Chapter 25
Scouting Report
Austen
The decay rate of a relationship is rarely linear.
In my experience, it doesn’t follow a steady downward slope. It follows a step function. You are on one level—stable, constant, safe—and then a single event occurs, a variable shifts, and you drop instantaneously to a lower plateau.
The event was the knock on the door. The variable was fear.
It had been forty-eight hours since Ryan pounded on Room 317, forty-eight hours since Luke shoved me off his lap with enough force to bruise, forty-eight hours since I started feeling like Luke’s dirty little secret.
I sat at my desk, my back to the room. five a.m.
Usually, this was our “quiet friction” time. Luke would be waking up, grumbling about the cold floor, making his way to the coffeemaker. I would be reviewing my schedule for the day. We would exist in a comfortable, shared orbit until he went off to practice.
Today, the silence was sterile.
Rustle of sheets. Heavy thud of feet hitting the floor. Zip of a gear bag.
“I’m heading out,” Luke said. His voice was rough, tight.
I turned in my chair. He was dressed—hoodie up, hat low. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the door, his hand on the knob.
“You have a lift block at six,” I said. “It’s only five.”
“Going early. Need to stretch.”
“I made coffee.”
“I’ll grab some on the way.”
He opened the door. The hallway air rushed in, cold and smelling of floor wax.
“Luke?”
He paused, but he didn’t turn. His knuckles were white on the door handle.
“We iterate,” I said, offering the phrase that had become our shorthand for we keep going, we fix this.
He stood frozen for a second. Tension in his shoulders, the way his head dipped. For a moment, I thought he might turn around. I thought he might drop the bag and come back to me and apologize for the thousandth time for the shove, for the panic, for the hiding.
“Sure,” he said to the doorframe. He walked out. The latch clicked shut.
I looked at the coffee pot. Full. Hot. Useless.
I opened my laptop and pulled up our text history.
Last Month Average Response Latency: 4 minutes.
Last Forty-Eight Hours Average Response Latency: 3 hours, 12 minutes.
Word Count Average (Sent): 15.
Word Count Average (Received): 4.
The data screamed. The trend line plummeted toward zero.
A familiar, cold sensation in my gut. It wasn’t heartbreak—heartbreak is a hot, sharp thing. This was old. This was the dull, heavy ache of recognition.
I knew this pattern.
I had lived in seven foster homes between the ages of six and sixteen. I considered myself an expert in the signs of “Placement Termination.”
It never happened all at once. The adults didn’t wake up one day and tell the caseworker to come get you. There was always a lead-up. A shift in the atmosphere.
I looked at Luke’s side of the room. Neat. Too neat. He hadn’t left his books on his desk. His gear bag was gone. His bed was made with military precision.
He was packing up his emotional investment. He hadn’t told me yet.
I dressed and fled the room.
Ridgeway Hall was my fortress of solitude, but today, the equations on my screen refused to resolve. I was staring at a complex manifold, but my brain was running a different simulation.
Simulation A: Luke stays. Probability: Low. The pressure from his father is a constant force. The fear of exposure is an escalating variable.
Simulation B: Luke leaves. Probability: High. The path of least resistance is to cut the tether. To be “singular.”
“You’re doing it again,” a voice said.
I looked up. Maya dropped her bag onto the table next to mine. She didn’t ask if the seat was taken. She sat down, unwound her scarf, and fixed me with a look that was equal parts pity and annoyance.
“Doing what?” I asked, closing my laptop.
“Calculating the end of the world.” She pointed at my face. “You have your ‘doomsday actuary’ expression on.”
“I am merely analyzing behavioral trends.”
“You mean Luke.”
I flinched. “He is… distant. Since the interruption.”
“Austen,” Maya sighed. She reached across the table and put her hand over mine. Her fingers were warm, stained with ink. “He’s a hockey player. He’s the starter. He’s a transfer student with a dad who treats him like a racehorse.”
“I know the variables, Maya.”
“Do you?” She squeezed my hand. “Because you’re looking at him like he’s a math problem you can solve if you find the right formula. But he’s not a proof. He’s a person. And people like Luke… they have trajectories.”
“Trajectory implies a predetermined path. He has agency.”
