Chapter Thirty-Six
Dylan
The first thing I notice is that I’m not thinking about football.
Not the contract I signed.
Not rookie minicamp.
Not the playbook waiting in my hotel room before I fly back tomorrow.
For the first time in as long as I can remember, none of it is loud enough to drown out everything else.
Lucy walks beside me with her hands tucked into the pockets of her sweater, matching my pace without either of us saying much. The sidewalks of Willow Creek look exactly the way I remember them.
We walk side by side and everything feels calm. Familiar.
Neither of us rushes to fill the silence. We just walk, our shoulders brushing every so often, our footsteps finding the same rhythm.
I realize so much of my life has been motion.
Running drills.
Reading offenses.
Tackling.
Filling every spare second with something to do so I never had to sit long enough to think about home.
Because home stopped feeling like a place a long time ago.
Maybe that’s why I never noticed how beautiful stillness could be.
Until now.
Then she stops walking when we reach the parking lot her car died in last fall.
“Sometimes, I like to stop here on my way to the library,” Lucy confesses as she wraps her arms around herself. “And remember the boy who fixed my car.”
I smile. “Yeah?”
“You were wearing your football jersey.” She shrugs. “Feels like a lifetime ago to me sometimes.”
“We were kids,” I say.
Lucy playfully rolls her eyes. “It was nine months ago.”
“Exactly.”
She stares up at me. “I would have pepper sprayed you.”
“I don’t doubt that.” I chuckle.
“Thank you for helping me that night.”
I want to kiss her. Instead, I reach for her hand.
“Thank you for not pepper spraying me.”
She laughs, and I realize how much I’ve missed hearing that sound.
“I almost didn’t jog over to help you,” I admit.
Lucy’s eyes widen. “What?”
“I was nervous,” I tell her. “You’ve always been somewhat intimidating.”
“How so?” she asks with a grin.
“You’re intelligent,” I say. “And I always felt like you could see right through me.”
“Some would argue intelligence is sexy,” she boldly proclaims.
I inhale sharply. “Yeah, it is.”
“I’m sorry I scared you,” she says, though she doesn’t sound apologetic.
“You took my advice, though,” I say. “You stopped parking here on Friday nights.”
“You scared me just enough to listen.”
“I didn’t want anyone to mess with you,” I say.
“But you just said I was intimidating,” she argues with a smirk.
“I never should have told you that,” I groan.
“Come on,” she says, motioning to the concrete path. “Let’s get you out of here before you confess all your deepest, darkest secrets.”
We start walking and I don’t miss the way her fingers tighten around mine.
Lucy sets an easy pace, swinging her free arm as she looks toward the sky. It’s a brilliant shade of blue today, clear enough that every cloud seems to know exactly where it belongs.
I used to think every walk had a destination.
Now I’m starting to think maybe the walk was the point all along.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Lucy says, bumping my shoulder lightly.
“I’m trying to remember the last time I wasn’t in a hurry.”
She smiles. “Have you figured it out yet?”
“No.”
“That’s kind of sad.”
“I know.”
We continue until the familiar brick building comes into view.
Althenia Hall. The library.
Lucy slows almost without realizing it.
“You still spend as much time here?” I ask.
She laughs softly. “Probably more than I should.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Seems like the safest addiction a person could have.”
“That depends on who you ask.”
She leads me toward the front steps but doesn’t climb them. Instead, she stops at the bottom, looking up at the old building as though she’s greeting an old friend.
The limestone columns haven’t changed. Neither have the flowers lining the entrance. Someone has planted bright yellow daisies beneath the windows since the last time I really looked.
Funny.
I spent four years walking past this place without ever actually seeing it.
“This building saved me,” Lucy says quietly.
I look over.
“When things got loud at school or inside my own head… I’d come here.” She smiles to herself. “I always knew where Ms. Thorn would be.”
“The front desk?”
“She’d pretend she wasn’t watching for me.” Lucy laughs. “But somehow she’d always have a book waiting that she thought I’d love.”
“That sounds about right.”
“She never tried to fix anything.” Lucy’s voice softens. “She just kept handing me stories until I figured things out for myself.”
I follow her gaze toward the front doors.
“I used to be jealous of this place,” I tell her.
She blinks at me. “The library?”
I nod. “You always looked happier walking in here than anywhere else.”
She studies me for a long moment before smiling. “You know what’s funny?”
“What?” I say.
“I always thought you belonged at the stadium.”
I laugh. “I did, too.”
For a few seconds, neither of us speaks.
It’s strange how two people can spend hours looking at each other and still misunderstand where the other feels most alive.
Lucy squeezes my hand.
“You know,” she says, “I used to think I’d stay here forever.”
“What changed?”
She looks toward the second-floor windows where sunlight spills across the glass.
“I don’t think the library changed.”
