Chapter 13 Tanner
TANNER
“Landry! Hey, Landry!”
I looked up from my laptop, already knowing what I’d see.
Seth had texted twenty minutes ago that he was grabbing coffee on his way to the athletic complex, and I’d deliberately chosen a table in the back corner, hoping he’d have time to sit for at least a few minutes.
He hadn’t, but he had swung by to give me a quick shoulder squeeze and a reminder that he’d be home late.
I watched as two guys in Gray Wolves gear flagged him down on his way out. “Dude, that catch against Ole Miss? Insane. My dad can’t stop talking about you going pro.”
The response was muffled, but I caught the familiar cadence of Seth’s laugh—self-deprecating, easy. The sound I usually loved.
“Nah, man. Just got lucky.”
“Lucky my ass. You’re having a career year!”
I turned back to my screen, but my fingers had frozen over the keyboard. The fluid dynamics problem set blurred in front of me. Before I could stop myself, I was typing Seth’s name into the search bar.
LANDRY’S brEAKOUT SEASON: Gray Wolves Receiver Having Career Year
The headline stared back at me from the campus paper’s sports section. Three days before Thanksgiving, and the algorithm had been trying to show me this for a week. I’d just been avoiding it.
My thumb hovered over the link. I should close the tab. Should go back to the problem set waiting in my bag. Instead, I tapped the headline and watched the article load, my coffee going cold on the table beside me.
Seth Landry has been one of the most pleasant surprises of the Gray Wolves’ season.
The senior receiver has posted career-high numbers across every major category, including receptions (58), receiving yards (847), and touchdowns (9).
His performance against Ole Miss—7 catches, 112 yards, 2 TDs—drew attention from NFL scouts who attended the game.
I stopped reading.
NFL scouts.
The words sat in my chest like a stone. Seth had told me he wasn’t good enough to go pro. Wasn’t dedicated enough. Didn’t want it. I’d believed him because I’d needed to believe him—because the alternative was loving someone who might choose the thing that had destroyed my father.
But people changed their minds. People got better. People had amazing seasons and drew attention from scouts, and suddenly, the dream they’d dismissed became possible.
I closed the article without finishing it.
The coffee shop buzzed around me—the clatter of dishes, the hiss of the espresso machine, someone laughing too loudly at the counter.
Normal sounds. College sounds. The kind of ambient noise I used to find comforting, back when I was just another stressed engineering student instead of someone whose boyfriend’s face was showing up in sports sections.
I pulled up the article again. Scrolled past the statistics I’d already memorized. Found what I was looking for near the bottom.
When asked about his future plans, Landry remained tight-lipped.
“I’m focused on the team right now,” he told reporters.
“We’ve got a real shot at a bowl game, and that’s all I’m thinking about.
” His coach, however, had stronger words: “Seth has the talent to play at the next level. It would be a shame to see that go to waste.”
A shame. Like choosing a different path was a failure. Like walking away from something that could destroy you was a waste.
I thought about my father, about all the people who’d told him how talented he was, how much potential he had, how it would be a shame to quit when he still had good years left.
He’d listened to them. He’d stayed in the game.
And now he was in the ground, and I was sitting in a coffee shop trying to breathe through the panic clawing at my chest.
My phone buzzed. I silenced it without looking.
The engineering building was quiet at this hour. Most students were scattered across campus, enjoying the last stretch before Thanksgiving break. I’d claimed my usual corner of the lab, spreading data across dual monitors, trying to lose myself in numbers that made sense.
Force distribution. Impact absorption. Variables I could control.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. I’d built my entire academic career around protecting people from the sport that had taken everything from my family—and now I was dating someone who played it.
Someone who was getting attention for playing it well.
Someone whose coach thought he had “the talent to play at the next level.”
I pulled up my latest test results. The new padding configuration had improved force distribution by another three percent. Good news. Progress. The kind of incremental gain that might, someday, mean fewer players ended up like my father.
But three percent didn’t feel like much when the voice in my head kept whispering about scouts and breakout seasons and all the ways success could change someone’s mind.
My phone buzzed. I ignored it. Buzzed again. I flipped it face down.