“Does he?” Maya challenged. “Look at him. Look at his life. His dad maps out his diet. His coach maps out his sleep schedule. The scouts map out his future. Where exactly does his agency live, Austen? Because from where I’m sitting, the only time he exercises it is when he’s with you.
And that realization probably terrifies him. ”
I pulled my hand away. “He loves me. He said it.”
“I know he does. I believe him.” Maya softened. “But love is an emotion. Self-preservation is an instinct. And right now, you are the biggest risk to his trajectory.”
She wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know. That was the worst part. She was vocalizing the data points I had been trying to suppress.
“So, what is your hypothesis?” I asked, my voice thin. “That he will terminate the relationship to secure the asset?”
“I think,” Maya said carefully, “that you need to protect yourself. You have a scholarship to keep. You have a thesis to write. You have a life that matters, Austen. Don’t let him burn it all down because he’s afraid of the dark.”
I looked out the window. The sky was the color of a bruised plum.
“I don’t have a life without him,” I whispered. “Not a constant one.”
“That,” Maya said, her voice hard, “is the scariest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
I left the library at four p.m.
I needed to walk. I needed the cold air to numb the panic rising in my chest like floodwater.
I walked the perimeter of the campus. I counted my steps. One, two, three, four. I forced my breathing to match the count. In, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four.
I found myself near the athletic complex. It wasn’t a conscious decision. My feet knew the vector.
The parking lot was full. It was a Tuesday, but the lot was packed with team trucks, student beaters, and faculty sedans.
I scanned the rows. Luke’s truck was parked in the back row, isolated, like him.
But then I saw something else.
Parked near the entrance to the rink, in a spot reserved for “VIP/Administration,” was a black Lincoln Navigator.
Sleek. Clean. It looked like a shark swimming in a pool of minnows.
The license plate wasn’t Massachusetts. It wasn’t New York or New Jersey.
It was Minnesota. Land of 10,000 Lakes.
I stopped walking. I stood on the sidewalk, the wind whipping my coat around my legs, and stared at the plate.
Minnesota.
The Wild. The team his dad played for. The team that was rumored to be looking at goalies for their development camp.
The door of the rink opened.
Two men walked out.
One was Coach Harper. She looked serious, pointing at a clipboard.
The other man was tall, wearing a camel-hair coat that cost more than my entire tuition. He had silver hair and the kind of posture that comes from never having to wait in line. He was nodding, listening to Harper, but his eyes were scanning the campus like he was appraising real estate.
He stopped at the Navigator, shook Harper’s hand, and got in.
The car pulled away, sliding silently past me.
I watched it go.
It wasn’t a car. It was the future. It was the variable that solved the equation of Luke’s life.
If that car was here, the offer was coming. And if the offer was coming, the timeline had accelerated.
I turned and walked back to the dorm. I didn’t count my steps this time. There was no point. The math was done.
I texted him from the sidewalk.
Me: You okay?
The reply came forty minutes later, while I was sitting in the dark.
Luke: Long day. Talk tomorrow.
Four words. No iteration. The trend line didn’t lie.
By eleven p.m. Luke still wasn’t back. His practice had ended hours ago. He should be here. He should be icing his shoulder.
I sat on my bed. I didn’t turn on the lights.
I took out my notebook. Not my class notebook. My scratch pad.
I wrote: Minnesota.
I started doing the math.
Distance: Cold Harbor to St. Paul. 1,248 miles.
Travel Time: 19 hours driving. 4 hours flying.
Cost of Flight: $350 avg. (Unaffordable on my stipend).
Duration of Development Camp: 6 weeks (July–August).
Likelihood of Rookie Contract: High (based on current stats).
If he signed, he would leave in June. He would go to St. Paul. He would be surrounded by press, by scouts, by teammates fighting for a roster spot.
He would be under a microscope.
And me?
I would be here. In Cold Harbor. In graduate school, probably. Living in a beige apartment we talked about renting together.
I looked at the variables.
Luke in Minnesota: Closeted again. Scared. High pressure.
Austen in Cold Harbor: Secret. Liability. Distraction.
A long-distance relationship requires transparency. It requires communication. It requires a foundation of trust that can withstand the silence.
