Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Tristan
The thing about choosing yourself is no one warns you how loud everything else gets after.
It’s not dramatic. It’s not fate playing games.
It’s just proximity.
A campus isn’t that big when there’s one person you’re trying not to see—and somehow keep seeing anyway.
The field house is the worst of it.
I’m halfway through drills, sweat already working its way down my back, shirt clinging, muscles warm and loose, when she steps onto the far court like she belongs there. No hesitation. No announcement. Just presence.
Stella.
Her hair’s pulled tight into that braid she wears on game days, a clean line down her back with a red bow tied at the end like a period at the end of a sentence. Finished. Controlled. No room for interpretation.
She doesn’t look at me.
Not once.
She moves through her warmups like I’m not here, like this isn’t the same space, like we’re not operating on the same air.
And somehow that’s worse than if she did.
She dropped the bomb that she’s ready to be with me. For real. And now she’s not even glancing in my direction after I rebuffed her.
It shouldn’t sting.
It does.
She’s strong. Not the type to grovel. Flirt or seduce. She played her cards and I walked away from the table. Now, she’s back to ignoring me.
I catch myself watching the way she plants her feet before a jump, the slight bend in her knees, the way her hands flex once before she sets. It’s all muscle memory, all discipline, all repetition—and it’s so precise it’s almost violent in how contained it is.
I turn away before it turns into something else.
“Vale, rotate!”
I’m already moving, sliding into position, calling for the ball, forcing my attention back where it belongs.
Drill. Pass. Cut. Shoot. Control isn’t hard when you don’t let anything in.
The cafeteria isn’t any better.
I see her before I sit down, even though I don’t look directly at her. You just know. You learn someone’s rhythm, the way they exist in a room, and your body picks it up before your brain does.
She’s a few tables over with her team, sitting cross-legged in her chair like she owns the space without trying to. Her hoodie sleeves are pushed up, exposing her forearms, still faintly marked from tape and training. There’s a tray in front of her, barely touched.
She laughs at something one of the girls says, and it’s not loud, not performative, just real—and it lands somewhere under my ribs before I can stop it.
I shift my focus back to my plate.
Chicken. Rice. Measured portions.
Routine.
“Yo, you gonna eat or just stare it down until it gets scared?”
I glance up at one of the guys across from me, lifting a brow.
“You worried about my macros now?”
He grins, shrugs, and the conversation moves on like it always does—easy, loud, uncomplicated.
I let it carry over me.
I don’t look back at her.
Not once.
But I don’t need to.
I can feel where she is.
I can feel when she stands, when her chair slides back, when her presence shifts and then disappears entirely.
And when she’s gone, the space feels… off.
I hate that more than anything.
The quad is where it almost cracks.
It’s busy, midday traffic, people moving in every direction, bikes cutting through, voices overlapping. It should be easy to blend in, to pass unnoticed.
It’s not.
I see her too late to avoid it.
She’s walking straight toward me, backpack slung over one shoulder, sunglasses pushed up on her head, that same calm, composed expression locked in place like armor.
She sees me.
I know she does.
Her shoulders square just slightly, her spine straightening like she’s bracing for impact without showing it.
I don’t slow down.
Neither does she.
We pass each other close enough that our arms brush, just a brief slide of skin and fabric, nothing that anyone else would clock.
But my body reacts immediately, a tightening through my chest, my hand flexing at my side like it almost reached for something it wasn’t supposed to.
I keep walking.
So does she.
No glance back. No words spoken.
We already said so much already.
Just forward.
She felt it.
But she’s waiting for me to make the next move.
I push through the English Lit building’s doors harder than necessary, the familiar hit of conditioned air and hardwood grounding me immediately. The smell of lemon wax and old books is oddly comforting. Like my father’s study in Newport.
After classes, I head back to the athletic complex for our second team workout of the day.
The echo of bouncing balls, the sharp squeak of sneakers cutting across the court—it all slots into place like it always does.
Here, things make sense.
I grab a ball without breaking stride and start moving, letting muscle memory take over before my head has a chance to catch up.
Dribble. Step. Pull.
Swish.
The sound is clean, honest, final.
I don’t hesitate. I don’t question.
I go again.
Drive hard to the basket, take contact, absorb it, finish anyway. No whistle. Doesn’t matter. I’m already turning, already running it back, already calling for the ball again.
