CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DARIUS
Briarwood finds us in Charlotte, which is exactly the kind of love that makes distance useless.
The team bus waits under the hotel awning with its engine running, luggage doors open, and airport security staff pretending they’re not checking their watches every twelve seconds.
Equipment crates line the curb in neat rows.
Staff move with tablets and clipped voices.
Players drift out of the lobby in team travel gear, half-focused on the flight ahead and half-scanning for coffee.
It should feel like departure.
Clean. Controlled. Professional.
Then the first cheer rises from the far side of the hotel driveway.
Nathan stops so suddenly I nearly walk into him.
“What was that?” Colton asks behind us.
Morgan looks up from the medical crate she’s checking. “If someone brought an air horn, I’m leaving it in Charlotte.”
Another cheer rolls across the driveway.
This one has my name in it.
My stomach drops.
Not badly.
Not exactly.
Just enough.
We turn toward the street, and there they are.
Briarwood.
Not all of it, obviously. But enough to make the hotel entrance feel like the old youth club field has somehow picked itself up and followed us here.
Coach Miller stands at the front of the group with a clipboard he absolutely does not need.
Mrs. Hanley is beside him holding a covered tray like airport security will personally offend her if they try to separate her from baked goods.
Kids in Briarwood FC shirts crowd the temporary barrier.
Parents hold phones. Someone has tied blue-and-gold ribbons to the railing near the curb.
And above all of them, crooked and proud, stretches a banner painted in uneven letters.
brING IT HOME, KINGS!
The G in Kings dips lower than the rest.
Good.
At least one thing is still properly Briarwood.
Nathan lets out a laugh that sounds like disbelief trying to become something safer. “They came here?”
Colton leans around him. “Is that a child in a cape?”
I look.
Tyler.
Blue towel cape. Shin guards. Serious face.
“Tyler understands branding,” Nathan says.
Morgan’s mouth opens.
Nothing comes out.
That catches me more than the banner.
Three girls near the barrier hold up poster board covered in glitter marker.
MORGAN KNOWS BEST.
Colton sees it and immediately presses both hands over his heart. “Oh, this is historic.”
“Do not start,” Morgan says.
“Too late. You have merch.”
“I do not have merch.”
“You have a movement.”
Nathan reads the sign aloud and nearly folds in half laughing.
Morgan points at him without looking. “Laugh carefully. Your hamstrings are also travelling today.”
He straightens. “Respectfully terrified.”
The bus idles behind us.
The airport waits.
New York/New Jersey waits.
The Global Cup Final waits.
And somehow Briarwood has planted itself in the middle of all of it with poster board, ribbons, baked goods, and emotional ambush tactics.
Coach Miller cups his hands around his mouth. “You weren’t leaving without a proper send-off.”
I find my voice. “We had a send-off.”
“That was Briarwood send-off number one,” he calls back. “This is the emergency travel edition.”
Mrs. Hanley lifts the tray. “And you still look too thin.”
Colton points at me. “That one’s yours.”
“It’s always mine,” I say.
The team laughs.
I should laugh too.
I almost do.
But the sight of them presses into my chest. Warm. Heavy. Impossible to organize into something manageable.
I thought I had left Briarwood back at the diner. Back on the rain-dark road to Charlotte. Back at the field with the crooked goalpost and the kids asking if captains get scared.
Instead, Briarwood is here.
At the hotel.
At the bus.
At the edge of the next stage, reminding me that love is not always quiet enough to ignore.
A camera shifts near the media barrier.
My body notices before my mind does.
There are reporters here too.
Not many, but enough. Northline. Two local stations. One sports site I don’t recognize. Their lenses catch the banner, the players, the fans.
And my legs.
My right knee sits wrapped under my travel pants, quiet after recovery, managed, present.
Morgan cleared me for the flight with instructions that could double as a contract.
Compression. Hydration. Walk the aisle every forty minutes.
No macho nonsense, which Colton insisted should be printed on team letterhead.
A camera angles lower.
I straighten before I can stop myself.
Morgan sees.
Her eyes narrow.
“Don’t,” she says under her breath.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You thought loudly.”
Colton appears beside us with his backpack over one shoulder. “He always thinks loudly. It’s part of the captain package.”
Nathan looks toward the crowd. “We going over?”
Coach, standing near the bus doors, checks the time, then the crowd, then me.
He sighs.
It’s the sigh of a man who knows the schedule has lost to small-town love.
“Five minutes,” he says. “Then bus. Airport. No negotiations.”
Coach Miller cups his hands again. “We heard that!”
Coach points at him. “You’re the reason I have trust issues.”
Mrs. Hanley calls, “You’re welcome.”
The team moves toward the barrier.
