Chapter 73
Allison
The crowd is on its feet, roaring, a sea of purple and gold.
The bleachers vibrate under us, a living thing pulsing with joy and noise.
Grayson is shouting, clapping so hard his palms must sting, and Luke—Luke just stands there beside me, his arm around Trinity, chin lifted toward the field like he’s trying to absorb every second of it.
Classic Park, home to the Division III College World Series, looks almost dreamlike under the stadium lights, the night hazy with the drift of fireworks and breathless energy.
Down on the field, Coach Alan McIntyre is surrounded by his players—his kids, as he calls them—all wild with victory.
They hoist him up; someone hands him the trophy. Alan’s grin is pure disbelief.
Then he takes the microphone. “This,” he shouts over the cheers, voice cracking with emotion, “this is for Skip!”
For Luke.
The sound crashes over us like a wave. The players erupt again, chanting Luke’s old nickname, pounding the dugout roof, slapping each other’s backs. Even from this distance, I can see Alan searching the stands, his eyes glinting. When he spots Luke, he raises the trophy in his direction.
I glance at my brother. His jaw works once, tight, and then he exhales, a small, uneven sound that could almost be a laugh. The lights catch the tears in his eyes, and he doesn’t bother to hide them.
I reach for his arm. He doesn’t look at me, just keeps his gaze fixed on the field, watching the players pile on one another in the grass, joy exploding everywhere.
For a moment, everything else that’s happened over the last two months—the dropping of his criminal charges, his hiring as the new coach at Olivet Nazarene University—falls away. It’s just him and this, the sound of a stadium shouting his name into the Ohio night.
Grayson, fresh off completing his freshman year at NYU, leans forward, grinning, shouting something I can’t hear. Luke finally blinks, wipes his face with the back of his hand, and whispers, almost to himself, “He did it.”
Next to him, Trinity clutches his arm, puts her head on his shoulder.
I’m glad to be here. Luke was not all that enthusiastic about my coming; I think he agreed only because Grayson wanted to be here.
Luke and I, well, we have some healing to do.
In the last year, he has learned that I severed the brake lines on his bike and tried to frame the woman he loves for drug possession.
I can hardly blame him if he can’t forgive me, if he finds the rift irreparable.
But the way I helped Trinity avoid liability for Fin’s murder went a long way toward…
if not healing the rend, at least calling a ceasefire.
I’m not sure he’ll ever look at me the same again.
But I think, at least, he’ll give me a chance; the door is not locked shut.
My phone buzzes. It’s surely one of two people, Vivian or Aaron.
The judge postponed the congressman’s trial for two months when Finley was murdered.
So now we’re scheduled for mid-July, about five weeks from now.
It will be ramping up again, the hurry-up-and-wait hustle that so often accompanies messy, complex litigation.
Standing here, I feel it. The noise, the cheers, the pulse of it all—not my story but life, messy and complex, loud and relentless, still charging forward, not slowing down for anyone or anything.
Finley feels far away tonight. Not erased, but distant, fading.
In some ways, I miss him and remember the things I loved about him before everything fell apart.
In others, my feelings toward him harden as each day passes.
I don’t know what time will do to his memory ultimately; I am in unfamiliar terrain.
But for a fleeting moment, as we stand there while the team hoists the trophy again, the crowd roaring beneath the Ohio sky, it feels like something is beginning.