Through the lab window, I could see the practice field in the distance.
Figures moved across the turf—too far away to identify, but I knew the routine.
Drills, then scrimmage, then the endless repetition of plays until muscle memory took over.
Seth was down there right now, running routes, taking hits, doing the thing that had given him that article in the campus paper.
I turned back to my monitors and tried to focus.
The numbers blurred in front of me. All I could see was that headline, those statistics, the casual mention of scouts like it was nothing. Like it didn’t change everything.
He said he was done after this season.
The thought circled like a vulture. I’d built so much on that promise—grad school plans, the future I’d let myself imagine.
A future where Seth wasn’t on a field getting hit, wasn’t accumulating damage that wouldn’t show up for years, wasn’t walking the same path that had led my father to a closet floor, clutching an old jersey, unable to remember his own name.
My phone buzzed a third time. I grabbed it, ready to silence whatever notification was demanding my attention.
Seth
Practice just ended. Want to grab dinner?
That Thai place you like is doing their curry special tonight
Hello? You alive in there?
How did I tell him I felt like I was dying and it was my own damned fault?
If only I hadn’t gone looking for the stories that’d been flying around lately.
If I hadn’t been eavesdropping, once I heard his buddies call out to him.
If only I hadn’t gone and caught feelings for my football-player roommate.
In the lab. Eat without me.
His response was almost immediate. Yes, I was being unfair to him, and I knew it, but I didn’t want to listen to him placate me. I needed a cooler head so I’d actually listen to him when we talked about this.
You okay?
Fine. Just busy.
With my concentration officially shattered, I packed up for the day.
The walk home took me past the athletics complex, and I found myself slowing, watching the stream of players emerging from the locker room.
A few of them glanced my way—not with recognition, just the automatic awareness athletes seemed to have about their surroundings.
Then I heard it.
“Landry!” Someone was calling across the parking lot. “Hey, Landry! That reporter from ESPN wants to follow up. She’s asking about availability next week.”
ESPN. Not the campus paper. ESPN.
I kept walking. Didn’t look back. Didn’t let myself imagine what a follow-up with ESPN might mean, what doors it might open, what plans it might derail.
By the time I reached our building, my hands were shaking.
I got home before him.
The apartment felt too quiet, too still. I dropped my bag by the door and stood there for a moment, trying to shake off the echo of that voice calling across the parking lot. ESPN. Follow up. Availability next week.
I forced myself to move. Opened the fridge, stared at the contents without seeing them, closed it again. Pulled out my laptop and pretended to work on my presentation while the minutes crawled by.
When the door finally opened, the smell of takeout preceded him—the rich aroma of lemongrass and coconut, the warm bite of chili and galangal. Seth appeared with bags from the Thai place, his hair still damp from a post-practice shower.
“Figured you wouldn’t have eaten,” he said, setting the food on the counter. He crossed to kiss me, brief and warm. “You mentioned being in the lab, so I grabbed your usual so you could reheat it.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know. I wanted to.” He set the bags down and crossed to where I stood, his hands finding my hips as he leaned in to kiss me.
It was easy, unhurried—the kind of greeting that had become routine over the past few months, his lips warm and familiar against mine.
When he pulled back, his thumb traced my jaw. “Missed you today.”
Before I could respond, he was steering me toward the couch, pressing a beer into my hand. “Sit. Relax. You look like you’ve been staring at screens for eight hours.”
“Because I have.”
“Then your eyes need a break.” He settled beside me, close enough that our thighs touched. “How’s the capstone coming?”
“Good. Final presentation is next week.”
“You’re going to crush it.”
I took a long drink of my beer and didn’t answer.
Seth’s hand found my knee, squeezed once. “You sure you’re okay? You’ve been quiet since this morning.”
This was the moment. The opening. I could ask him about the article, about the scouts, about whether his plans had changed. I could tell him that I’d spent the afternoon spiraling into worst-case scenarios instead of working. I could be honest.
“Just stressed about everything,” I said instead. “It’ll pass.”
He studied my face for a beat too long. I watched him decide whether to push, and saw the moment he chose to let it go.
“Well, food’s ready. And I have news.”
“Yeah?”