Chapter 39 #4
I hate it anyway.
Pride is a miserable consolation prize in the first ten minutes after losing.
I sling my bag over my shoulder and head toward the side exit because I cannot do one more teammate conversation without either crying or becoming a terrible person.
The door opens.
Cold air.
Dark lot.
And there he is.
Tristan.
Leaning against the hood of his SUV in sweats and a black jacket, hands in his pockets, face shadowed and tired and waiting.
Not dressed up.
Not dramatic.
Not trying to fix it with flowers or words or overreach.
Just there.
My whole chest cracks open.
I stop walking.
For one second I think I might actually hold it together.
Then he pushes off the car and starts toward me, and the second he does my eyes fill so fast it’s humiliating.
He reaches me.
Doesn’t say anything at first.
Just takes my bag off my shoulder and sets it down, then opens his arms.
That’s all it takes.
I go into them like something cut loose.
Not pretty.
Not controlled.
Not graceful in any way.
He catches all of me.
One arm around my back.
One hand at the back of my head.
My face buried in his chest while the first tears of the night finally come hot and hard and angry into the front of his jacket.
“I know,” he murmurs.
That’s it.
Not you played great.
Not you’ll get them next year.
Not anything hopeful enough to feel insulting.
Just—I know.
Athlete to athlete.
I clutch the front of his jacket and cry into it for exactly as long as my body needs before the tears thin out into shaking breaths and exhaustion.
When I finally pull back, my face is a mess.
His thumbs wipe under my eyes.
Careful.
No fuss.
“Did you watch?” I ask, though I already know.
His mouth tightens.
“Every point I could.”
I look down. “I should’ve ended it at fourteen-thirteen.”
He goes still.
Then he cups the back of my neck and makes me look at him.
“No.”
The word lands hard.
“But—”
“No.” His eyes hold mine. Steady. Certain. “Do not do that to yourself tonight.”
I swallow.
The parking lot hums softly around us—distant engines, a far-off door slamming somewhere on campus, the faint metallic rattle of somebody loading gear.
My season is over.
The phrase still doesn’t fit in my mouth.
I look at him and whisper, “I don’t know what to do now.”
That’s the real wound.
Not the loss.
The void after it.
His expression changes when I say it.
Softens at the edges without losing any of its steadiness.
“You don’t have to do anything tonight except let it hurt.”
The tears burn again.
Not because the line is pretty.
Because it’s exactly right.
I nod once.
He kisses my forehead.
Then he picks up my bag, loops his fingers through mine, and says, “Come on, baby.”
And for the first time since the whistle blew, I let someone else lead.
The days after are worse than the loss.
That’s what nobody tells you when you’re young and in season and convinced the heartbreak is all in the final point.
It’s not.
It’s in the mornings after.
No practice.
No match prep.
No scout notes.
No recovery schedule so brutal it organizes your whole nervous system.
No reason to tape your fingers.
No reason to ice your shoulder.
No place to put the energy that has lived inside your body for months.
Everyone says rest like it’s a gift.
Sometimes it’s just absence in sweatpants.
Tuesday I slept too late and woke up disoriented, like I had missed something important, only to realize there was nothing to miss.
Wednesday I wandered into the campus training room from habit, then turned around before anyone could ask why I was there.
Thursday I tried to do homework and ended up staring at the same paragraph for twenty minutes while my brain kept supplying phantom routines.
It is astonishing how much of your identity can be scheduled.
And how abruptly silence can replace it.
Tristan sees all of it.
He doesn’t lecture.
Doesn’t tell me to “use the time.”
Doesn’t feed me some uplifting garbage about balance and perspective.
He just… stays.
He brings food.
Walks me to class when he can.
Leaves protein bars in my bag.
Shows up with coffee when I forget to eat breakfast.
Lets me be mean on the days I need to be mean.
Lets me be quiet on the days I can’t find anything useful to say.
One night he finds me sitting cross-legged on the floor of my room with my season duffel still half-unpacked and asks, “You want help?”
I look up at him.
At the hoodie.
At the duffel over one shoulder.
At the gentle caution in his face, like he knows this is sacred wreckage.
“No,” I say.
A beat.
Then:
“Yes.”
So he sits on the floor with me.
No speech.
No fixing.
He hands me clean tape rolls, folds warm-ups, coils resistance bands, stacks practice shirts, and acts like none of this is tragic even while treating it like it matters.
That’s the line he walks with me.
Nothing dramatic.
Nothing diminished.
Just real.
When his season starts to surge, I feel it before the stats even say it.
The campus buzz shifts.
The basketball side of the complex gets louder.
His games start filling.
His name starts moving through sports media with more heat.
The first time I sit in the stands for one of his big games after my season ends, I have this weird split-second of dislocation.
Like I should be somewhere else.
Under lights.
In motion.
Needed differently.
Instead I’m in his hoodie with my hands wrapped around coffee and my heart climbing into my throat every time he touches the ball.
Then he glances into the stands.
Finds me.
And just like that, I know where I’m supposed to be.
Not because I lost something and now live inside his spotlight.
Because this is what we do now.
We carry each other through the bright parts and the empty ones.
He drops thirty-one that night.
Campus loses its mind.
The sports pages go feral.
Student media post side-by-side graphics.
Someone edits a clip of him looking up into the stands after a made three and zooms in on me laughing like an idiot in his sweatshirt.
I should be embarrassed.
I’m not.
Because when he comes through the tunnel after the game, sweaty and wrecked and incandescent with adrenaline, his eyes find me before they find anybody else.
Always.
And I understand then—really understand—that this is how the HEA begins for people like us.
Not in one perfect night.
Not in one win.
In the aftermath.
In the transfer of weight.
In the way he held me when my season died and the way I can stand up now and cheer when his catches fire.
He meets me just outside the tunnel, hands finding my waist, forehead brushing mine while the arena still roars behind him.
“Hey,” he says, breathless.
“Hey.”
His smile breaks slow and lethal.
“You okay?”
I laugh softly.
“You just dropped thirty-one and you’re asking if I’m okay?”
His hands tighten just a little.
“Always.”
There it is again.
The thing that steadies me every time.
Not that he loves me.
That he keeps choosing the ordinary shape of it.
So I kiss him once, quick and smiling, and whisper against his mouth—
“Yeah, Tristan. I’m okay. Now take me, home.”
And for the first time since the season ended, I know I mean it.