CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Lucas
Light.
Too bright. Too white.
Then dark.
Voices come and go. They’re muffled, distorted, like I’m underwater and everyone else is shouting from shore.
“Lucas, you’re out of surgery and in recovery now. Everything went as planned.”
As planned.
Darkness swallows me whole again.
My shoulder feels dull. Heavy. Like it belongs to someone else.
I drift.
A football spirals through the air. My brother’s small hands and our combined big dreams. Our backyard. The smell of freshly cut grass. Brendan tossing the ball and throwing his arms up. “Touchdown!”
Darkness keeps me under.
Pressure. Tugging. Metal clinking somewhere close to my head.
“You have to start waking up soon, Lucas. I know anesthesia gives you the best nap ever, but you need to start waking up. The surgery is done. It’s all over.”
I don’t like those words.
It’s all over.
Dark smothers me.
Friday night lights. The stadium roaring as my heart pounds so hard it feels like it’s racing out of my chest. State high school champions. Confetti sticking to my sweat-soaked face. Feeling invincible.
I try and swim out of the darkness. It’s so fucking heavy and thick.
Pain flares, and I groan.
“Easy,” someone says. “You’re okay.”
Am I?
“Emery?” I think I say. Or maybe I don’t. Maybe I just think it so loudly it feels like sound, but I don’t know because I lose myself back into the shadows again.
Draft day. The phone call coming in. My name on the television screen in front of me. Hands shaking. Brendan tackling me to the ground as a room of my friends and their parents cheer all around us. Everything ahead of me.
Everything.
“You’ve got to wake up, Lucas. I know it’s a good sleep, but I need you to open your eyes for me.”
The stadium jumping. All of the noise and cheering from fans. The national anthem. A B2 flyover. The game is even better. Back and forth as the minutes tick down. And when the clock hits zero, I drop to my knees, now a Super Bowl winner.
The dreams Brendan and I used to live out on our front lawn, now a reality.
“Lucas. There you are.” Bright lights burn my eyes before my eyelids drift back closed. It’s so much easier in the darkness.
A phone call I’m waiting for. A second-chance contract. The Lone Star Rebels. A locker with my name taped crooked on it. You still got it, Hale.
I believed that.
I still do.
Or I want to.
This time when my eyes flutter open, it’s slower. Heavier. Like my body doesn’t want to follow my mind anymore.
I force my eyes to stay open.
The room swims with blurred edges and haloed lights. My mouth is dry. My arm feels . . . wrong. Wrapped. Immobilized. Not mine.
And then—
Her.
She’s sitting beside me, close enough that I can see every detail.
Emery.
Her hair is pulled back, a few strands loose around her face. No makeup. Dark circles under her eyes like she hasn’t slept in days. And somehow, she’s never looked more beautiful.
My chest aches at the sight of her.
I’m overwhelmed. I know it’s the aftereffects of the anesthesia, so I don’t fight it. I don’t want to.
Her fingers are laced through mine.
She smiles when she sees my eyes open, but it’s soft. Careful. Bittersweet in a way that makes my stomach sink.
“Hey,” she murmurs. “You’re okay. Surgery’s done.”
I swallow. My throat burns.
“Martin—”
“Martin?”
“Dr. Hanson cleaned your shoulder up arthroscopically as best he could,” she continues gently, slipping into that calm, steady voice she uses when she’s trying not to break. “Removed the damaged tissue. Trimmed and sutured the tear in the labrum. Cleaned up old scar tissue.”
I watch her mouth move, even as dread settles deep in my bones.
“Mm,” I say.
“This won’t be the last time you’ll need surgery on it. But we now know what’s under there and know it can be managed. Cleaned up in stages as needed.” She gives me a small smile that doesn’t quite hold. “Pain will improve. Function too. You’ll heal.”
Just not for football. Those are the words she’s not saying but that her eyes are relaying.
I nod once.
That simple acknowledgment takes everything I have.
She doesn’t have to say the words.
I already know. Have known.
This surgery was never about saving my career.
It was about confirming its end. About managing my future.
My eyes burn, but I don’t let the tears fall. I don’t have the strength for them anyway.
“I’m done,” I whisper. Or maybe I don’t. Maybe I just think it.
She squeezes my hand, and that’s when it hits—the finality of it. The weight. The grief rushing in like a wave I can’t outrun.
I close my eyes.
I don’t want to be awake for this part.
I’d rather fall back into the dark. Back into the memories where my arm was strong and the future was endless and nothing hurt like this.
The last thing I feel before the anesthesia pulls me under again is her hand tightening around mine.
And the quiet, crushing devastation of knowing that when I wake up next time, everything will be different.
Forever.