Chapter 17 Colson
seventeen
Colson
The thing I like most about Sadie is that she doesn’t feel the need to fill the silence. We can just be. That’s how it feels tonight, or whenever it’s only the two of us together.
We make our way down to the beach as the sun dips lower, the sky stretching itself out in bands of gold and pale pink. The sand is still warm from the day, holding onto the heat like it doesn’t want to let it go yet.
Sadie had us stop at her car, grabbing a blanket like this was always the plan. Like she didn’t even question whether we’d end up here.
She spreads it out over the sand. I watch her do it, the ease of her movements, the quiet confidence of someone who belongs to a place. I sit when she pats the spot beside her, close enough that our shoulders almost touch.
She opens the brown paper bag, containing whatever she grabbed at the shop. Sadie hands me my half.
Peanut butter and jelly. Cut clean down the middle. A bag of chips between us.
My chest tightens. I pick up my half, turning it over in my hands like it might vanish if I don’t pay attention. “How did you know?”
She shrugs, like it’s no big thing. “You bring it sometimes when you’re coaching at the rec center. Wait, is there an issue with the jelly or something? Is it that you’re very specific about a very generic sandwich?” Sadie waits for me to tell her that something isn’t right.
I swallow hard. “No, no. Absolutely not. This is perfect. Thank you.”
It’s such a small thing. A nothing thing. But it feels like proof that I exist in her world even when I’m not standing right in front of her.
I take a bite. It tastes like comfort, like childhood. Like the kind of meal you eat when you don’t need to impress anyone.
She smiles, leaning back on her hands, watching the water instead of me. Like she knows better than to make a moment feel heavy.
The sun slides closer to the horizon, turning the lake into something molten and unreal. The air cools, brushing against my skin, and for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel like I’m waiting for the next hit.
I don’t remember the last time I did something like this. Just… let the night happen. Let myself land in the next thing without a plan or an escape route.
I’m still piecing myself together; it wasn’t too long ago that I was at the edge of this lake with a sadness too enormous to contain. Tonight is completely different.
Sitting here, with Sadie beside me, it feels like maybe I don’t have to have it all figured out yet. Maybe a piece at a time is enough.
Sadie’s dress rides up a little as she settles in, knees bent, sandwich balanced easily in her hands. It’s unintentional, the kind of thing she doesn’t think twice about.
That’s when I see it.
A pale scar curves along her left knee—clean, deliberate. Not old enough to be forgotten, not new enough to still be angry. The kind of mark that comes from something that stopped everything.
I’ve never seen it before. At the rec center she’s always in leggings, hair pulled back, moving with purpose. This feels like a glimpse of something unguarded.
She catches me looking and follows my gaze down, and smiles, small and knowing.
“ACL,” she explains. “Senior year of college. We were playing in the NCAA championship, the elite eight. I should’ve been sitting out but my coach had this thing about not resting starters, even if we were up big.”
I look back up at her. “Damn.”
She nods. “Yeah.”
That’s all she says, like it explains everything it needs to.
I glance back at her knee, then up at her face. “You were good,” I remark. It’s not a question.
She lets out a slow breath. “Good enough that the next step was the WNBA.”
Not in it. Close enough to touch. My shoulders slump at the realization—the injury took her out.
She nods. “That was the plan. Training camps. Summer workouts. I loved it. If the timing had been different…” She trails off then shrugs, like she’s made peace with the sentence ending there.
“I tried to rehab and come back, but by then the coaches who’d been talking to me were gone.
I was damaged goods.” She laughs to herself but it’s sad and a bit faded.
Playing with the edge of the blanket, she continues. “Pro sports move fast. If you miss your window, they don’t wait.”
Something shifts in my chest. Because suddenly it clicks.
Sadie Becker. The way it’s always sounded familiar. Not because of her dad—though that didn’t hurt—but because I’ve heard it before. On game recaps. On lists. Whispered with respect.
She was that Sadie.
Something tightens in my chest.
Because I know that feeling. The way you obsess and love something. Thinking it will be there for you until you’re ready to walk away. The way it still grabs hold of you, even when it’s not yours anymore.
Maybe that’s why losing my spot with the team hurts the way it does. They took the thing I’ve loved my whole life. And before that? They wanted me to risk it.
I watch Sadie, the easy certainty in the way she says I loved it, and realize something that catches me off guard. I miss the thing that felt like it was in my control. And for the first time since everything fell apart, I let myself admit how much I still want it back.
