Chapter 2
Chapter Two
ISA
If you asked anyone on campus, they’d tell you Tristan Vale belongs to everybody.
The student section thinks he belongs to Stanford basketball.
The alumni think he belongs to legacy and East Coast money.
Girls with glossed mouths think he belongs in the passenger seat of their lives, one big hand on the wheel, jaw sharp in the streetlights.
Boys think he belongs to some dumb old code about princes and winners.
None of them have seen him the way I have.
Not under bad fluorescent lights at eleven-thirty with his hoodie half-zipped and athlete exhaustion hanging off his shoulders.
Not when his face goes still and dangerous after practice, like the game is still in his blood.
That version of Tristan doesn’t belong to everybody.
That version feels private. That version feels like something I could almost have.
Or at least that’s the lie I’ve been feeding myself for weeks.
I’m stretched out on a treatment table while Tiffany digs her elbow into my left hamstring. The training room smells like menthol and tape. Most normal people are asleep or making mistakes in dorm rooms. Athletes are in here getting patched together like expensive machinery.
“I am relaxed,” I say through my teeth.
“You’re threatening me with your eyebrows,” she says.
“I’m from Texas. That’s just our face.”
She snorts and presses harder. I catch my reflection in the dark window—tan legs, deep brown hair with caramel even under ugly lights, lashes still on because I was raised correctly, body all soccer curves and pageant poise. Men have been explaining what I look like to me since I was thirteen.
Beauty queen. Soccer girl. Too pretty to be mean until I open my mouth.
None of it matters. Because I have my eyes on the one man everyone else wants too.
The door swings open.
The air shifts the way it does around certain people. I look up.
Tristan.
Gray sweats. Black hoodie. White practice shirt damp at the collar. One dark lock fallen over his forehead again. He’s tall in that clean, elegant way—lean, tan, long through the body but broad enough through the shoulders that he looks carved. His duffel hangs from one hand like it weighs nothing.
He sees me immediately. His face changes in that small, unfair way. Not a full smile. Just recognition. Something warm enough to matter.
“Texas.”
“Vale.”
He drops his duffel on the next table and sits, elbows on his knees, studying my leg like it personally offended him.
“You still tight there?”
I blink. Three days ago I mentioned my left side was acting up after weights. In passing. He remembered.
“Tiffany says it’s just overuse.”
Tiffany presses harder. I hiss. Tristan’s brows pull together.
“She’s lying. That looked spiritual.”
I laugh despite myself. “It’s fine.”
“No athlete says ‘it’s fine’ and means anything but ‘I’m one weird landing from a meltdown.’”
That’s the problem with boys like Tristan.
It’s not just the face or the shoulders or the way he moves like the world was built to get out of his way.
It’s the attention. He notices things. Tracks soreness.
Remembers when you mention something hurts.
That kind of attention will ruin a girl faster than pretty eyes ever could.
And he has those too.
I cross my arms. “You offering medical opinions now, Vale?”
His mouth lifts at one corner. “No. Just calling you out.”
Tiffany strips off her gloves. “You’re done. Stretch tonight, heat not ice, and stop acting like your body isn’t attached to the rest of you.” She points at Tristan without looking. “And you. Your shoulder is one more day from becoming my problem.”
He gives her a lazy salute. “Yes, ma’am.”
She leaves us in the low hum of the room.
Tristan reaches down to retie his shoe. “You heading back?”
“Eventually.”
He stands. Sitting down, Tristan is handsome. Standing up, he’s an event.
“I’ll walk you.”
I stop. “You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
No performance. No smirk. Just quiet, masculine certainty.
I shoulder my bag and fall into step beside him.
The athletic complex at this hour belongs to the overtrained and the almost-broken. We walk in silence that never feels awkward with him—which is also part of the danger. He knows how to use silence the way other people use charm.
For twelve whole seconds I refuse to be that girl.
Then I glance up. “You look terrible.”
“That your version of flirting?”
“It’s my version of honesty.”
He nods. “Then yes. I’m exhausted.”
“You played like a psycho at practice tonight.”
“So did you.”
I stop. “You watched?”
“Of course I watched.”
My stomach flips.
We push through the glass doors into cold night. Campus at this hour feels suspended—silver paths, dark palms, the faint smell of damp concrete and eucalyptus. We take the long way without commenting on it.
“You say things like that,” I say lightly, “and one day I’m going to think you mean them.”
He goes very still. Then he looks at me, really looks, tired athletes under bad lighting and all.
“I do mean them.”
