it survives contact with actual players and actual impacts…? That’s the question I can’t answer in a university lab.”
Seth’s hand squeezed my thigh. “Lincoln’s not going to blow you off. He cared about your dad. He cares about this work.”
I knew that. Lincoln had been checking in on me since the funeral, sending occasional emails about research he’d come across working with the Breakers, asking how the capstone was progressing.
He’d been one of Dad’s closest friends on the team, one of the few people who’d stayed in touch through the worst years of the decline.
When Dad couldn’t remember his own son’s name, he could still remember Lincoln’s.
Some days that had felt like a gift. Other days, it had felt like a knife.
“I just keep thinking about how Dad never got to see any of it,” I said.
“He knew I was working on helmet design, but by the time I had actual data, he couldn’t—” My voice cracked.
“He couldn’t follow a conversation anymore.
I tried to explain it to him once. He just looked at me like I was a stranger. ”
The memory hit harder than I expected—Dad in his armchair by the window, his eyes vacant, his hands picking at the hem of his shirt while I talked about force vectors and impact absorption like any of it mattered.
He’d smiled and nodded, the way he smiled and nodded at everyone by then, and I’d driven back to school and sat in my car for an hour because I couldn’t stop shaking.
That was three weeks before he wrapped his favorite classic car around a tree while trying to prove he wasn’t completely dependent on Mom and me.
“I want Lincoln to tell me I’m on the right track,” I said, “but part of me wishes it was Dad telling me instead. And that’s never going to happen. He’s gone, and he never knew if any of this was worth a damn, and I can’t—”
My breath caught. I couldn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t find the end of it.
“Hey.” Seth’s voice was firm. “You’re spiraling. I can hear it.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” He checked his mirrors and started signaling. “There’s a rest stop coming up.”
“Seth, we don’t need to—”
“We’re stopping.”
He pulled off at the next exit.
The rest stop sat at the edge of a pine forest, the air sharp with resin when we climbed out. A few trucks idled in the far lot. I stood by the passenger door, arms wrapped around myself, trying to pull it together. Failing.
“Walk with me,” Seth said. Not a question.
A trail cut into the trees behind the rest stop—just a short loop, probably, something for people to stretch their legs.
Pine needles crunched under our feet. The forest closed around us, blocking out the highway noise until all I could hear was our breathing and the wind moving through branches overhead.
“I keep waiting for it to get easier,” I said. The words came out rough. “Everyone says it does. Time heals, whatever. But some days it’s worse. Some days I forget he’s gone, and then I remember, and it’s like losing him all over again.”
Seth didn’t say anything. He just walked beside me, close enough that our shoulders brushed.
“The last thing he ever said to me that made sense—” I had to stop.
Start again. “He grabbed my hand. Looked right at me, really looked, like he knew who I was for the first time in months. And he said, ‘You’re going to fix it, aren’t you?
You’re going to make it so this doesn’t happen to anyone else.
’” My vision blurred. “And I said yes. I promised him. And then he was gone again, and two weeks later, he was just gone.”
I stopped walking. Couldn’t see the trail anymore through the tears I’d been fighting since we’d gotten in the truck this morning. Since before that. Since always.
“I don’t know if I can keep that promise,” I said. “What if the research isn’t good enough? What if Lincoln looks at it and tells me I’ve been wasting my time? What if Dad believed in something that was never going to work?”
Seth stepped in front of me. “Give me your hands.”
“Seth—”
“Hands.”
I gave him my hands. He held them between his own, his thumbs pressing into my palms with steady pressure. The contact was grounding—warm skin, callused fingers, something solid to hold on to.
“Breathe,” he said. “In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.”
“I know how to breathe.”
“Then prove it.”
I breathed. In for four, hold for four, out for four.
Seth counted with me, his voice low and even, his hands solid around mine.
The pine trees swayed overhead. The wind carried the smell of resin and earth.
By the third cycle, the tightness in my chest had started to ease. By the fifth, I could think again.
“Better?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I looked down at our joined hands. “Where did you learn that?”
“Sports psychology. Coach makes us do breathing exercises before games.” He shrugged. “Figured it might work for other kinds of pressure too.”
“Thank you.”
“That’s what I’m here for.” He lifted one of my hands to his mouth and pressed a kiss to my knuckles. “Ready to keep going?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.” I squeezed his fingers before letting go. “But maybe change the station. I can’t handle any more Garth Brooks.”
He laughed and reached for the dial as he started the truck. We pulled back onto the highway with something softer playing, and I let myself relax into the rhythm of it. Seth beside me. Music filling the silence. The miles disappearing beneath us.
Hunter was waiting on the porch when we pulled into the driveway.
The house was a hideous hot-pink monstrosity a block from the beach, live oaks draped with Spanish moss crowding the front yard. The air hit different here—salt and marsh and wet earth. A pelican glided overhead, heading toward the water. Somewhere nearby, a boat motor hummed.
Hunter had bought the place after signing his first pro contract.
We’d grown up together, spent summers chasing each other through sprinklers and winters huddled over video games.
Now he owned property, played professional football, and was engaged to a man who looked at him like he’d hung every star in the sky.
“About time,” Hunter called as we climbed out. “I was starting to think you got lost.”
“Your directions were terrible,” I said, even though they hadn’t been.
“My directions were perfect. And there’s this little invention called GPS, so this isn’t on me.”
I crossed the lawn and let him pull me into a hug. Hunter gave good hugs—always had, even before he’d bulked up enough to make them feel like being wrapped in a weighted blanket. He held on longer than usual, one hand coming up to cup the back of my head.
“You look better,” he said into my hair. “Less like death warmed over.”
“Thanks. That’s exactly what every guy wants to hear.”
“I’m serious.” He pulled back, hands on my shoulders, studying my face. “Something’s different.”
His eyes slid past me to where Seth was pulling our bags from the truck bed. Hunter’s jaw tightened, his gaze cutting to Seth and back to me.
“Come inside,” he said. “John’s making dinner.”
The kitchen was at the back of the house, open to the living room, and John was standing at the stove stirring something that smelled like garlic and butter. He abandoned it to hug me, wiping his hands on a dishtowel first.
“God, it’s good to see you. How was the drive?”
“Long. Seth has terrible taste in music.”
“I do not,” Seth said, appearing in the doorway with our bags. “I have excellent taste. He just doesn’t appreciate the classics.”
“Nineties country is not classic,” I said.
John was watching the exchange with undisguised interest. He caught my eye and raised an eyebrow— We’re talking about this later. I ignored him.
“Guestroom’s down the hall, second door on the right,” Hunter said, his eyes tracking Seth as he disappeared. When he turned back to me, his expression had gone serious. “Can we talk for a sec?”
The back deck overlooked a tidal creek, the fading light turning the water bronze and gold.
The sunset was behind us, but the marsh caught all of it—the cordgrass glowing amber, a great blue heron standing motionless in the shallows.
I leaned against the railing and waited for whatever Hunter needed to say.
“So,” he said. “You and Landry.”
I bristled at the name. “You and John.”
“Don’t deflect. I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine.”