Chapter 27 #2
“Yes,” Jade says immediately.
Leo snorts quietly. “She’s not wrong.”
“Or,” Jade adds, more measured now, “you stop pretending you don’t already know what you want.”
Silence.
Because I do.
That’s the problem.
“You don’t get to half-love people, Tristan,” she says.
Quiet.
Certain.
“You either choose… or you don’t.”
I stare at the floor.
At my hands.
At nothing.
“Yeah,” I say finally.
Low.
“Yeah,” Leo echoes. “Figure your shit out before you hurt someone who doesn’t deserve it.”
“Too late for that,” I mutter.
Jade exhales softly.
“Then stop making it worse.”
The line goes quiet.
“Get some sleep,” Leo adds. “You sound like hell.”
“I’m not sleeping,” I say.
“No kidding.”
We hang up.
And the silence that follows?
It’s louder than anything.
I sit there for a minute.
Two.
Maybe more.
Then I stand.
Because I can’t sit still.
Not with this in my head.
Not with this in my chest.
I grab a ball on my way out.
Head to the court.
Empty.
Dark except for the overhead lights.
I don’t warm up.
Don’t stretch.
Don’t think.
I shoot.
One.
Two.
Three.
Miss.
Grab the rebound.
Shoot again.
Harder.
Faster.
It doesn’t fix it.
Nothing fixes it.
After a while, that’s not enough.
I leave the ball.
Head outside.
Bleachers—I take them two at a time.
Up.
Down.
Up.
Down.
My lungs start burning fast.
Legs heavy.
Breath ragged.
Good.
Punish it out.
Run it out.
Burn it out.
Because I don’t know whose heart I’m about to break.
Isa’s.
Stella’s.
Or my own.
I hit the top step again, chest heaving, sweat dripping down my back, my shirt sticking to me.
And for a split second—
I picture her there.
Stella.
Running these.
Breathing like this.
Alive like this.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
Push off again.
Faster.
Harder.
Like I can outrun the truth.
I can’t.
Because no matter how hard I push—
it’s still there.
I know what I want.
I just don’t know if I’m man enough to choose it.
The next day the training room smells like menthol, athletic tape, and irritation.
Which fits.
I’m already in a bad mood by the time I walk in.
Practice ran long. Coach spent twenty minutes riding my ass over spacing like I haven’t been carrying half this team on my back since the second I transferred in. My shoulder is tight. My temper’s tighter.
So by the time I step through the training room doors and see Stella Cortez standing at the far counter with a roll of tape in one hand and that don’t-even-think-about-it look in her eyes, I’m in absolutely no shape to pretend I don’t want a word.
Not later.
Not by text.
Not in some neat, controlled conversation where both of us act like what’s between us has ever been polite.
Now.
The room is busy in that late-afternoon way—track girls on the bikes, a baseball pitcher icing his elbow, a swimmer arguing with a trainer about shoulder mobility like his life depends on it. Nobody pays me much attention when I walk in.
That changes the second I change direction toward Stella.
She sees me coming and her whole body goes still.
Not soft.
Not startled.
Still the way a person gets when they’re already bracing for impact.
Good.
I stop in front of her.
Too close for casual.
Too close for deniability.
“What?” she says.
Straight to it.
No hello.
No game.
That should please me more than it does.
I brace one hand beside her against the supply counter.
Then the other.
Not because I mean to trap her.
Because I’m angry enough I don’t trust what my hands will do if I let them hang free.
She notices that.
Of course she does.
Her chin lifts half an inch.
Her eyes go colder.
“Move,” she says quietly.
“No.”
Her jaw tightens.
There’s too much noise in the room to hear everything clearly—ice machine hissing, tape ripping, music from somebody’s speaker bleeding in from the rehab side—but the air around us is dead silent.
She smells like clean skin, shampoo, and the faint trace of effort.
Not perfume.
Never perfume.
Just Stella.
And that alone is enough to make me want to put my fist through something.
“You really doing this?” I ask.
She stares at me.
“Doing what?”
I laugh once without humor.
“Acting like that moment at your game yesterday didn’t happen?”
A flicker crosses her face.
There.
That.
The small crack.
The proof that she felt it too.
“That’s rich,” she says. “Coming from you. Who are you into? Her or me?”
I lean in closer.