And somehow that feels worse. Because it’s not a lie. It’s just not enough. Not yet.
I force a smile. “Great. That’ll make the emotional ruin more convincing.”
His mouth twitches.
We keep walking. Past fountains. Across brick. A couple guys on bikes coast by and one glances at me, then at Tristan, and immediately looks forward like he remembered God.
“Problem?” Tristan asks without turning his head.
“No.”
“You sure?”
“You planning to tackle a cyclist?”
“If necessary.”
I laugh. He glances down at me in the lamplight—tall, lean, tired, dark hair falling over his forehead again like it has a personal grudge against my self-control. My fingers actually ache to brush it back.
He slows as we near my dorm steps. That careful almost again. Not wanting the walk to end. Not quite knowing what to do with that.
I stop and turn toward him. He stays in the cooler light of the path.
For one second we just look at each other.
Then he reaches up like he’s going to touch my face. Stops himself. His fingers flex once. He changes direction and hooks one finger into the strap of my duffel instead, tugging it higher on my shoulder where it’s slipping.
Tiny. Stupid. Intimate.
“Go stretch,” he says.
“Bossy.”
“You like it.”
“Maybe.”
Something hot and real passes between us—something that could absolutely become a kiss on a different night, in a different life, if there weren’t ghosts in his eyes and caution in his shoulders.
He steps back. Nods toward the entrance. “Text me when you get upstairs.”
“Why? That sounds suspiciously like concern.”
His smile is smaller now. Private. “It is.”
I should say no. I should remember every warning I’ve ever given myself about beautiful boys with old sadness and complicated eyes.
Instead I hear myself say, “Fine. Don’t make me regret it, Vale.”
His gaze holds mine one last second. “Good night.”
Then he turns and walks back into the dark quad, shoulders broad under his hoodie, leaving me on the dorm steps with my hamstring aching and my heart doing truly stupid things.
I watch him go longer than I should.
Because there it is. The beginning of the problem.
Not that I want him.
That I think, maybe, he might want me too.
On a Tuesday in early October, soccer practice ran late again. By the time we wrapped, the sky had gone dark blue and the field smelled like cut grass and cold sweat.
I’m walking off with my hair half out of its ponytail when I see him.
Tristan.
Standing just outside the gate with his hands in the pockets of his hoodie like he accidentally ended up there and not like he’s very obviously waiting.
Lana leans into my shoulder. “Oh my God. He’s waiting for you.”
“Don’t.”
“He looks like a Victorian husband waiting outside surgery.”
I elbow her and keep walking.
He pushes off the fence when I get close. “Took you long enough.”
“Sorry. Some of us play real sports where you can’t pause every six seconds for dramatic male sweating.”
His mouth curves. That private almost-smile he never gives away for free.
“I brought tribute.” He holds out a blue sports drink and a protein bar.
Not flowers. Electrolytes. Athlete romance.
My stomach flips. “You waited for me with hydration?”
“You say that like I showed up with a sonnet.”
“That would’ve been less useful.”
“Exactly.”
I take the bottle. His fingers brush mine for one second.
We start walking toward the athletic complex. Campus at this hour belongs to athletes and ghosts.
“You look wrecked,” he says.
“Very romantic.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
By the time we hit the doors I’m smiling despite myself.
And that’s when I see her.
Stella.
Coming down the opposite path from the volleyball side, long legs eating up the pavement, face tipped toward her phone.
Even from here you can see why boys lose their minds.
She’s all clean lines and control and quiet heat.
Dark eyes. Strong mouth. Hair pulled high, neck bared like it’s more intimate than if it were down.
At the start of the year the campus couldn’t shut up about her and the two boys orbiting her—Tristan and Kane. Everybody had a theory. Everybody said she had both of them half insane and refused to choose either.
Then, supposedly, she turned away from both. And the whole time Vale was supposedly trying to get with her… he was walking me back from the sports complex. Walking me cross campus…. double dealing I guess. But he never crossed a line with me enough to call him out about any of it.
Stella looks up as she nears us. Tristan’s head turns before I can stop myself from noticing. Only for a second. Recognition. History. Something expensive.
Her eyes flick from him to me. One quick, assessing look. Then she nods once and keeps walking.
Tristan watches her go for a fraction too long before he looks back at me.
“Volleyball royalty,” I say lightly.
His eyes narrow. “You know she hates that.”
I smile anyway. “Good. I’d hate to think she enjoyed the branding.”
He opens the door and gestures me through first like a gentleman and a problem.
I go.