CHAPTER 32
Becker
Not late enough to be considered morning, not early enough to be considered a respectable time to still be awake.
It's the hour where your brain decides to replay every embarrassing thing you've ever done while simultaneously convincing you that your entire life is a dumpster fire that will never, ever stop burning.
I'm wandering the training compound like some kind of ghost, haunting the silent walkways between cabins. The moon's hanging low and fat in the sky, casting everything in that weird blue-silver light that makes even normal things look like they belong in a horror movie.
I woke up twenty minutes ago to a quiet cabin. No Kane. No soft breathing from the bunk below mine. No occasional shift of weight or rustle of sheets. Just... nothing.
Where he went isn't my business anymore. That's what I keep telling myself, anyway. Kane is no longer my... whatever the fuck he was. Hookup? Almost-boyfriend? The guy who made me come so hard I saw constellations that haven't been discovered yet?
Does it matter now?
The compound is dead silent except for the occasional hoot of an owl or rustle of leaves.
Everyone's asleep like normal humans, dreaming of scoring goals or winning faceoffs or gaining more muscle.
And here I am, walking barefoot on dew-damp grass because my brain won't shut up and my chest feels like someone's sitting on it.
I need to burn off this restless energy before I vibrate out of my skin. The gym. That's what I need. Nothing fixes existential dread like deadlifting until your arms shake.
The training facility is dark except for a single light spilling from the gym doorway. Someone else is apparently having a middle-of-the-night crisis too.
I'm about to turn around—I'm not in the mood for company—when I spot him through the glass door panel.
Kane.
He's on the treadmill, running like the devil himself is chasing him. His gray t-shirt is plastered to his body, completely soaked through. Sweat drips from his elbows, creating little dark spots on the treadmill belt. He’s going way too hard.
I should leave. This isn't my problem anymore. He made that abundantly clear when he threw me away like yesterday's jock strap.
But he looks... wrong. Like he's punishing himself. Like he's trying to outrun something he can't escape.
Fuck.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I push open the door and step inside. The gym smells like rubber mats and metal and Kane's sweat. He doesn't notice, earbuds in, gaze fixed on some invisible point in front of him.
I move closer, into his peripheral vision, and he startles when he sees me in the mirror. His pace falters for a split second before he recovers, pushing even harder, his feet pounding the belt like he's trying to break it.
"How long have you been at it?" I ask.
He yanks out one earbud. "Hour. Maybe two." His voice is ragged, breath coming in harsh pants.
Jesus Christ. Two hours sprinting?
"You're going to hurt yourself," I say, moving closer to the treadmill.
"Don't care." He reaches forward and increases the speed to 13 mph, his legs pumping even faster, his form starting to break down.
This is insane.
I cross to the treadmill and do the only thing I can think of—I slam my hand down on the emergency stop button.
The belt slows abruptly. Kane stumbles, nearly face-planting on the control panel before catching himself on the handrails. He hangs there for a moment, chest heaving, before whipping his head up to glare at me.
"What the hell?" It’s a growl.
"You're destroying yourself," I snap back, matching his intensity.
"So what? My body, my choice." He tries to restart the treadmill, but I block the controls with my hand.
"Is this what you want? Running yourself into the ground because you're stubborn?" I'm suddenly furious. At him for being so goddamn reckless. At myself for still caring.
He shakes his head, droplets of sweat flying from his forehead. "You don't understand."
I let out a sad chuckle. "Can't argue there."
He steps off the treadmill, his legs visibly shaking. He braces himself against the machine with one hand, the other wiping his face with his t-shirt. For the first time since our... whatever, he looks at me. Not through me or past me, but at me, his eyes moving over my face slowly.
I can't read his expression. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this one before. I let him look, even though every instinct screams at me to turn away.
"Riley?" he finally says, his voice so uncertain it doesn't even sound like him.
I sigh, feeling bone-tired in a way that has nothing to do with the hour. "What?"
"Can I..." He pauses, swallows. "Tell you something."
I sigh again, then shrug. "If you want to."
His eyes lock with mine, intense and unwavering. "I don't want to. But I need you to know."
***
Kane
"YOU DID WHAT?"
Becker's voice is so quiet it barely registers above the hum of the gym's ancient air conditioning, but the fury behind it might as well be a fucking train barreling straight into my chest.
We're sitting cross-legged on the gym floor like we're about to start some twisted version of show-and-tell. Except what I just showed Becker wasn't my cool rock collection or my favorite action figure—it was the complete and utter dumpster fire that is my decision-making process.
For the past twenty minutes, I've been spilling my guts like they're on clearance. The ultimatum. The threat. The earth-shattering discovery that it was all bullshit. My father's gallery of supposed victims who are all living their best fucking lives while I've been cowering like a scared child.
And Becker? He just sat there and listened. No interruptions, no comments, nothing. Just those blue eyes boring into me like he could see straight through to the wasteland of my soul. The silence was worse than if he'd started screaming.
Now I'm waiting for the punch.
My jaw's already clenched in anticipation. I deserve it. Hell, I'd probably throw it myself if I could figure out how to punch my own face hard enough to make up for the past seventy-two hours of concentrated stupidity.
"I'm sorry." The words feel pathetically inadequate, like bringing a squirt gun to a five-alarm fire. "I'm really fucking sorry. Had I known it was all just a story—"
"That's not the issue here, Jayden."
My name in his mouth stops me cold. Not 'Kane.' Not 'Robot.' Jayden.
"It's... not?" God, I sound pathetic.
Becker stares at me like I've grown a second head, complete with its own bad haircut and daddy issues. His eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep, his hair a disaster zone from running his hands through it repeatedly, and somehow he's still the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
"The issue is, you didn't tell me!" The words explode out of him, not a shout but something worse—raw and wounded and so fucking honest it makes my teeth ache.