The sun dips lower, the lake turning molten and still. I don’t tell her I get it. But for the first time, I realize I don’t only understand her loss—I recognize it.
She leans back on her hands, close enough where I feel the warmth of her through the blanket. I think about how long it must’ve taken to get back here. How much patience that kind of healing requires. It makes my shoulder injury feel like a papercut.
“How’s the shoulder feeling?” she asks.
I stretch my neck, side to side, and then roll both shoulders. “Much better. Needed a little more time for it to heal. But, it didn’t really matter after all.”
In this moment—when she looks at me without saying a single word—I know I’m going to tell her everything.
She’s going to be the first person who gets the full story.
Given how she told me about her failed engagement, it almost feels like I owe her a little more of myself. Fuck, maybe I even owe it to myself.
“So… the shoulder,” I start. “That’s part of why I was dismissed from the team.
” I pause, trying to get my nerves under control, then keep going.
“The head athletic trainer wanted me back sooner than I was comfortable with. And I don’t mean mostly healed.
I mean—” I take a breath, swallow it, and force myself forward.
“He wanted injections. Pain meds that we don’t talk about.
Enough that I wouldn’t feel it during the game and could deal with whatever came after. ”
Her eyes soften immediately. “Oh no.”
I nod. “Yeah. He didn’t care about the long term. We were finishing the season strong, talking postseason. That was all that mattered to him.”
I stare out at the water for a second, grounding myself. “I told him no. More than once. And he made it clear it wasn’t something I was supposed to talk about, so I didn’t. I kept it to myself.”
My stomach drops as the memory surfaces—us in the training room, the way he’d assumed he had leverage. Like I’d fold.
But I wasn’t a rookie. I knew my body. I still had years left on my contract and every intention of seeing it through. I was thinking big picture.
He wasn’t.
“It was the right call,” I say quietly. “I wasn’t even close to ready. I could barely lift my arm high enough to brush my teeth. Being on the court wasn’t anywhere on my radar.”
Sadie doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t rush to fix it. She listens.
“That must have been hard,” she says softly.
“It was.”
“So, he got sick of you telling him no? Is that what happened at the game?” She asks this with honesty, like she’s trying to understand.
Sadie may be the first person to do that. No agenda. No news outlet to report to. Simply trying to understand what happened during the viral video clip that seemed to take my reputation down in a matter of seconds.
“One of our second-year players pulled his hamstring,” I reveal. “It had been lingering for a couple months, but he tweaked it again during the game. We were tied going into the fourth quarter, and it was basically a must-win.”
I shake my head. “I overheard the trainer leaning on him. Telling him to keep going. Not to give up on the team. Not to let anyone down.”
Sadie drops her head into her hands, and something in my chest tightens—like she already knows where this is headed.
“He’s a kid,” I continue. “Can’t even legally drink yet. And here’s this grown man, someone in a position of power, trying to bully him into playing through it. I could see it on his face—how badly he didn’t want to go back in. But he started to agree anyway.”
I swallow. “That’s when I lost it.”
I glance down at my hands, then back up at her. “What happened at the end of the bench—that was me stepping in. Standing up for someone who didn’t feel like he could do it himself. A player who was legitimately injured and had no business being back on the floor.”
I exhale slowly, the weight of it still there.
“And I’d do it again.”
Sadie loops her arm around my bicep, easy and sure, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. She leans her head toward my shoulder, her warmth radiating through the thin fabric of my shirt.
Something in me gives. Melts. Like I’ve been bracing for impact and suddenly realize it’s not coming.
“Colson,” she says quietly. “I’m so sorry.”
There’s no judgment in it. No attempt to smooth it over or reframe it into something easier to swallow. Only understanding. Space.
Her thumb presses lightly into my arm, grounding, steady. It tells me she believes me. That she sees what it cost me to do the right thing—and how unfair it feels to be the one carrying the consequences.
I let my head tip the rest of the way, settling against hers. She doesn’t shift or flinch. She simply stays, solid and warm, like she was ready for it.
For the first time since everything happened, I feel… steadied. Like maybe I wasn’t completely in the wrong. Sadie doesn’t push for more. Our question game drifts away, unfinished.
For a moment, I wonder if this is the end of the night. But instead, we sit. Quiet. The way we did the other night.
Sadie shows up. The way she has since the first day I met her.