“Vale!”
I hear my name somewhere behind me, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except the next play, the next shot, the next movement.
Because the second I stop—she’s there.
In my head.
In my space.
In everything I’m trying to keep separate.
I steal the ball clean and push it up the court, pulling up from deep without thinking.
Swish.
The gym reacts, voices rising, someone yelling something I don’t catch.
It all fades.
Because out here, I don’t miss.
Out here, I don’t get second-guessed. I catch a glimpse of movement near the doorway as I jog back on defense—just a flash, a silhouette I don’t need to fully see to recognize.
Not close enough to be part of it.
Not far enough to be gone.
Just—there.
Watching.
And I don’t look.
But my body knows.
Adjusts.
Tracks.
Responds.
Like she’s part of the court whether I want her to be or not.
I shoot again.
Swish.
Clean.
Controlled.
It should prove that I’ve got this handled. That I meant what I said.
That I’m choosing myself. But it doesn’t.Because no matter how locked in I get—no matter how clean the shot—no matter how loud the gym—she’s still there.
And I’m starting to realize—that wanting her might be the one thing I don’t know how to control.
“Note to self, don’t date other athletes,” I mutter. I already dodged Isa in the training room earlier.
My dorm room was a disaster—mini-fridge humming like it was on its last breath, clothes I meant to put away still on my bed. I sit at the desk by a single window overlooking the narrow path that cuts between the athletic buildings and the main quad.
I was supposed to be studying for my accounting midterm. Numbers. Rules. Debits and credits marching in perfect, soulless columns across the page. My pencil moved on autopilot, but my brain was somewhere else entirely.
I glanced up for the hundredth time, just a quick check out the window while I stretched my neck.
A flash of motion caught my eye—long tan legs striding down the path, dark ponytail swinging with every step like it had its own rhythm.
My heart slammed once, hard. The pencil in my grip snapped clean in two.
Not her.
Stella was probably in the library right now with that little crease between her brows, hair twisted up, completely unaware that I was out here losing my mind over a stranger’s ponytail.
I stared at the broken pencil, then at the empty path.
She was everywhere and nowhere. Every swing of hair, every set of legs, every flash of red in the distance—my eyes hunted for her now without permission.
I’d catch myself doing it between classes, in the cafeteria line, even in the damn locker-room mirror. Pathetic. Obsessed.
Completely screwed.
I shoved the textbook aside, stood, and dropped onto the couch. The cushions were lumpy, the room too quiet except for the low hum of the mini-fridge and the occasional laugh drifting up from the hallway.
My brow furrowed as I tried to drag my focus back to the spreadsheet on my laptop—columns of numbers that refused to line up, rules that felt like they were written in another language. My eyes burned.
My shoulders ached from morning practice. I was so damn tired. Tired of fighting it. Tired of pretending I could keep her out of my head for even five minutes.
My eyelids got heavier. The numbers blurred. And then…
I’m deep in it—pulling from thirty, nothing but net—when I catch the flash of her near the doorway.
She’s there.
Leaning against the frame, arms crossed, watching.
Not close enough to speak.
Not far enough to ignore.
Just… there.
My next shot rims out. First miss all day.
I jog back on defense, breathing hard, and she’s still watching.
Then she moves.
Slow. Deliberate. Crossing the sideline like the court belongs to her too.
She stops just inside my peripheral, close enough I can smell the faint citrus of her shampoo mixed with sweat and rubber.
I don’t look.
I won’t.
But she steps closer.
“Vale.”
Her voice is quiet. Too quiet. The kind that cuts through everything.
I plant, ready to drive again.
She steps right into my path.
No warning.
Just her body—close, warm, alive—blocking my line.
I freeze.
She tilts her head, braid sliding over her shoulder, red bow catching the light like blood.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” she says, soft, almost sweet.
I swallow. Jaw locked.
“You put me on ice first,” I manage.
Her lips curve. Not quite a smile.
“So what? Now you’re punishing me and torturing yourself?”
She lifts a hand, slow, fingertips brushing the damp fabric over my chest—right where my heart is slamming.
“I want you. Want this.”
The words detonate.
Everything I’ve locked down—the restraint, the routine, the control—cracks wide open.
I grab her wrist. Hard.
She doesn’t pull away.
She leans in.
And I break.