“I should choose her… she’s sweet and your nothing but spice on your best day.”
Her mouth parts.
Closes.
Then opens again.
For one second, I think maybe she’ll finally do it. Finally cut all the way through the bullshit and tell me something real instead of circling it like it’s too bright to touch.
Instead she says, “Screw off, Vale.”
I let out a slow breath through my nose.
“You really want to talk about Isa?”
“I want to talk about you using her like a placeholder while your head’s still stuck on me.”
That lands.
Hard.
Because she’s not entirely wrong.
And because I hate that she knows it.
My jaw goes tight.
“This from the girl who led me on only to decide I was too much trouble to deal with?”
Her eyes flash.
I see the answer before she gives it—the hurt, the pride, the instinct to strike before I can hit anything tender.
“Please,” she says. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
The lie is pathetic.
And she knows I know it.
So does everybody in the room, probably, even if they can’t hear the words.
She shoves once at my chest.
Not hard.
Warning, not force.
“Move, Tristan.”
Not Vale.
Tristan.
That’s what gets me.
Because Stella only uses my first name when the truth’s trying to crawl out of her with its throat cut.
I don’t move.
For one impossible, vicious second, neither does she.
We are too close.
The whole room is too close.
The season is too close.
Everything between us feels like dry grass and one lit match.
Then she says, low enough only I can hear:
“You don’t get to do this to both of us.”
That one slices.
Not because of the accusation.
Because of the us.
Because some part of me still hears that and wants the wrong thing.
My mouth goes hard.
“And you don’t get to decide what this is when it suits you.”
Her stare stays locked on mine.
Then she shoves harder this time, slips sideways under my arm, and steps out of the cage I built without meaning to.
I turn after her immediately.
Of course I do.
And that’s when I hear Travers.
“What the hell are you doing, Vale?”
I close my eyes for one half-second.
Because, naturally, the universe has sent me a broad-shouldered football Neanderthal with a martyr complex and a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas right when my patience is already hanging by a thread.
I turn.
There he is.
Drew Travers.
Tank in a cut-off hoodie.
Tape around his hand.
Shoulders like he was built in a military lab to haul furniture and start bar fights.
He’s in my space before the sentence finishes landing.
Close enough to be stupid.
Close enough to think I won’t do anything because we’re indoors and there are staff around and I’m too disciplined to make a scene.
The problem is, he’s not wrong.
That only annoys me more.
My face goes cold.
The prince shut-down, Leo used to call it at Royal Oaks.
The one that means whatever warmth or humor or humanity was visible a second ago just got locked behind bulletproof glass.
“None of your business.”
Travers laughs once.
Short.
Ugly.
Provocative.
“Clearly.”
I watch him.
He watches me.
And just like that we’re not doing the fake-athlete-civility thing anymore.
“Say what you came to say,” I tell him.
So he does.
“Stay away from Isa.”
That lands, not because it surprises me, but because now it’s been said out loud.
Travers takes one step closer.
“And what exactly makes that your concern?” I ask.
His nostrils flare.
His taped fist tightens.
“What makes it my concern is watching you chase two girls like you think nobody can see it.”
There it is.
That’s the line.
That’s the one that gets me.
Not because it’s crude.
Because it’s accurate enough to sting and disrespectful enough to make my hand ball at my side.
I step closer.
Now we’re chest to chest.
I can smell rain-damp cotton and whatever soap he uses and the kind of pure blunt-force masculinity men like him carry around like a weapon.
“So what do you care what my love life looks like?” I ask.
I keep my voice low.
That’s what makes it more dangerous.
If I raise it, somebody steps in.
If I don’t, this stays ours for one more second.
He leans in too.
“Because she thinks you’re picking her,” he says. “And you’re not.”
That gets all the way in.
Actually gets in.
My jaw locks so hard it hurts.
Because Isa does think that.
Or at least she did.
And because some part of me hates hearing it from him more than I would’ve hated hearing it from Stella.
Because Travers says it like accusation and certainty and possession all at once.
He doesn’t get to do that.
He sure as hell doesn’t get to stand here and act like he understands any of this better than I do just because he’s loud enough to make his instincts look noble.
“I’d be real careful what you think you understand,” I say.
He smiles.
“About her?” he says. “Or about you?”
I take one more step.