We didn’t have that. We had panic attacks in hotel rooms. We had “just a friend.” We had silence that stretched for hours because he was afraid his father might hear him breathing on the phone.
If he went to Minnesota, he wouldn’t take me with him. Not really. He couldn’t.
He would pack me away. He would put me in a box marked College and leave me on the shelf, intending to come back for me when it was safe.
But I knew about shelves. I knew about storage.
Foster kids know that once you go into storage, you rarely come back out. You gather dust. You get forgotten. You get replaced by something newer, shinier, less complicated.
I closed the notebook.
The door opened.
Luke walked in. He looked exhausted. His eyes were red-rimmed. He smelled of sweat and the cheap deodorant he kept in his locker.
He saw me sitting in the dark. He paused, hand on the light switch.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
He flicked the light on. The brightness made me squint.
“You’re still up,” he said, walking to his side of the room. He didn’t look at me. He started unzipping his jacket.
“I saw a car today,” I said.
Luke froze. His jacket was half off. He didn’t turn around.
“What kind of car?”
“A black Navigator. Minnesota plates. Parked at the rink.”
The silence that followed was heavy.
Luke finished pulling his jacket off. He hung it on the back of his chair.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “That was Gulliver Vane. The head scout.”
“He was here.”
“He watched practice.”
“And?”
Luke turned around. He looked wretched. He looked like a man who was drowning and trying to pretend he was swimming laps.
“And he wants to meet,” Luke said. “Tomorrow. With my dad.”
“Your dad is coming?”
“He’s driving up tonight.”
I nodded. A strange, cold calm. The data was verified. The simulation was running exactly as predicted.
“So, it’s happening,” I said.
“It’s a meeting, Austen. It’s… talking.”
“Talking about the future.”
“Yeah.”
“Does that future include variables?” I asked. “Or is it singular?”
Luke flinched. He walked over to me. He sat on the edge of my bed, close enough to touch, but he didn’t reach out.
“I don’t know what they’re going to say,” he whispered. “But I know what I want.”
“Do you?”
“I want the net,” he said. “And I want you.”
“In that order?”
He looked at me, his eyes pleading. “It’s not that simple.”
“It is,” I said. “It’s math, Luke. It’s finite resources. You have a finite amount of courage. You have to decide where you’re going to spend it.”
“I’m spending it,” he insisted. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“You’re here physically. But you’re packing, Luke. I can see it.”
“I’m not packing.”
“You are. You’re pulling away. You’re checking the exits. You’re getting ready to leave before you’ve even signed the paper.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is,” I said, my voice trembling. “I know the signs. I’ve lived them.”
I stood up. I couldn’t be this close to him. It hurt too much.
“My third foster home,” I said, walking to the window. “The Millers. They were nice. They bought me a bike. They took me to the movies. But two weeks before they sent me back, Mrs. Miller stopped making eye contact. She stopped asking about my day. She stopped shopping for me.”
I turned to face him.
“You’re buying the small cereal, Luke.”
Luke looked stricken. He stood up. “Austen, no. That’s not—I’m stressed. It’s the playoffs. It’s my dad. It’s not you.”
“It’s always me,” I said. “I am the complication. I am the thing that doesn’t fit in the suitcase.”
“Stop it.” He crossed the room. He grabbed my shoulders. His hands were shaking. “You are not a complication. You are the only thing that makes sense.”
“Then tell them,” I said.
“What?”
“Tomorrow. When you meet Vane. When you see your dad. Tell them. Tell them you have a boyfriend. Tell them you’re not going to live in a closet in St. Paul.”
Luke dropped his hands. He stepped back. The fear was back in his eyes, shutting down the light.
“I can’t,” he whispered. “Not yet. I need the contract first. Once I sign… once I’m valuable… I can have leverage.”
“Leverage,” I repeated.
“Yes. That’s how it works. You play the game until you win, then you change the rules.”
“And in the meantime?”
“In the meantime… we iterate,” he said, his voice weak. “We make it work. We find a way.”
I looked at him. I saw the desperation. I saw the love. But mostly, I saw the fear.
And I knew, with the cold certainty of a mathematical proof, that the fear was winning.
“Okay,” I said softly. “We iterate.”
It was a lie. We both knew it.