Chapter 15 Sloane
SLOANE
Iwake up angry, which is convenient, because anger is the only thing that holds me together at this point.
I stare at the ceiling, blink into the pale gray light leaking around the edges of my curtains, and breathe like I didn’t spend last night with Logan’s mouth on mine. Like my hands didn’t fist in his hoodie like I was trying to hold onto something I’ve spent two years pretending I don’t want.
The second lie is the way I move through my room like I’m not hyperaware of everything. Of my lips. Of the way my pulse keeps jumping for no reason. Of the fact that the air feels too loud in the quiet moments, like the house is listening.
It’s early January. Cold enough that the window glass feels like a warning when I brush my knuckles against it. The kind of morning that should mean a new semester, new routines, basketball and weight room and syllabi and normal.
Normal is a joke.
I step out into the hallway anyway because routines are safe, and routines don’t ask questions. I aim straight for the kitchen because coffee is a task, and tasks are where feelings go to die.
Then I hear movement—not from Pops’s room, not from Cameron’s empty one, but from the living room.
A shift. A soft clink. The sound of someone existing quietly in a space they don’t want to disturb.
My stomach drops before my eyes even make the turn.
Logan.
He’s on the couch with his leg propped on a pillow, brace strapped on like a second skin, hair a mess like he didn’t sleep either. The TV is off. His phone is in his hand, but he isn’t scrolling. He’s just staring at the blank screen like he’s waiting for it to tell him what to do next.
For a second, neither of us moves.
It’s too early for a fight. Too early for a conversation. Too early for whatever we did last night to have consequences in the daylight.
His gaze lifts to mine, and it isn’t smug. It isn’t victorious. It isn’t sharp.
It’s careful.
Like he’s afraid one wrong breath will send me running.
“Morning,” he says softly.
My throat closes.
I should say it back. I should act normal.
So I do what I always do when normal starts slipping.
I sharpen.
“Don’t,” I say, voice flat.
His brow furrows. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t talk to me like…” I cut myself off because even saying like last night happened feels too big to fit in the room. I swallow hard, force the words into something smaller. Something safer. “Like you’re allowed to be nice.”
Something tight crosses his face, pain, maybe, or patience. He looks away for half a second, like he’s swallowing something.
“I’m not trying to be nice,” he says quietly. “I’m just—”
“Existing?” I snap.
His eyes flick back to mine, and something in them darkens, not anger—something worse. Something honest.
“Yeah,” he says. “Existing.”
The silence that follows is thick, weighted. The kind that presses against your ribs until you either speak or break.
From down the hall, Pops coughs—soft, rough, too familiar.
My body reacts before my mind does. I’m already moving, already scanning the sound, already calculating whether it’s deeper than yesterday’s. Whether it lingered too long.
Logan watches me do it.
And the look on his face—like he sees the way I keep a whole house together with my teeth—makes my chest ache in a place I refuse to acknowledge.
“I’ll check on him,” I mutter.
Logan’s voice stops me, gentle but firm. “Sloane…I’ve got it.”
I freeze.
Because that’s the problem, isn’t it?
If he’s got it, then what am I holding onto so tightly my hands ache?
I turn my head just enough to glare at him. “No, you don’t.”
His jaw tightens. “I can walk to a bedroom.”
“It’s not about your leg,” I bite.
He flinches slightly, then steadies. “Then what is it about?”
Everything.
About the fact that he kissed me last night and I let him, and now my body wants things my brain and heart can’t afford. About the fact that Pops is down the hall and time is shrinking and I don’t get to add Logan Brooks to the list of things that could break me.
“It’s about you not inserting yourself into everything,” I say, sharper than I mean.
He goes still.
Then he nods once. Small. Controlled. Like he’s taking the hit on purpose.
“Okay,” he says. “Go.”
The lack of argument throws me off balance, but I don’t let it show. I turn and head down the hallway before my face betrays me.
Pops’s door is cracked. The nightlight paints the room in soft amber, and for a second, he looks like himself—big shoulders under the blanket, a familiar silhouette.
Then he coughs again, and I hear the effort in it.
I step in quietly and sit on the edge of his bed. His eyes are closed, but his brow is pinched like even sleep isn’t letting him rest.
“Pops,” I whisper.
His eyelids flutter. He blinks once, slow, like he has to climb back to the surface.
“Hey, kiddo,” he murmurs, voice thick with sleep.
“How’s your head?” I ask immediately.
His mouth twitches, like he knows exactly what I’m doing. “Fine.”
I stare at him until he sighs.
“Okay,” he corrects. “It’s there.”
My throat tightens. “You need anything?”
