38. Chapter 38 — Ava
He's in the end zone.
I knew before the ball landed. I've been reading his routes since Philadelphia and the corner was a half-step behind from the break — I saw it coming three seconds before it happened and I was on my feet before I decided to stand.
It's good. Both feet. The ref is signaling.
The stadium detonates around me — a hundred thousand people becoming one sound — and I stay completely still in the noise. The person beside me is on their feet screaming. I am watching number eighty-two.
His head tips back. That grin — wide open, all the way there, aimed straight at the sky like he's the luckiest person on earth.
He is.
Three minutes fifty seconds. Empires up by two.
I sit down.
I fold my hands in my lap. Watch the defense take the field. Think about my father somewhere under this stadium, already on to the next possession.
The clock runs. The defense holds. My father built something in that team — not just a game plan, a belief — and I watch it hold under pressure in real time for three minutes and fifty seconds.
Final whistle.
I'm already moving.
Bag over my shoulder. Credential in hand. The same credential I've used at every road game since early December.
I get onto the field the way I've gotten into every secured space all season — credential up, purpose visible, moving like I belong there.
Because I do.
Confetti falling. Chaos everywhere. The whole franchise in motion around me.
I find him by the numbers.
By the way he moves through a crowd — that specific kinetic energy I've been tracking since he walked toward me at the gala eleven weeks ago. Too much of it. Takes up more space than his body occupies.
He finds me at the same moment.
Not a decision. Just physics.
The team parts around us. Of course it does. They've known all season.
He reaches me. His hands in my hair. Confetti on his shoulders. The open bright expression I've watched him dim and correct a hundred times this year — wide open now, no dimmer, all the way there, nothing held back.
I let him pull me in.
In front of everyone. In front of the cameras. In front of the whole world and every person in this franchise and my father, who is twenty feet away.
I look up over his shoulder.
My father. Stopped walking. Watching his wide receiver hold his youngest daughter in the middle of a Super Bowl celebration on Valentine's Day.
He looks at me.
I look back.
One long moment. The confetti keeps falling. The noise keeps going.
He nods.
Once.
And keeps walking.
I close my eyes for exactly one second.
That's the whole thing. That's everything.
Wren appears at my shoulder. Not managing — just present, in case it needs managing. She catches my eye. The smallest nod. I've got it.
I mouth: thank you.
She shakes her head. Then her expression does the dry, precise thing. Just make sure he doesn't say anything stupid.
I almost laugh.
Ty is already opening his mouth.
"Don't," I say.
He closes it. The grin stays. "I wasn't going to say anything stupid."
"You were absolutely going to say something stupid."
"Something true."
"Same thing right now." I look at him. "Not here. Not like this."
He searches my face. Reads whatever's there.
"Okay," he says. Just that.
He pulls me back in. I let him.
Later. We'll say the rest of it later, the right way, when it's just us.
He already knows that. I can feel it in how he holds on.
Across the field Sara Reed has a press credential and the expression of a journalist who just watched a story confirm itself.
She opens her notebook. Writes one line. Closes it.
Looks at Dante.
He tilts his head. Leave it.
She puts the notebook away.
Around us the celebration keeps going — cameras, confetti, fifty-three men who kept a secret all season finally having no reason to.