My eyes burn, and I'm fighting tears like they're armed insurgents. "I was trying to protect you—"
"Jesus, Kane." He drags a hand through his hair. "That's exactly the type of decision we were supposed to make together. Instead, you chose to make it for me.
Every word lands like a body check, and I deserve every bruise. Because he's right. Of course he's right. I made the same choice my father's been making for me my entire life—deciding what's best for someone else without giving them a say in it.
I hang my head, staring at the floor. "I'm sorry."
The punch I've been bracing for doesn't come. Neither does the storm-out.
What comes instead is somehow worse: silence.
Long, brutal, suffocating silence that that stretches between us like taffy being pulled to its breaking point..
Minutes pass. Or hours. Or fucking days. The gym's fluorescent lights buzz overhead, indifferent to the human drama unfolding beneath them. Outside, the sky gradually lightens from pitch black to navy to a pale, hesitant blue.
We sit there like statues, not yelling, not arguing, not speaking at all. Just existing in the same space, breathing the same stale gym air, while I silently catalog every regret I've ever had.
My ass is numb. My back aches. My throat feels like I swallowed sandpaper. But I don't move. I don't break the silence.
I would give anything to know what's going through his head right now.
Is he mentally packing his bag again? Planning how to avoid me for the upcoming season? Calculating the exact trajectory needed to knee me in the balls without getting a penalty?
But I don't ask.
The sun finally breaks over the horizon, painting the gym in soft gold light through the high windows. It feels wrong for such a beautiful sunrise to witness such an ugly moment.
Becker’s looking out the window. The light catches his profile, highlighting the sharp line of his jaw, the slope of his nose, the stubble that's grown in overnight.
"What now?" His voice is rough from disuse.
It's such a simple question with such a complicated answer.
"I don't know. How angry are you?" The question slips out before I can stop it.
He's quiet for another moment. "Well, I'm not happy, that's for sure." He keeps staring out the window, like the answer might be written in the clouds. Then, finally, he turns to look at me, his expression softening just a fraction. "You're hard to stay angry at for long, though."
"Am I?" I'm scared to hope.
He tilts his head. "Don't push it."
I'd push my luck off a cliff if it meant he'd keep talking to me.
"I'm new to this, remember?" I venture, testing the waters.
"Relationships?"
"Being human."
Becker rolls his eyes, but—there. The corner of his mouth twitches. Not quite a smile, but in the same zip code. "Funny."
I’m so busy clinging to that twitch, that barely-there movement, I almost miss the words themselves. "Is that what we are—" I stop, correcting myself, "—were having? A relationship?"
Becker looks at the ceiling and takes a moment. "More like... a situationship." He pauses, and something shifts in his expression. "Unless..."
"Unless...?" My throat closes around the word.
Becker looks at me, straight into my eyes for three entire eternities, before he gives me the rest of that sentence. "Unless you want to upgrade?"
The air leaves my lungs.
Want to.
Not "wanted." Not "could have." Want.
"Upgrade? As in... not past tense?"
My voice comes out so fucking small it’s barely even there.
Becker lets out a chuckle—the first real laugh I've heard from him since...I don’t know when, but way too fucking long. "What? You thought I'm that easy to get rid of?"
I don't think.
I don't plan.
I don't run through the seventeen different scenarios of how this could go wrong in a fraction of a second.
I launch myself forward, closing the two feet between us like it's the most important distance I've ever covered. My hands find his face, his jaw rough with morning stubble under my palms, and I kiss him like I'm trying to apologize with my mouth since words clearly aren't my strong suit.
He tastes like pain and second chances.
Something wet hits my hand.
It takes me a moment to realize I'm crying. Actually crying. Tears rolling down my face and onto Becker's as we kiss like we're trying to make up for tn years apart.
Becker's hands come up to cup my face, his thumbs wiping at my cheeks even as we keep kissing. "You're such a disaster," he murmurs against my mouth.
"Upgrade," I manage, my voice cracking on the word. Another kiss. "All the way up."
He pulls back just enough to look at me, and his eyes are doing that soft thing that makes my chest hurt in an entirely different way than it's been hurting for the past seventy-two hours.
"Yeah," he says quietly. "All the way up."
We shift without discussion, some unspoken agreement that sitting two feet apart is no longer acceptable.
Becker's arm comes around my shoulders, tugging me against his side.
I let him, tucking my head against his chest and trying not to think about how pathetic I must look right now—tear-streaked face, running nose, the works.
His heartbeat thuds against my ear. Steady. Reliable. The complete opposite of everything in feel right now.
The sun's fully up now, orange light spilling across the gym floor and turning the scuff marks into abstract art.
I breathe him in. And again. And again.
The relief is so profound it's almost painful, like blood rushing back into a limb that's been asleep too long.
And then, he asks, "What are you going to do about your father?" dropping my mood like a stone through ice.
Right. My father. The man whose opinion has dictated every major decision I've made since I was six years old. Who I've been trying to please for eighteen years. Who just threatened to destroy the man currently holding me and turned out to have all the actual power of a wet paper bag.
"I have no idea."
I have a dozen contingency plans for neutral zone breakouts and defensive coverage schemes, but absolutely zero idea how to handle the fact that my father is a manipulative asshole.
Where do you even start with that? Family therapy? Cutting him off completely? Awkward phone calls where we both pretend nothing happened?
I turn my head to look at Becker and find him already watching me, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. Not his usual shit-eating grin or his sarcastic smirk. This is something else. Something that looks suspiciously like mischief.
"What?" I ask, wary.
The smile widens. "Good thing I'm never out of ideas."