Chapter 13 #2
The shower didn’t take long; it cleaned me of turf and sweat, and I was dried and dressed in record time.
“You have the worst personal care I know,” Dustin grumbled as he watched me pull a hoodie on.
“Huh?”
“You’re twenty-one, Noah. We play an outdoor sport. You need sponsorships when you go pro, dude. You need to take care of your skin.”
What the fuck? “Huh?”
The eye roll was worthy of Hadley. Dustin moved to his locker area, pulled out a toiletry bag, and started pulling out bottles and tubes.
“You wash with the shower-room face-wash. Wrong. Use this from now on.” He handed me a navy-blue bottle.
“What is it?”
“Face-wash.” He saw my look. “Just do it. Also,” he handed me a tube with a spray nozzle. “Toner. Everyone needs to use toner.”
“I thought toner was for printers.” I was only half-joking.
“Nah. When you wash your face, you alter the pH balance, using toner helps reset it.”
He spritzed my face. I felt weirdly violated.
“Naya got me all this shit one Christmas. She said I was aging prematurely because I ‘run around all day with only sunscreen on’, so I started using it, and it’s good. I feel the difference.”
I was going to argue. I mean, c’mon, there were so many things to say, but he was serious, and as I looked at him, he did have really nice skin.
“Fine. I’ll use the face-wash and toner. Happy?”
“Moisturizer.” He handed me another tube.
“For?”
“You need to feed your skin. Face-wash, toner, moisturizer, then sunscreen. Every day.”
“Doesn’t my SPF moisturize?”
“Rookie mistake,” Dust said, clapping me on the shoulder. “Okay, I’m starving. Coming?”
I looked at him and the four products in my hand, and with one glance, I knew the conversation was over. I dropped them into my kit bag without a word.
“So . . . you trying out for the Olympics or just punishing yourself?” he asked as we walked out of the locker room.
I didn’t look at him. “Conditioning.”
“Uh-huh.” He shoved his hands into his hoodie pockets. “You know we have scheduled conditioning, right?”
I pushed the door open. “You here to critique my training plan?”
“Nah.” I could feel him studying me. “Just making sure you’re not spiraling.”
I huffed a quiet breath that might’ve been a laugh. “You’ve been reading therapy blogs again?”
“Hadley sends me stuff.”
Of course she did.
“She knows everything?” I asked.
Dustin grinned — not cocky, not performative. Just . . . open. It changed his whole face.
“Yeah,” he said, as if it were obvious. “She was surprised we kept her in the loop, but I don’t know why. We wouldn’t have gotten as far as we have without her.”
It was the way he spoke about her, not playful or casual, but certain.
“So . . . how’s it going?” I asked.
He shrugged, but he couldn’t hide the smug satisfaction. “Good.”
“Define good.”
We reached the door to the outside, and he opened it with a hearty push. “She’s . . . she’s not easy.”
“No,” I said dryly. “I don’t imagine she is.”
“She pushes back. Doesn’t just agree because it’s simpler.” His grin faded into something steadier. “I like that.”
I thought about another woman who wasn’t easy. Maybe it was the air here. Or maybe it was me. Why the hell was I thinking about Briar right now?
We walked a little in silence, and when I glanced at him, I knew he wasn’t joking or deflecting. He looked . . . grounded.
Slater was invested? Did not see that coming. “You look very steady for a guy in a new relationship.”
Dust shrugged. “New?” He looked surprised when he thought about it. “It’s only been a couple of weeks.”
“And you’re already smiling like that.” I rubbed my jaw. “You look like you’re ready to put a ring on it.”
Dustin-Player-Slater didn’t even grumble.
He rubbed the back of his neck, but he didn’t deny it. “I don’t know. It just feels—” He stopped, searching. “Right.”
Right.
I thought about that for a second. It had taken me years to trust my first step on the field. Years to know when to commit to a gap without hesitation. Even then, I still checked. Still adjusted.
He was talking about a woman as if it were instinct.
“That’s fast.” I was being honest. For someone like Dustin, it was so fast.
“Yeah.” He didn’t argue. “It is.”
Silence stretched between us, easy, but it still felt loaded.
“You ever have that?” he asked suddenly.
“Have what?”
“That.” He gestured vaguely. “Where you just know.”
I faced forward, my eyes trained on the top level of the library as I thought about his question.
I’d known anger fast. I’d known responsibility fast. I’d known when something was about to break. I wasn’t sure if I had ever experienced anything soft that fast.
“Not like that,” I said.
He studied me. “No one? Not even in high school?”
My jaw tightened automatically. “Nope.”
“Huh. Me either,” he added with a sniff. “But with her? It’s just . . . you know.”
I searched for a reply and came up empty. “I don’t think I do,” I said finally. “I don’t do fast.” I didn’t know why I’d said that.
Dustin smiled a little. “That’s true, unless it’s on the field.” He gave me the side-eye. “Emotions? I agree, definitely not fast.”
“That’s not true.” Even though I’d just said it was.
“Really? Emotionally?” He shook his head. “You process like an auditor. Methodical and thorough.”
That almost made me smile.
Dustin nudged me with his elbow, heavy and familiar. “You’ll get there.”
“Well, I hate to tell you, man, but I’m twenty-one.
I’m in no hurry to get there.” I nudged him back.
“I’d have swallowed my own tongue if someone had told me in January you and I would have been having this conversation.
The notorious Dustin Slater, slayer of hearts and women’s virtue, all loved-up. ”
Dustin laughed out loud before slowing to a stop, his eyes on the ground. “Shit.” He blew out a breath.
“What is it?”
He was silent for so long that I began to fear the worst.
“This is going to sound so corny,” he mumbled, his eyes still focused on the concrete. “But . . . I hadn’t noticed my world was broken until she walked into it.”
Jesus, that was cringey. What the fuck did I say to that birthday-card word vomit?
“Um . . .”
He shrugged. “Yeah.” He glanced at me and looked away quickly. “I’m fucked.”
I watched him as he started to walk away.
“I won’t tell,” I teased slightly as I caught up with him.
He turned, with no hesitation. “Yeah? I think she needs to hear that from me, right?”
She was never hearing it from me, that was for sure. “Absolutely.”
We walked the rest of the way to the dorms in silence, and I couldn’t help but think about what it would be like to feel something before you’d tested it for structural weakness. To let it settle around you without checking for leverage points and exit strategies?
Dustin moved toward things, trusting them to hold. I’d spent most of my life making sure I was the thing that held.
Fast wasn’t my way off the field. But maybe inevitability was its own kind of certainty.
I thought about Briar again, not consciously; she just popped into my brain. Like a whack-a-mole. Only I didn’t have a stick to whack her with. I grimaced. Okay, that was harsh. I would never hurt her.
Briar didn’t feel fast — she felt inevitable. She felt like a problem I’d been walking toward long before I knew her name.