Enough that the room falls another degree quieter.
Around us, nobody is pretending not to watch now.
They’re just pretending not to hear.
Good luck.
My fist is already tight.
His too.
One wrong word and the paperwork Coach warned me about becomes a full-time job for three departments.
And maybe some part of me wants that.
Maybe some part of me would love to hit something simple.
Something that doesn’t feel like Stella.
Or Isa.
Or guilt.
Or choice.
Something with a jaw I can break and a name I don’t care about keeping.
Travers sees it.
Of course he does.
The bastard actually looks pleased.
Then Kane appears out of nowhere and slams an arm across my chest at the exact same second one of Travers’ football guys grabs his shoulder.
“Easy,” Kane says.
Like that’s an option.
“Back up, Travers,” the football guy mutters.
Travers doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
Kane looks from him to me and swears under his breath.
“Not in here.”
He means—not in front of staff or trainers, not with the season this close—not with the kind of headlines this would make if somebody filmed it.
I know what he means.
Doesn’t improve my mood.
An assistant strength coach steps into the room.
A trainer looks up from taping somebody’s ankle.
The whole place has that awful suspended feeling institutions get when they’re one bad choice from paperwork.
“What’s going on?” the coach asks.
Nobody answers.
Of course not.
No one’s snitching.
Not basketball.
Not football.
Not even the golf team.
We all know the rules.
Kane lifts both hands slightly.
“Nothing.”
The lie is insulting.
The coach takes it anyway because the alternative is a disaster.
Slowly, I force my hand open.
One finger at a time.
Travers takes one step back when his guy pulls harder on his shoulder.
Then another.
But his eyes stay on mine the whole time.
Still challenging.
Still pissed.
Still acting like I’m exactly the kind of rich-boy asshole he’s spent his whole life wanting to put through drywall.
Maybe I am.
He points once on his way backward.
“This isn’t over, Vale.”
I don’t answer.
Mostly because if I do, I’m not sure it’ll stop at words.
So he gives me one last shot instead.
“I see through your pretty-boy bullshit.”
That lands too.
Not because it’s clever.
Because it’s the kind of line guys like him love saying to guys like me. Like money erases hunger. Like trust funds erase damage. Like polish means there’s nothing feral underneath it.
For one second, I actually consider finishing it.
Right here.
Staff, season, consequences—none of it feels particularly urgent compared to the urge to put him through the rehab table.
Kane feels me tense.
His arm firms across my chest.
“Don’t.”
I don’t know if he means it for me or for the team.
Probably both.
Travers turns and walks out before anybody can stop him, shoulders still hard, jaw tight, every inch of him broadcasting righteous anger like a flare.
The room exhales the second the door shuts.
Conversation starts back in pieces.
A trainer clears his throat.
Tape rips somewhere behind me.
The assistant coach looks at me like he’d love to say something but likes winning too much to push it right now.
Kane drops his arm and looks at me.
“What the hell was that?”
I drag a hand over my face.
Stella is gone.
Travers is gone.
The whole room still smells like tension and antiseptic and the kind of mess you can’t document on a stat sheet.
“What did it look like?”
Kane gives me a long, unreadable stare.
Then he says, “It looked like you’re one bad day from blowing up your own life.”
That one lands.
Because unlike Travers, Kane doesn’t say shit just to hear himself sound tough.
He says it when he thinks it’s true.
I look toward the door Stella disappeared through.
Then toward the one Travers just slammed on his way out.
And for the first time since I transferred, I feel it cleanly enough to name.
This isn’t a triangle.
It isn’t drama.
It isn’t harmless overlap.
It’s the point where all the halves of my life stop cooperating and start demanding I choose.
And I’m running out of room to pretend I can keep everybody standing while I figure out which fire I’m actually willing to burn in.
Kane follows my line of sight.
Then looks back at me.
“You good?”
No.
Not even close.
I straighten anyway.
Cold face back on.
Prince armor up.
“Yeah,” I say.
He snorts like the lie offends him on a personal level.
Then he claps my shoulder once and heads back toward the weight room.
I stay where I am for one extra second, pulse still too high, hands still half useless with adrenaline, Travers’ words ringing in my head.
Pretty-boy bullshit.
Maybe.
But he was wrong about one thing.
I’m not toying with anything.
If I were, this would be easy.