He shifts, wincing faintly. “Just…a minute.”
I nod, smoothing the blanket over his chest like it’ll fix something. My gaze flicks to the little notepad on his nightstand, my handwriting all over it—med times, appointment times, questions I’ve been collecting like ammunition.
2:00 PM – Hospice Visit
The words sit there like a sentence.
My stomach rolls.
Pops follows my gaze and exhales. “Don’t make that face.”
“I’m not making a face.”
He snorts softly. “You’ve been making that face since they said the word hospice.”
My throat burns. “I hate that word.”
“I know,” he says, voice gentler. “I don’t love it either.”
I swallow hard, forcing my eyes to stay dry. “I’ll be back from practice before they get here.”
Pops nods, then reaches out and squeezes my hand. His palm is warm. Familiar.
“You don’t have to do everything,” he says quietly.
I stiffen. “Yes, I do.”
His eyes sharpen. “No.”
I open my mouth, ready to argue, then snap it shut because my voice will crack if I try.
Pops watches me for a long moment. “Cameron’s coming by later,” he says, like he’s changing the subject for both of us. “Said he’d grab lunch after his morning lift.”
My chest tightens again—Cameron bouncing between campus and home, between being a brother and trying to be a kid in his own life. “Okay.”
“And Logan’s here,” Pops adds carefully.
Heat flashes up my neck. “I know.”
Pops’s mouth twitches like he’s trying not to smile. “Just…don’t eat each other alive today. I’m too tired to referee.”
“Tell him that,” I mutter.
Pops squeezes my hand again. “I’m telling you.”
I exhale hard, then stand. “Try to sleep. I’ll be back.”
He nods, eyes already drifting shut. “Go be great,” he murmurs.
The words hit me like a punch because I don’t know how to be great in a world where my dad is dying.
I slip out and close the door softly behind me.
In the hallway, Logan is still on the couch, exactly where I left him.
He doesn’t look up when I pass.
And somehow that feels like mercy.
There’s someone I need to talk to before practice. I make my way down the hall of the athletic center, hesitating for a moment before tapping on the partially opened door.
“Yeah,” Coach calls. “Come in.”
I step inside and close the door behind me, quieter than I mean to. Coach is at his desk, glasses low on his nose, watching film on a laptop. He looks up, and the second his eyes land on my face, something in his expression shifts—focus softening into concern.
“Rhodes,” he says carefully. “You okay?”
I swallow. My throat feels too small for the truth.
“I need to tell you something,” I manage.
Coach leans back in his chair, setting his pen down like he knows this isn’t about practice, isn’t about missed shots or defensive rotations.
“Okay,” he says. “Talk to me.”
I take a breath that doesn’t do anything.
“It’s my dad,” I say, and my voice cracks on the word like my body is trying to protect me by breaking first. “His cancer…it’s not…it’s not responding anymore.”
Coach’s face stills. He doesn’t interrupt. Doesn’t try to fill the space with false comfort.
I force the words out anyway, because if I stop, I’m going to fall apart right here on his carpet.
“They gave us…a timeline,” I say quietly. “And hospice is—” I blink hard, stare at the edge of his desk like it’s something solid. “Hospice is involved now.”
For a second, Coach doesn’t speak. He just nods once, slow, like he’s absorbing the weight of it with me.
“Sloane,” he says, voice lower now, gentler. “I’m so sorry.”
I nod like I’m hearing him from underwater.
“I didn’t want to miss anything,” I blurt, because that’s the truth that’s been clawing at me. “Practice. Games. I know it sounds selfish but—”
“It doesn’t,” he cuts in immediately. Firm. No hesitation. “It doesn’t sound selfish.”
My eyes burn.
Coach stands, moving around the desk, stopping a few feet away like he’s giving me space to breathe.
“You do not owe me basketball right now,” he says. “You don’t owe the team anything. You owe yourself—your family—whatever you need to get through this.”
I shake my head once, automatically. “I don’t know how to stop. If I stop, I’ll—” I press my lips together. “I’ll drown.”
Coach nods again, like he understands that too.
“Then we do it your way,” he says. “If being here helps you breathe, we keep you here. If you need time off, you take it. If you need to come and sit on the bench and not run a single drill, you do that. You want to disappear for a week and not answer a text? You do that too.”
A small, broken laugh tries to escape me. It comes out more like a sob.
Coach’s gaze holds mine, steady and solid.
“I can lighten your load,” he says. “But you have to let me. Tell me what you need.”
I blink. My hands are fists at my sides and I hadn’t even noticed.
“I…I don’t want everyone to know,” I admit, voice barely there. “Not yet.”