Chapter 1
LOGAN
The first thing I lose when I tear my knee is my future.
The second is the illusion that I can do this on my own.
Everything after that is just damage control.
The California sun in early January is still warm as Cameron pulls into the driveway of his childhood home, the house that became my home before heading off to PCU.
I don’t look over at my best friend. If I do, he’ll see my brain spinning, the part of me already calculating how long I can stay here before I become a burden. A problem.
“You’re staying with us,” he says finally, tone flat like this was decided weeks ago and I’m the only one catching up.
“Temporarily,” I reply automatically.
“That’s what you said the last three times,” Cameron shoots back. “And you were wrong on every one of them.”
I swallow and stare out the windshield at the Rhodes’ house. The kind of place people live when someone shows up for them every day. When groceries get bought. When bills get paid on time.
The kind of place my mom never managed to keep.
“Just while you rehab,” he adds. “The house is ten minutes from the hospital, tops. Your place is forty.”
“I can manage forty,” I say.
He finally glances over, unimpressed. “My man, you can’t manage stairs without cussing like a drunk sailor.”
My lips quirk. “That’s fairly normal.”
Cameron chuckles and cuts the engine before hopping out. I look out my window at the basketball hoop over the garage, which is almost perfect—backboard clean, net new, pole nice and straight.
Both Rhodes kids play college basketball, and their dad coached the high school team for years. Fundamentals mattered here. Do it right. Take care of things and fix things that are broken.
Maybe even people.
I tighten my grip on the crutches wedged between my knees.
The brace on my right leg is locked, plastic and metal hugging the joint like it doesn’t trust me to stand on my own. Three torn ligaments will do that.
ACL. MCL. Meniscus.
A triple tear.
One bad cut in a routine play on the field in my fourth year at Pacific Coast University. A pop so loud the whole field went quiet. One moment where my future went from when to if.
“You’re doing that thing,” Cameron says.
“What thing?”
“The thing where you act like you’re fine while silently plotting your escape.”
I snort. “You always think you know what I’m thinking.”
“I do,” he says easily. “Because you’ve been doing the same shit since middle school.”
Well, can’t fault him on that one.
Middle school was when my mom stopped pretending she had it together. When nights got longer and meals got smaller and excuses started stacking up faster than bills. When Cameron’s dad noticed I was over at their house more than mine, he asked a few questions he already knew the answers to.
Coach Rhodes didn’t make a big deal out of it. He just welcomed me with open arms and told me I could stay as long as I needed.
I swallow past the lump of nerves forming in my throat.
“I don’t want to be a burden any more than I already have been,” I say quietly.
Cameron exhales through his nose like he’s been waiting for me to make that excuse.
What can I say? I stick to my behavioral patterns just about as well as my routes.
“You’re not, man.”
“Cam—”
“You lived here for six years,” he cuts in. “You didn’t leave because you wore out your welcome. You left because you got a full scholarship at PCU.”
That part is true.
PCU offered me everything. A full ride, a better football program, a real shot at going pro. CSU couldn’t compete with that—not in facilities, not in funding, not in exposure. Cameron understood, even though it sucked when we both became well-known athletes for rival colleges.
Football was once my way out. My way to carve out a future that wasn’t surrounded by the mess of pills left behind by my mother’s addiction.
Now it’s a question mark strapped to my knee.
I shift carefully, unlocking the brace just enough to move. The click is loud in the quiet cab. Embarrassing. I hate that sound, but at least I can drive myself starting tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong, Cam’s a good driver, but it’s been a minute since I’ve had the freedom that driving gives you.
Cameron opens his door and hops out. “Come on. Pops made chili.”
I hesitate, then grab my crutches and follow.
The house feels exactly like I remember when the front door opens.
Warm, but not in temperature. Warm in the way that love and the feeling of being wanted and welcomed feed your soul when it’s starving.
I was craving any sort of that when I first walked through this door as a ten-year-old kid, and it immediately eases a fraction of the tension in my shoulders walking through it today.
Andrew Rhodes stands there in his favorite gray hoodie, coffee mug already in hand, like this is just another afternoon and not the return of a kid he helped raise with a busted knee and a future in limbo.
“About time,” he says, smiling. “You look like hell.”
“Recovery’s going great,” I deadpan.
He hugs me anyway, quick, careful, solid. No pity. No questions. Just…normal.
“Your room’s ready,” he says, like it never wasn’t. “Want me to help grab your stuff?”
My chest tightens, guilt for throwing myself into their space once again threatening to eat me alive. “You didn’t have to—”
“I know,” he says simply. “But I did.”
That’s how Coach Rhodes has always been. No speeches. No guilt. Just space.
Too much space, sometimes. Space I don’t know how to accept without bracing for it to disappear.
Inside, the house creaks in all the familiar places. The photo wall in the hallway still holds Cameron in his first jersey, Sloane missing a front tooth, Coach with his arm around both of them like nothing bad could ever touch his family.
I’m in some of the pictures too.
That still feels unreal.
We don’t get far before the front door opens again.
Footsteps. A gym bag dropped hard on the floor.
“Great,” she mutters. “The infestation’s back.”
I freeze.
Sloane Rhodes stands in the entryway, flushed from practice, hair pulled back tight, a few loose strands framing her dark brown eyes, irritation written all over her face. She takes in my crutches, my brace, the boxes on the floor, while I take in her.
My best friend’s little sister. The one girl I always knew I should never want in that way, but my heart still picks up the pace any time we’re in the same room.
Her legs are long, toned, and tanned from hours spent in the sun.
If her hair was down, it would be slightly wavy, but you could never guess the length consistently.
She had a little habit of taking the scissors to it at every minor inconvenience, which often had to do with me.
Any time she needed something, anything, to control, I always knew she’d come out of the bathroom with a new style, ranging from a slight little trim to bangs to the time she cut a whole eight inches off when Pops was first diagnosed with cancer five years ago.
My eyes finally meet hers, and just like that, I’m nineteen again. A lot less injured, but a fuck ton more stupid. Standing in a crowded room. Watching her laugh with someone else. Feeling something ugly crawl up my throat.
Two years ago. A party. A moment I handled badly.
I said what I did out of jealousy, and she never forgave me for it. Can’t really blame her for it either.
This house has always been a constant. A place where people stayed. Where things were fixed instead of abandoned.
I want to believe that’s still true.
We’ve spent some awkward holidays and car rides together since my fuck-up, but it’s never been for more than a few days at a time, and we’ve been able to avoid each other for the majority of the last eight hundred and twenty-nine days. Not that I’ve been counting.
Now, I’m back in her space. In her family. In the one place that ever felt like home to me.
And I don’t know if I’m strong enough to rebuild what I broke.
Or if this time, staying will cost all of us more than leaving ever did.