“No?”
She shakes her head. “I did.”
The words hang between us. And I don’t rush to fill the silence.
Months ago, I would have.
Months ago, I would have started telling her about California. About opportunities. About how much she’d love it.
Now…
I just let her have the moment.
After a while she smiles, almost to herself. “I think that’s how you know you’ve grown.”
“How?”
“When the place that once felt big enough for your dreams suddenly feels too small.”
I look at the old brick building again. And I no longer see the place that kept Lucy hidden from the world. I see the place that quietly helped prepare her for it.
“What do you want now?” I ask.
She looks at the windows. “I want to write. I don’t know exactly what that means yet, but I want to find out.”
“I think you need to.”
“You ready?” she asks.
I glance at our joined hands. “Yeah.”
She smiles.
Together, we leave the library behind and continue to walk down the path, neither of us looking back.
The sidewalk stretches ahead of us beneath the shade of old oak trees, their branches swaying gently in the breeze. Every now and then, a leaf breaks free, spinning lazily to the ground before either of us steps around it.
“You know,” Lucy says after a while, “I used to think this town was enormous.”
I glance over. “Yeah?”
“When I was little, walking from my house to the café felt like an adventure.”
“And now?”
She shrugs. “Now, I can probably make the trip with my eyes closed.”
I laugh. “I feel that.”
She nudges my shoulder. “Do you?”
“I spent years thinking the world ended at the fifty-yard line.”
She nods. “It’s funny how places shrink.”
“Or maybe we grow.”
She looks over at me, and I can tell she’s turning the words over in her head. “We do.”
We walk another few steps before I stop.
Lucy turns. “What?”
I rub the back of my neck. “I owe you an apology.”
Her expression softens immediately. “Dylan…”
“No.” I shake my head. “Just… let me say it.”
She swallows hard.
“I spent months believing loving you meant I had to choose between you and football.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I do,” I insist. “You never asked me to give up football.” She stays quiet. “You never asked me to stay.” She nods. “I just…” I look down at our hands. “I convinced myself that loving you meant sacrificing something. And the worst part is… I never gave you the chance to tell me I was wrong.”
Lucy’s expression crumples slightly. “I didn’t know you believed that.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
I blink. “What are you apologizing for?”
She shrugs helplessly. “For thinking I had to protect your dream instead of trusting you with mine.”
It’s strange.
We spent months carrying the weight of decisions we never let each other help make.
“I don’t want us doing that anymore,” I say quietly.
“Doing what?”
“Deciding things for each other.”
She smiles. “I’d like that.”
“So…” I squeeze her hand gently. “Next time one of us is scared—”
“We talk,” she finishes.
“Even if it’s messy.”
“Especially if it’s messy.”
“I can do messy.”
I swallow hard. “Does this mean we’re trying again?”
Lucy looks at our joined hands. “It means I never stopped wanting to.”
“Neither did I.”
She laughs again, shaking her head, and I realize something.
For months I’d imagined what getting Lucy back would feel like.
I’d pictured grand speeches.
Perfect words.
Some impossible moment where everything suddenly made sense.
Instead, it feels like this. Walking beside her. Making her laugh. Learning how to be honest before fear has the chance to speak for either of us.
Maybe love was never supposed to be found in the big moments.
Maybe it was always hidden inside a thousand ordinary ones like these.
Without really thinking about it, we drift toward Ashby Park, where we watched Shakespeare in the Park.
The playground is mostly empty, save for a little girl determined to conquer monkey bars while her father waits patiently beneath her, arms outstretched just in case.
Lucy smiles. “I used to come here with my mom.”
“You did?”
She nods. “Every Saturday morning. We’d stop at the café afterward if I managed not to fall off the swings.”
I grin.
We settle onto a weathered park bench beneath a sprawling maple tree. The branches sway overhead, scattering patches of sunlight across the sidewalk in front of us.
Lucy leans her head against my shoulder with a quiet sigh.
Instinctively, I lace my fingers through hers.
“I missed this,” I admit.
“This?”
“Just… being with you.”
She smiles without lifting her head. “I missed it, too.”
I look out across the park, watching the little girl finally swing across the last monkey bar before dropping triumphantly into her father’s waiting arms.
Life keeps moving.
Kids grow up.
Dreams change.
People leave home.
But none of that feels frightening. Because home isn’t Willow Creek or California. It isn’t a football field or the library.
Maybe home isn’t the place waiting at the end of the road.
Maybe it’s knowing we decide where to go together.
I kiss the top of Lucy’s head. “Ready?” I ask softly.
She gazes up at me. “Yeah.”
We stand and continue our walk beneath the late afternoon sun, neither of us hurrying toward whatever comes next.
I don’t need to know exactly where I’m going.
As long as she’s walking beside me, that’s all that matters.