Chapter 20 #2
Efficient minutes. Clean rotations. Closeouts sharp enough that Coach actually nods at me like I’m not a liability.
I’m not in the starting five consistently, but I’m starting enough games that my name pops up in recaps.
I’m closing quarters. I’m getting called in when things are tight, when they need someone who won’t panic.
It’s not lost on me that I’ve become the guy who doesn’t panic.
If they only knew.
Kirk and I don’t speak. We don’t even pretend to.
We share the floor because we have to, because Coach expects professionals.
Kirk can chirp at refs and bark at other guys, can stomp around like he owns the gym, but I don’t give him anything anymore.
Not a reaction, not a glance, not the satisfaction of my attention. He’s a shadow I move around.
It’s easy, honestly.
Basketball is simple. You see the play. You execute. You recover. You do your job. It’s the silence after that’s the problem.
The quiet is where everything I’ve been holding down starts clawing back up.
I wake at 3:00 a.m. more nights than not, eyes snapping open like someone shook me awake.
My jaw aches from clenching. My shoulders are tight.
My phone is always within reach, face down or face up depending on what kind of courage I think I have.
I lie there and replay conversations that never finished. Porch boards. A front door closing. Rafe’s voice: “We’ll take a breath.”
I tell myself the same thing every time: If I’m perfect on the court, I can earn the right to be messy later.
It’s a lie I keep buying because it feels like control.
There is no later.
I’m in the training facility after practice, towel around my neck, sweat cooling on my skin, when Marco drops down beside me on the bench with a grunt. He’s been doing this more lately—showing up in my orbit like he’s making sure I don’t drift too far out.
“You good?” he asks, casual.
I take a sip of water. “Yeah.”
Marco’s eyes flick over my face. He knows my tells now. The too-fast answer. The way my shoulders stay rigid even when I sit.
He nudges my knee with his. “No bullshit.”
I exhale slowly through my nose. “I’m fine.”
Marco huffs a laugh. “Man, I swear ‘fine’ is your favorite lie.”
I don’t respond.
He leans forward, forearms on his thighs. “You heard from him?” he asks, voice lower.
There’s no need to say Rafe’s name. There hasn’t been for a while.
“Yes,” I say. “He’s… good.”
Marco gives me a sideways look. “You’re saying ‘good’ like you’re reading it off a PR sheet.”
“He’s on tour,” I say, like that explains everything. I rub my thumb over the edge of my bottle. “He’s busy.”
“And you’re not?” Marco’s tone is pointed. “You’re playing your ass off, Ollie. Coach has been in a good mood for, like, three straight days. Do you know how rare that is?”
A weak smile tugs at my mouth. “Miracle season.”
Marco waits. “So?”
“So, what?”
“So, how are you really doing?” he says, slower. “Not your stats. Not your minutes. You.”
A lump forms in my throat. It shouldn’t. It’s a simple question. But the answer is too big for a locker room bench. I shrug. “Same.”
Marco studies me. “You talk to him?”
“We try.”
“That bad?”
I don’t answer fast enough.
Marco’s sigh is quiet. “Okay,” he says. “You don’t have to tell me everything. But you don’t get to pretend you’re not hurting. I’m not asking to fix it. I’m just… here.”
Something shifts in my chest, sharp and warm and painful. I nod once. “Thanks,” I manage.
Marco slaps my shoulder, like he can’t stand the softness too long. “Yeah. Now go ice whatever you’re destroying inside your body, psycho. We need you.”
I snort, but the sound is thin.
Outside of the gym, outside of the court, my world is filtered through a screen.
Rafe’s face shows up everywhere.
Clips from shows. Photos from backstage. Interviews. Fans screaming lyrics. The band’s name in headlines that would’ve sounded like fiction a year ago. He looks unreal in the way people always say about celebrities—too bright, too alive, too much.
Eyeliner heavier now. Shirts torn open. Sweat on his throat, hair damp, veins standing out on his forearms as he grips the mic. There are crowds chanting words he wrote in a bedroom I once slept in.
Sometimes I watch the clips like homework. Like I’m studying for a test in being his husband. I pause on his smile. I rewind when the camera catches him turning his head like he’s looking for someone. I tell myself it’s just stage work, just instinct, just him connecting with the crowd.
But my stomach always twists anyway.
It isn’t jealousy exactly. It’s worse. It’s the fear that the world is getting a version of him I no longer know how to hold.
We finally sync a call on a night that feels like a small miracle.
It’s late for me, early for him. Or maybe it’s late for him and early for me.