The sound lifts immediately.
Kids shout names. Parents wave. Someone starts a chant that falls apart by the third repetition because half the group is saying Kings and the other half is saying Briarwood, which somehow makes it better.
Nathan is claimed first by the kids from his old training group.
Colton gets swarmed by three boys demanding a trick before the airport, and Morgan appears beside him so fast it is almost supernatural.
“No tricks involving jumping,” she says.
Colton puts one hand over his heart. “You wound me.”
“I prevent that professionally.”
The boys look at Morgan like she has just introduced a new law.
One of them points at the glitter sign. “We made you famous.”
Morgan’s face does something complicated.
Colton sees it.
So do I.
He wisely says nothing.
A rare and beautiful moment.
Coach Miller reaches me near the barrier and pulls me into a hug over the metal rail, which is awkward, firm, and completely unavoidable.
“You eating?” he asks.
“Good morning to you too.”
“You’re thinner.”
“Mrs. Hanley already opened with that.”
“She copies me on important matters.”
His eyes flick down.
Not to my face.
To the knee.
Not long.
Long enough.
Then he looks back up. “Field might be bigger in New York/New Jersey, but the rules don’t change.”
I lift an eyebrow. “That your tactical advice?”
“That’s my life advice. Tactical advice is don’t let Nathan make emotional tackles after the seventy-fifth.”
“I heard that,” Nathan calls from three feet away.
“You were meant to,” Coach Miller says.
The crowd laughs.
The warmth of it lands hard.
Then I see Sienna.
She stands near the end of the media line with Scott beside her, one camera operator behind them, no big production setup, no dramatic light, no crowding.
Her press credential rests against a pale blue blouse.
Her hair is pinned back, but the morning breeze has already pulled loose strands around her face.
She isn’t filming me.
She’s filming Briarwood.
The kids. The banner. Mrs. Hanley forcing a box of muffins into the hands of our team nutritionist, who looks both grateful and afraid. Coach Miller trying to organize a group that refuses to be organized.
Then Sienna crouches near Tyler and points to his shoelace before asking him anything.
He looks down, fixes it, and salutes her.
She smiles.
Not for the camera.
I look away before wanting becomes visible.
This is worse than if she were chasing me.
At least then I would know what to do with my hands.
Morgan steps beside me, watching Sienna before her gaze shifts back to the medical crate.
“She warned me,” she says quietly.
My body goes still.
I don’t ask who.
I don’t need to.
“About the story moving,” Morgan adds. “Not enough to make herself a source. Enough to give us warning.”
Across the driveway, Sienna laughs at something Tyler says. Scott keeps the camera wide.
My throat tightens.
“She didn’t tell me.”
Morgan’s eyes cut to me. “And yesterday you told her official settings were cleaner.”
Fair.
Annoying.
Accurate.
Before I can answer, a boy near the barrier calls, “Darius! Do captains get scared on airplanes?”
The whole group laughs.
I step toward him because it’s easier than standing inside Morgan’s truth.
“Only when Colton controls the playlist,” I say.
Colton lifts both hands. “My playlist builds team unity.”
“It builds complaints,” Nathan says.
The boy grins. “Are you scared for the Final?”
The question drops the noise by half.
Not all the way.
Enough.
I feel the cameras shift.
Sienna’s too.
But hers lowers.
Not away from the moment.
Away from taking it too hard.
I crouch carefully, left leg taking more of the load because I can feel Morgan’s eyes between my shoulder blades.
“Yes,” I say.
The boy’s eyes widen.
A few adults go quiet.
“Captains get scared,” I continue. “Players get scared. Coaches definitely get scared, even when they pretend its tactical concern.”
Coach says, “I object.”
“Noted.”
A few kids giggle.
I keep my eyes on the boy. “The trick is not letting fear be the only voice you listen to.”
“What other voices?” he asks.
“Your teammates. Your coach. The people who know when you’re pretending. The people who tell you the truth even when you don’t like it.”
Morgan makes a soft sound behind me.
Maybe approval.
Maybe a medical warning.
With her, there is overlap.
I glance toward Sienna.
Her face is soft, but the microphone stays low.
I look back at the boy. “Fear gets a vote. It doesn’t get the whole match.”
The group claps.
Not huge.
Not stadium loud.
Briarwood loud.
Messy. Warm. Close enough to hurt.
Coach calls from behind us, “Two minutes!”
Mrs. Hanley pushes the covered tray toward me. “Muffins for the plane.”
Morgan appears instantly. “I’ll inspect those.”
Mrs. Hanley gives her a look. “You’ll eat one.”
Colton whispers, “This is the match I want to watch.”
Morgan takes the tray. “Everyone on the bus.”
Groans rise from the kids.