Chapter 15
fifteen
MORGAN
I won, so why do I still feel like shit?
The morning air has teeth, nipping at exposed skin between my jacket collar, even as my footsteps create a military cadence on brick, precise and controlled like I've trained myself to be.
As I walk, each breath forms a small cloud that dissipates instantly, like every connection I've successfully avoided.
This is control.
This is loneliness.
Last night, I performed surgery on James's psyche without anesthesia. I peeled back every layer, exposed every pathetic coping mechanism, every desperate joke he's ever wielded as armor. And that final moment—I learned my lesson about that three summers ago—was the kill-shot.
The look on his face. God, that look. It was like watching someone realize they'd been breathing wrong their whole life. His mouth had opened, then closed, and for once in his goddamn life, James had nothing to say.
And the silence—that beautiful, terrible silence—had stretched between us like a canyon neither of us could cross. I'd watched his eyes cycle through confusion, recognition, then something worse than anger: understanding.
He'd finally seen what I saw three years ago, that he was exactly the coward I'd always known him to be. As I think about it, my spine straightens into the posture my Mother drilled into me.
Own your emotions, Morgan, she'd always said. Own your space.
And as I walk across campus towards the coffee shop, I try my best to do so.
Despite the cold, Pine Barren University ordered its weather from the same catalog where it gets its promotional materials, with an absurdly perfect fall morning complete with golden sunlight filtering through leaves that look individually painted.
Students are sprawled across the quad in groups, enjoying the sunlight. Some are studying, others are just hanging, but everyone is here to be with others. And here I am, the lone wolf, striding on my own, no doubt giving off my usual 'fuck-off-and-don't-dare-approach-me' vibe.
A couple passes me, joined at the hip like they're competing in a three-legged race nobody asked them to enter. She wears his basketball jersey, cute and casually possessive at the same time, and his hand claims her back pocket with the desperation of someone afraid she'll fly away if he lets go.
"A breakfast burrito has eggs," she insists, mock outrage brightening her voice. "Eggs are literally the most breakfast food ever invented."
"But they're wrapped in a tortilla," he counters, pulling her closer when she pretends to escape. "That makes them lunch. It's science."
Fools… my mind tries to sound convincing as they drift out of earshot. They're drunk on intimacy, but in three weeks, one of them will ghost the other after a pregnancy scare or to depart on a study abroad program or just because Tuesday rolled around and they got bored.
As I try to convince myself I'm right where I am, doing exactly what I want, the liberal arts building rises ahead, all Gothic pretension and unnecessary gargoyles. I round the corner, cataloging today's battle: equipment inventory where I'll discover what else the men's team has "borrowed"—
Then Devils colors stop me cold.
My body reacts before my brain processes the threat, and pure instinct drives me back into a stone archway's shadow. Because, right there, James and a few of the hockey boys are sitting on the low wall bordering the philosophy building's pretentious meditation garden.
They're all talking, but someone has replaced James with a deflated version of himself.
Those shoulders that usually sprawl across space have collapsed inward.
His perpetually moving hands—always drumming, or conducting invisible orchestras—rest still in his lap.
He stares at nothing, present but not really.
Satisfaction shoots through me. There's what you really are without your circus act, I think.
Because this is accountability, a visual depiction of what happens when someone finally refuses to laugh at your deflections, and who doesn't accept your bullshit that's shoveled down on others from a position of privilege. And if he has to sit in it for a while, well… it'll be good for him.
He might need to learn how to function without emotional training wheels.
Part of me wants to stride right past them—past him—but my legs stay frozen. Because here, in the shadows, watching, I'm finally able to confirm my hypothesis: that underneath the manic energy and entertainment, there's a frightened child who never learned to speak without making it a punchline.
But there's also data that doesn't compute.
Erik Schmidt sits beside him, close enough their shoulders almost touch. Not talking—because Schmidt treats words like stocks, hoarding them for maximum value—but his presence is intentional. He's reading what looks like an economics textbook, but his eyes haven't moved across the page once.
He's standing guard and holding James up all at once.
On his other side, Leo Cooper mirrors the position.
The chemistry genius who once told a reporter that human interaction was "an inefficient use of cognitive resources" has planted himself there.
His chemistry textbook remains closed, a man who treats study time like church choosing proximity over productivity.
A cluster of other players maintains a loose perimeter, orbiting him, maintaining gravitational pull even as his light dims. They're tossing a football in lazy arcs, and I see Ben Kellerman catch a wobbling pass and start to celebrate, until he remembers and scales his enthusiasm down to library volume.
The satisfaction inside me curdles.
Because they haven't abandoned him.
Even broken, even stripped of his entertainment value, they're here, with him, because they actually give a shit. He fucked up and got eviscerated for being exactly the coward I knew he was, and now he's surrounded by people choosing to stand by him anyway.
When was the last time someone stood by me when I was hurting?
The answer lands hard.
Never, my mind chimes in. Because you've never let anyone see you bleed.