The time zones blur. All I know is that I’m sitting on the edge of my hotel bed on the road, suitcase half-open, ice pack melting on my bruised knuckles from practice, and when his face appears on my screen, my chest aches like I’ve been hit.
He looks tired. Not stage-tired. Bone-tired.
His words come a little slower than usual, softened at the edges—not slurred, just…
loosened. Like he’s using something to make the loneliness go down easier.
His hair is damp, cheeks flushed, eyeliner smudged in a way that makes him look both gorgeous and wrecked.
The background is a generic hotel room—lamp, curtain, bland art.
He’s probably been in seventy identical rooms already.
“Hey,” he says softly.
“Hey,” I reply.
For a second, we just look at each other, like we’re both trying to remember what it feels like to exist in the same space.
“How was your game yesterday?” he asks.
“Good,” I say automatically, then correct, because I don’t want to be empty. “We won.”
Rafe smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Yeah? How’d you play?”
“Fine,” I say, then sigh. “Better. Coach didn’t yell at me.”
“That’s huge,” Rafe says, and there’s a flicker of genuine pride in his voice. It hits me in the chest.
“How was the show?” I ask.
He blows out a breath. “Insane. Loud. The kind of loud where you can feel it in your teeth.”
“I saw a clip,” I admit.
His eyebrows lift. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. You looked…” I hesitate, because the words feel dangerous. “Happy.”
Something crosses his face. Not anger. Not even hurt. Just… exhaustion.
“I am happy,” he says carefully. “I’m also tired. And—” He stops, like he’s choosing whether to keep going.
My pulse spikes. “And what?”
Rafe’s gaze holds mine. “It’s weird,” he says quietly. “You feel… far.”
The words land soft, but they hit hard. “I’m right here,” I say immediately.
His expression doesn’t change. “No,” he says, “you’re not.”
A cold, slow dread sinks through me. “I’m literally on the phone with you,” I try, forcing a half joke, because jokes are safer than pain.
Rafe doesn’t smile. “Ollie.”
My jaw locks. “What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know,” he admits, voice roughening. “I just… I can’t feel you. Not the way I used to.”
It isn’t a fight. That’s what makes it worse. If he yelled, if he accused, if he threw something at the wall, I could grab onto that. I could argue back. I could defend. I could do something.
Instead, he’s just telling the truth, and the truth sits between us like a closed door.
“I’m sorry,” I say, because it’s all I have.
Rafe’s jaw flexes. “Yeah,” he says, too flat. “Okay.”
He sounds polite, controlled, like we’re coworkers who stumbled into personal territory and need to retreat fast before we say the wrong thing.
I nod, throat burning. “Okay.”
We talk for another five minutes about schedules like it’s a business meeting. How many games I have. How many cities he has. What day he’s flying. What day I’m flying.
Transactions.
Fragments.
When we hang up, my room feels colder.
A week later, Rafe forgets to reply for a full day. It shouldn’t matter. We miss each other constantly now. We miss calls, texts, moments. I tell myself it’s normal. It’s the tour. It’s the League. It’s life.
But today, it lands wrong, because I’m already raw.
Because I send him something small—just a photo of the sunset outside the arena, orange bleeding into pink over the city—and he doesn’t respond. No heart emoji. No pretty. No miss you. Nothing.
I tell myself he’s sleeping.
I tell myself he’s on a plane.
I tell myself he’s nursing a brutal hangover in a hotel bathroom somewhere, blinking against light and promising himself he’ll slow down tomorrow.
And more significantly, I tell myself that it’s fine.
Then that night, scrolling mindlessly in bed, I see it. A photo posted by some radio station. Rafe in the middle of a group of people I don’t recognize. He’s laughing, head tipped back, surrounded by warmth. Someone has their arm around his shoulders like they belong there.
He looks… held.
My stomach twists, and something ugly flickers through me before I can stop it. It isn’t fear he’ll cheat. It’s fear he won’t need me. It’s the sharp realization that I’m keeping our marriage in a locked room… and resenting him for living outside it.
I hate myself for it immediately, because what kind of man does that? What kind of husband builds a cage and then gets angry when the person he loves breathes air?
The next morning, at practice, the whispers start.
It’s not loud or even obvious. Just the kind of comments that drift through a locker room when guys think they’re talking about nothing.
Front office meetings that run long. My agent checking in more than usual. Teammates making jokes about “business,” about how nobody’s safe, about how you can play your heart out and still get moved like a piece on a board.
“Hope you like snow, Marshall,” one of the vets says with a grin that might be harmless or might not.
I laugh like it’s funny. My stomach drops anyway.