Chapter 40 #2
And because I am suddenly calmer than I have been all day, my voice comes out low and clean.
“Yeah,” I say. “I do.”
No rush.
No heat.
That’s what makes everybody listen harder.
“Stella Cortez is one of the best athletes on this campus,” I say. “She was before me. She is now. She’ll be that long after a gossip cycle gets bored and moves on.”
The room is silent enough I can hear somebody shifting a camera strap.
I keep going.
“She’s not a rebrand. She’s not a side story to my season. She’s not somebody who ‘pivoted’ into being seen because people finally put us in the same frame.” My jaw tightens once. “Put some respect on what she built before anybody started hashtags.”
There’s movement at the back of the room.
Phones.
Typing.
Good.
Take it down exactly like that.
The reporter opens her mouth like she might follow up.
I don’t let her.
“And while we’re at it,” I say, eyes on the room now instead of any one person in it, “if anybody’s still trying to recycle old high-school rumors to explain us, don’t. Those rumors were a failure on my part. Not hers.”
That one lands like a dropped weight.
Coach turns his head just enough that I know he’s looking at me now.
Not stopping me.
Just clocking the fact that I went there deliberately.
Yes.
I did.
Because that’s the wound.
So that’s the thing I answer.
I lean back a fraction, but I’m not done.
“I failed her when I was younger,” I say. “That’s on me. I’m trying to do it right now. I loved her badly.”
Silence.
A flash goes off somewhere.
No one speaks.
Then Coach, because she is good enough to know exactly when to let a man stand in his own truth and when to move the room forward, taps the table once and says, “Next question.”
The rest of the presser happens around me.
I answer.
Coach answers.
People scribble.
The room starts breathing again.
But the thing that mattered has already happened.
The lights came on.
And I didn’t let go.
By the time I get out of the locker room, the article is already dying.
Not because the internet found a conscience.
Because it found a better line.
Clips of the press conference are everywhere.
Quotes.
Screenshots.
Posts.
PUT SOME RESPECT ON WHAT SHE BUILT
I FAILED HER WHEN I WAS YOUNGER. I’M TRYING TO DO IT RIGHT NOW. #LOVEBADLY
TRISTAN VALE SAID WHAT HE SAID.
Kane is having the time of his life.
“You do realize,” he says as we walk the hall, “that you just gave campus enough quote content to survive until February.”
“Unfortunate.”
“Hot, though.”
“Die.”
He laughs and peels off toward the bus.
I keep going.
Because there’s only one person I care about finding.
I spot Stella in the side corridor near the family-and-friends exit, half hidden by concrete and shadow and one bright vending machine that hums like a witness.
She’s standing with her arms folded, my hoodie sleeves pushed over her hands, face tipped down toward her phone.
When she hears my steps, she looks up.
And I swear the whole night narrows.
Not because she’s crying.
She isn’t.
Not because she looks wrecked.
She doesn’t.
Because she looks like someone holding something fragile and trying to decide whether to trust that it’s safe now.
I stop in front of her.
For one second neither of us says anything.
Then she holds up her phone with one of the clips open and says, softly, “You’re insane.”
I look at the screen.
At myself at the podium.
At the caption.
At the line about loving her badly.
Then I look back at her.
“No,” I say. “Just late.”
Her mouth trembles at the edges.
Almost a smile.
Almost tears.
She drops the phone to her side and steps into me so fast it feels like impact.
I catch her automatically.
One arm around her back.
One hand at the back of her neck.
She buries her face in my chest and just breathes for a second.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she says against my shirt.
I put my mouth in her hair and close my eyes briefly.
“Yes,” I say. “I did.”
Her hands fist in the back of my warm-up top.
And then, quieter:
“You said it in front of cameras.”
I ease back just enough to look down at her.
At the dark eyes.
The fierce mouth.
The woman I once failed under softer pressure than this.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
The question isn’t disbelief.
It’s deeper than that.
More dangerous.
Why now?
Why like that?
Why not before?
So I answer the real thing.
“Because the last time the lights came on, I let other people tell the story.” My thumb brushes once under her jaw. “That doesn’t happen again.”
There.
That’s the vow.
Not future tense.
Present.
Her eyes shine.
She laughs once, shaky and beautiful and wrecking.
“That was a lot.”
I smile.
“I know.”
“You called me one of the best athletes on campus.”
“You are.”
“You said you loved me badly.”
“I did.”
She exhales and tips her forehead into my chest again like my honesty is physically tiring.
Fair.
I hold her there and let the noise of the arena fade behind us.
Then she says, very softly, “You chose me in daylight.”
My heart does something near-fatal.
I tighten my arms around her.
“Yeah, baby.”
And because there is no point pretending I understand moderation anymore, I tip her face up in the fluorescent half-light of an arena corridor and kiss her.
Not hidden.
Not quick.
Not for anyone else.
Just enough to put the exclamation point where it belongs.
When we break apart, she’s looking at me like I’ve done something bigger than a press conference.
Maybe I have.
Maybe the whole point of an HEA is that eventually the grandest thing a man can do is simply stop being afraid to be seen loving you correctly.
She touches my face.
Just once.
Then smiles through the remains of the day and says, “Okay.”
I brush my lips to her forehead.
“Okay?”
“Yeah.”
A breath.
A brighter smile.
“I think that fixed it.”
And God.
Maybe it did.
Because standing there with her in my arms and the old wound finally answered in the exact language it was made in—public, visible, undeniable—I feel something settle for good.
No more almost.
No more explanation.
No more shrinking the truth until it looks safer.
Just us.
At full volume.