Suddenly furious at the shift in my mood, at having the sight of James's devastation being turned into self-doubt, I turn sharply. Ponytail whipping against my cheek, I stride toward the campus coffee shop with purposeful aggression that makes freshmen scatter.
But the image follows.
The broken jester and his loyal court.
The coffee shop is a sensory overload—violent espresso machine hissing, the barista's overwhelming enthusiasm—and students pack every corner, their biggest worry whether their Philosophy TA will round up their 89.4 to an A-minus.
"Good morning! What can I get you?" The barista's name tag reads Madison! with a heart dotting the 'i'—because of course it does.
"Black coffee," I say, my voice sharp. "The largest size you're legally allowed to serve."
"Venti it is!" She rebounds from my tone like those inflatable clowns that always pop back up. "Can I get a name for that?"
I almost say Morgan, but what emerges is, "Morgue."
If the shoe fits, right?
Her marker freezes mid-air. "I'm sorry, could you…?"
"Morgue," I repeat. "Like where they keep the bodies."
To her credit, Madison only pauses a beat before scrawling it on the cup. "That'll be right up. And badass name. Very Wednesday Addams."
That's… actually not terrible.
When she calls "Venti black for Morgue?" with the confidence of someone announcing the next heavyweight champion, I grab my cup and escape to outdoor seating, suddenly self-conscious because there's a bunch of people looking for the girl with the weird name.
There's a corner table, partially hidden by a plant that's given up on life. It feels highly relatable, so I claim it, wrapping my hands around the cardboard cup like a life raft. The heat burns through, too hot to drink, but I like that the pain is quantifiable and real.
At the next table, girls explode into laughter over someone's phone. One—blonde, wearing a PBU Hockey sweatshirt that definitely started the night in some player's room—collapses against her friend's shoulder. They touch constantly, unconsciously, a hand on a forearm, a head against a shoulder.
Casual intimacy, as natural as breathing. "Did you see his face?" one of them gasps between giggles. "Like someone told him Santa wasn't real!"
"Stop," her friend manages, wiping tears away from her eyes as she laughs. "I can't breathe."
They're probably talking about some frat boy's epic fail at a party last night.
Nothing that matters, or so I try to tell myself.
But the way they lean into each other, creating their own gravity, that matters.
The blonde reaches over to steal her friend's croissant without asking, and the friend just shifts her plate closer.
When was the last time someone touched me without calculation?
Not glove-taps after goals or professional handshakes. Real touch. The kind that says I choose proximity without strategic reason, the kind that tells me another person considers my company pleasurable and worthy of time investment outside of what they get out of it.
The coffee has cooled enough to drink, but now tastes like liquid regret.
This is victory, apparently. I destroyed James Fitzgerald, but I didn't finish the job. Because, already, his teammates have caught him in a giant net of support, and are holding him suspended in place until he's strong enough to climb out and walk again.
My team respects me. Fears me, probably. They execute plays with military precision and never question my decisions. They work with me because they benefit. But would they sit with me if I couldn't function? Would they form protective circles if I showed up broken?
Mills would try. She's as loyal as they come, and she'd stand there, shifting her weight nervously from one foot to another, wanting to help but having no blueprint for doing so. Because I've trained her—trained them all, trained everyone—that Morgan Riley is a self-sufficient ecosystem.
As my mind turns over, I watch the blonde show her friends a video of something. They lean in, forming a circle that excludes the world without malice. One casually fixes another's smudged mascara without being asked, and the small gesture lands like shrapnel.
James is a coward. A professional deflector and certified bull in the emotional china shop. But he's also surrounded by people who witness his worst moment and stay. And I'm here, alone, with cooling coffee and the empty chair across from me that might as well have neon signage.
"This Space Intentionally Left Vacant."
I drain the coffee in one bitter swallow that burns all the way down.
And just a second before I stand to leave, the table of girls I've been watching breaks up. The blonde calls "Love you, bitch!" as she leaves, and the rest of the friend group responds with casual "Love you too!" and "Text me when you get home!".
It's connection, warmth.
And here I am, cold and alone.
Dead inside.
The Morgue.
I toss the dregs of my coffee in the trash, then head home, where my apartment greets me with perfect silence, everything exactly as I left it. Keys in the ceramic dish by the door, shoes on the rack and organized by purpose, kitchen counters clear and a single mug drying on a dish towel.
Like always, there's no roommate to disrupt order with chaos and I won't receive any surprise visitors.
Hell, there's no one to notice if I didn't come home at all.
Everyone in my building would probably need a week to realize I was missing, and my players would only notice because I missed practice.
I stand in my living room and listen to silence that used to sound like safety and control. But now it sounds exactly like what it is, the absence of everything that makes noise worth tolerating, a total and crushing aloneness that never relents.
This is what three years of perfect defense earned me.
An impenetrable position with nothing inside worth protecting.
A fortress so secure that there's nothing alive inside.
A trap I can't escape.