36
Rihaan
THE STADIUM WAS QUIET.
Not all at once, but I’d been here long enough to notice the layers.
First the crowd had gone, taking their noise with them.
Then the cameras. Then the players. The dressing room had emptied after that, voices fading into the corridors until there was nothing left but the distant scrape of equipment being packed away and the occasional rumble of a trolley crossing concrete.
I had changed out of my whites hours ago.
Still, I hadn't left.
I sat on the edge of the boundary, one foot planted against the grass, staring across the pitch.
The field looked different without people on it.
Too large.
Too quiet.
All that green stretching beneath the stadium lights, the centre strip worn down from days of bodies running over it, the faint marks where I'd landed over and over again.
I had spent half my life on fields like this.
Winning on them.
Losing on them.
Bleeding on them.
Growing up on them.
And now that I'd finally done everything I'd once thought would make me feel complete, I wasn't sure what I was supposed to feel.
Pride was there.
Somewhere.
Buried beneath exhaustion and the strange hollow feeling that had followed me for months.
The World Test Championship.
The World Cup.
The County Championship.
The Hundred.
Everything people told you to dream about when you were thirteen and standing in a garden with a ball in your hand, imagining a stadium full of people chanting your name.
I’d got there.
And still I was sitting alone, wondering what came next.
I closed my eyes.
Footsteps sounded behind me.
Slow. Measured.
Familiar enough that my spine went rigid before I even turned.
I looked over my shoulder.
My father stood a few yards away.
For one second, the years collapsed.
He was there in every version of me.
The boy who wanted approval.
The teenager who wanted recognition.
The man who had spent years trying to make achievements feel like proof.
He walked closer. “You've done well.”
I laughed softly, the sound didn't carry. “Feels great, Dad.”
He waited. “The best part is I did it before you did.”
His expression hardened. “Still acting like a child.”
I looked back at the pitch.
“Still fixated on what I did rather than what you achieved. You have the talent, the career, the trophies. And yet you continue to measure yourself against me.”
I turned towards him. “Is there a reason you're here?”
“I was invited.”
“Ah.” I nodded slowly. “The guest of honour.”
His jaw tightened at my mocking tone.
“I wonder what they’d think if they knew the truth.”
His eyes narrowed. “Are you threatening me, boy?”
“No.” I stood taller, but my voice was quieter. “I'm reminding you.”
I looked at him.
“I don't care where you go. I don't care who you talk to. I don't care what you tell people about me.”
My chest felt strangely calm.
“But you're not going to be part of my life. I don't want anything from you anymore. I don't want your approval. I don't want your money. I don't want your name.”
His face twisted.
“And I don't want a single part of you in my life.”
The last word hung between us just as someone grabbed my arm.
I flinched.
The pitch disappeared.
The stadium shifted.
I blinked hard as I settled back into reality.
“Hey.”
Maeve.
She stood beside me, one hand still curled around my forearm.
Her brows were drawn together.
“What's wrong?”
I looked at her.
For a second, I couldn't place the difference between memory and reality. Then I breathed. The evening air smelled different here.
Cooler. Damp. Real.
I rubbed a hand down my face. “Just thinking about what my father would say if he were here. Got lost in the idea of it, I guess.”
Her mouth pressed into a thin line. “Anything good?”
I looked at her, a smile tugging at my mouth. “Does me telling him to kindly fuck off count?”
Her lips twitched. “Then yes.”
I laughed under my breath.
The sound felt foreign after everything else.
The first drop of rain landed against my cheek.
I tilted my head upwards.
Another touched my forehead.
Then another.
Maeve didn't move.
Neither did I.
“My dad told me you talked to him.”
I looked at her, and gave her a slow nod. “I hadn't planned on telling him.”
Something softened in her expression.
“But he's always been able to tell when I'm lying. So it just came out. I’d been think about telling him for a while, so it felt right.”
Her expression turned somewhere between shock and disbelief. “You're serious.”
“Dead fucking serious.”
She gave a breathless laugh. “I can't believe you.”
“Join the club.”
“Why in the world would you do that?” She shook her head. “I tell you I don't date cricketers, and you go straight to my father and tell him you're willing to quit cricket?”
My eyes widened. “Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. I did not say that.”
She stopped. “You didn't?”
I shook my head. “No.”
The rain was falling properly now, cold against my skin.
