Chapter 18 #2
Not jealousy.
Not exactly.
Something closer to shame.
Because I had him first.
Or almost.
I had the spark.
The history.
The thing he still looked at me with.
And what did I do with it?
I told him to leave me alone.
I chose silence.
Distance.
Control.
And then I stood back while another girl—a smarter girl, maybe, or just braver walked right into the space I vacated and said mine.
I hate her for it.
I hate myself more.
The curtain moves again. A shadow shifting.
I step back fast this time and nearly bump into the trainer’s rolling stool.
“Need help?”
I jump.
The trainer at the desk is looking at me over the rims of her glasses.
I force my face into something neutral.
“No. I got it.”
My voice sounds normal.
I hate that too.
I walk out of the training room with the ice sleeve draped over my shoulder like that’s all I came for.
The hallway outside is cool and bright and full of students moving through their day like nobody’s life just cracked open behind a blue curtain.
I keep walking.
Past the cardio room.
Past the hydro tubs.
Past the glass wall where men’s basketball is running half-court sets.
I don’t look in.
I absolutely do not look in.
And because the universe has a sense of humor, I hear his voice before I clear the corner.
Low. Easy. Laughing at something Kane says.
I stop anyway.
Just out of sight.
But I can’t make my feet move.
Through the glass I can see only part of the court.
Kane on the wing.
The coach with a clipboard.
A manager rebounding.
And Tristan.
At the free-throw line.
The ball spins in his hands once.
Twice.
That stupid lock of dark hair falls over his forehead and he shakes it back without thinking.
His calves flex when he bends his knees.
His shoulders roll. His watch is gone. Just sweat, tape at one finger, black practice shorts, and those ridiculous hot pink Nikes he insists on wearing like he likes being underestimated.
He lifts the shot.
Swish.
Clean.
He turns at something someone says and laughs.
And I just stand there, hidden and stupid, with an ice sleeve melting down my arm, knowing more than I wanted to know.
He doesn’t know any of it.
He doesn’t know she plotted.
Doesn’t know her mother built a campaign around his transfer.
Doesn’t know I know.
And if I tell him?
What do I sound like?
Bitter.
Jealous.
Desperate.
The girl who turned him down and suddenly cares only when another girl gets close.
I can already hear it.
I can already see the look on his face if I say her name and start spilling secrets overheard from behind a curtain.
No.
Absolutely not.
I am not going to become that girl.
So I keep walking.
Out the doors.
Into the heat.
Across the quad where the fountain’s running and freshmen are still getting lost and some guy is playing a guitar badly on a bench like the world is simple.
My shoulder aches.
My chest aches more.
And by the time I reach the far side of campus, I realize the part that won’t leave me alone isn’t that Isa wanted him.
It’s that she went after him on purpose.
With strategy.
With confidence.
And it worked.
At least enough.
Enough that I had to hear another girl say she’d keep trying until he told her not to.
I stop beneath the shade of an oak tree and stare down at the wet patch the ice sleeve left on my shirt.
I could tell him.
I could walk right back across this campus and say, she knew exactly who you were and came for you the second your name hit the portal.
I could still tell him her mother called him a prize.
That he was a target before he was a person.
That some polished woman in Texas probably already picked out baby names.
It’s the exact kind of play old money families like his take exception to. Loathe. And expected of someone like me. But I never tried to run any games. I was just too scared he’d steal my heart.
He’d hate her.
Run back to me?
Or maybe he’d think I’m trying to poison something because I don’t know how to ask for him back.
The thought makes my stomach turn.
Because maybe that’s not even entirely false.
I sit on the low stone wall under the tree and press the ice to my shoulder finally, properly, the cold biting through my shirt.
Across the quad, bells chime from somewhere I can’t see.
Another hour gone.
I tip my head back and close my eyes.
When I open them again, the sky is painfully blue.
Beautiful.
Indifferent.
And I know two things at once.
Isa is not fake.
And she is absolutely coming for him. I sit there quietly with my ice sleeve and my pride and the taste of regret rising like blood in the back of my throat.
Then I stand up.
Because practice doesn’t care.
Class doesn’t care.
Life doesn’t care that I just heard exactly how another girl learned to go after what she wanted.
Maybe that’s the real lesson.
Not that Isa is worse than me.
That she’s not.
That she is strategic and coached and willing — and somehow still sincere.
And I am none of those things when it comes to Tristan Vale.
No strategy.
No script.
No mother in my ear telling me to be softer, prettier, hungrier.
Just me.
Just all this feeling and nowhere clean to put it.
By the time I go back to the athletic campus a few hours later my face is smooth.
My spine is straight.
My mouth is set.
No one would know that hours ago I was standing behind a curtain listening to another girl explain exactly how she planned to catch the boy I never stopped wanting.
Good.
Let them keep not knowing.
I step back onto the hardwood.
The smell of polish and sweat hits me.
The familiar squeak of shoes.
The bounce of balls.
Coach’s whistle.
This, at least, still makes sense.
I walk to the baseline and pick up a ball.
One bounce.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Routine settles into my body like prayer.
I toss.
Jump.
Serve.
The ball slams into the floor so hard the crack echoes through the empty corners of the gym.
“Again,” Coach calls.
Good.
Because if I stop moving, I might start thinking.
And if I start thinking, I might do something reckless.
Like tell the truth.
Like go after him.
Like admit that the slow, devastating gut-drop in that training room wasn’t because I learned Isa had a plan.
It was because, for the first time, I realized I never had one.