“I told him I loved you.” I stared softly. “And if loving you meant giving up the sport so I could give you the future you imagined for yourself…I would.”
Her eyes widened. “You're lying, right? You did not say that to him!”
“I mean, I told him that I wanted to take this year slower to recover, and when he asked why, I told him about…well, you. And the rest just came out.”
She looked like someone had taken the air out of her.
“And I also told him that if you rejected me after all that, I probably wouldn't come back.”
Her expression changed. “Why?”
I laughed softly. “Because imagine having to work beside someone after confessing your love and getting rejected.”
She shook her head. “That would be humiliating.”
“Exactly.” I smiled faintly. “It’s probably a good think I achieved all the goals one can in a sport, because if I go now, no one would question it.
Just mark it as an early end. Like you had.
Plus, I couldn't decide which would be worse. Losing you or having to face you every day after you told me I was a liar, again.”
A tear slipped down her cheek.
I frowned immediately. “Hey.”
She wiped at it.
Another followed.
The rain hit her face so heavily now that I couldn't tell where the water ended and her tears began.
I moved closer, cupping her cheeks. “Why are you crying, chaos?”
She laughed, except the sound broke halfway through.
“Because I love you too.”
Everything inside me went still. She looked at me through the rain.
“And I’m pretty sure my father manipulated me into confessing it.”
I laughed. A startled, disbelieving sound that escaped before I could stop it. “You're kidding.”
“No.” She wiped at her cheeks again. “He sat me down and somehow managed to make me admit everything. Did you really tell him you're in love with me?”
A smile broke across my face. “I sure as hell did.”
She laughed through another tear.
“You're crazy.”
“Yeah.” I lifted a hand, brushing the wet hair back from her face. “About you.”
Her eyes softened.
For a second, neither of us spoke.
The rain came down harder.
The stadium lights blurred behind her, turning the whole world into silver and gold.
I touched her cheek.
She leaned into my palm.
And that tiny movement nearly undid me.
After everything.
After every argument.
Every lie.
Every reason we'd told ourselves this couldn't happen.
She was standing in front of me, looking at me like I was something she had finally stopped being afraid to want.
“I’ve loved you for longer than I knew what to call it,” she whispered.
My chest tightened. “I have too, you know?”
“The tequila may have helped.”
I laughed. “The tequila trivia absolutely helped.”
She smiled. “You always knew what I wanted, huh?”
Then she stepped closer. Close enough that our foreheads touched. “I did.”
“I’m sorry I made you feel like you didn’t mean much to me. You do, I was just…”
“I know.”
“And, I’m sorry for not choosing you when you gave me a chance.”
“You were scared.” I replied, brushing the tear mixed rain from her cheek. “You didn’t want to lose your father’s respect at the expense of your heart.”
“Yeah, but you were ready to give up the sport you loved so much.”
“Because I’ve achieved everything I’ve wanted in it. If I was in the position two years ago, I wouldn’t have made the same choices.”
“Still. I feel like I’ll need to grovel.”
“You’re here, chaos. That’s all that matters to me. You’ll never have to grovel for me, especially not for choosing your career.”
“Yeah, but if I hadn’t given into my fear. We would’ve worked this out before. How can I even make that up to you?”
“I’m not worried about the timing, and neither should you be. We can’t change how we acted in the past. But Maeve,” I whispered. “I don’t need you to be brave. I just need you to talk to me so we can make decisions together. And, for you to be mine.”
“I already am.” She whispered, and I felt those perfect words against my mouth before I kissed her.
The first touch was almost hesitant, a question.
She answered by gripping the front of my jacket and pulling me closer.
Everything else disappeared.
The rain.
The empty stadium.
The future.
The past.
My father’s voice.
Her rules.
Every reason we’d been terrified of this.
Her mouth softened against mine, and my hand moved to the back of her neck as she rose slightly onto her toes.
The rain soaked through my shirt.
She laughed against my lips.
I smiled. “Still want to ban cricketers?”
She pulled back enough to glare at me. “Don’t ruin this.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, chaos.”
She kissed me again.
And this time, I didn’t think about what happened next.
I just held her.
For once, that was enough.
The stadium lights glowed behind us.
The rain kept falling.
And somewhere between the pitch where I’d spent more than half my life proving myself and the woman I’d spent months trying not to love, I realised I didn’t need another trophy.
I had already won the most important thing.