Chapter 4
Chapter Four
ISA
Drew catches me outside the training room a few days later.
Because apparently being six-foot-four and built like an oil rig gives a man the confidence to ignore every social cue God ever invented.
He’s leaning against the wall with his wrists taped, one ankle crossed over the other, sleeveless hoodie hacked off at the shoulders like he got in a fight with fabric and won.
He straightens the second he sees me.
I keep walking.
He pushes off the wall.
I walk faster.
He falls into step beside me anyway.
“You mad at me?”
I cut him a look.
“You almost started a fight in the training room.”
“Almost.”
“That is not the word you should be emphasizing.”
He runs a hand over the back of his neck, jaw tight, less smug than usual. Interesting.
“Okay,” he says. “Fair.”
I stop so abruptly he has to check himself not to walk past me.
We’re in that ugly little side hallway between treatment and strength, all cinder block and fluorescent light and institutional gloom. It smells like athletic tape and bleach and old adrenaline.
I turn to face him fully.
“You do not get to interfere in my life because I tuned you down.”
His eyes stay on mine.
No grin.
No football-boy charm.
No fake Texas accent.
“I know.”
“Then why are you here?”
He exhales once, hard through his nose.
“Because I’m not wrong.”
Up close, his eyes have specks of blue-green I’d never noticed before… tiny flecks—the same hue the water turns at my favorite beach when the sun hits just right.
“That is a truly unbelievable quality in a man who has spent less than five total minutes in my good graces.” I retort pretending I wasn’t just lost in his eyes for split seconds.
His mouth almost twitches.
“Isa.”
That gets me.
Not Texas.
Not sweetheart.
And he says it like he means to use it carefully.
I hate that.
I fold my arms tighter.
“Say what you need to say so I can hate you on schedule.”
He glances down the hallway once, then back at me.
“Vale’s not clean where you’re concerned.”
I go still.
Only for a second, then recover immediately.
“Congratulations,” I say coolly. “You’ve now repeated yourself with more syllables.”
He steps closer.
Not enough to crowd.
Enough to make me aware of how much space he takes up without trying.
“I saw him with her.”
I already know who he means. That’s the worst part. I don’t have to ask. I lift my chin anyway.
“And?”
“And it wasn’t over.”
My jaw tightens.
There’s a kind of humiliation that comes not from being lied to, but from hearing your private fear spoken aloud by someone you can’t even stand.
Drew watches my face like he knows that’s exactly where he’s landed.
And because apparently this morning was not difficult enough already, he softens.
Actually softens.
“Look,” he says, voice lower now. “You don’t have to like me. You clearly don’t. But I’m telling you because I’d rather have you pissed at me than blindsided by him later.”
That should not be the sentence that hurts.
But it does.
Maybe because it isn’t sleazy.
It isn’t competitive.
It isn’t him trying to score points off Tristan.
It’s just… blunt.
Protective, even.
And I refuse to make room for that.
Not when my own heart is already stretched enough trying to turn Tristan’s almost into something steadier.
So I give Drew the coldest smile I have. “You are mistaking interest for entitlement.”
His face hardens right back.
“No,” he says. “You are mistaking hope for denial.”
That does it.
I step into his space and jab one finger into the center of his muscular chest almost bending the tip in the process.
“You don’t know what he feels.”
His eyes drop to my hand. Then lift. The tiny specks of turquoise glow now like embers in a fire. “Do you?”
The silence after that is enormous.
Because no.
Not fully.
Not enough.
Not in the clean, simple way I want to.
But I hate him for making me feel that uncertainty in my own bones.
So I square my shoulders, smooth my face back into beauty-queen composure, and say, “Stay out of my love life, Drew.”
His nostrils flare slightly.
“Then stop dragging me into it.”
I blink.
“What?”
He lets out one short laugh with no amusement in it.
“You think I don’t know that I saw you watching me while pretending not to at the party last Thursday. When you were looking for him… your eyes kept landing on me. Talking to Hailey from track.”
For one stupid second, all I can do is stare at him.
Because I was looking at him all tan, fine and muscular drinking beer like there was no tomorrow cutting it up with a group of WAG wannabes clinging to his biceps.
Not because I wanted him. But because so many girls did and I just didn’t fully get why… but now…
He sees the crack.
Of course he does.
And because he is incapable of letting a moment stay tender for more than four seconds, he steps back, shoves both hands in his hoodie pocket, and says, “Go be mad. You play tonight, right?”
I narrow my eyes.
“How do you know that?”
He looks offended.
“I can read. Also there are posters.”
“Right.”
He nods once.
Then, maddeningly calm—“Good luck, Texas.” Before I can react he comes closes, tucks a stray piece of hair behind my ear and leaves.
I shiver. I hate him. And also that he—might be right.
Because now I can’t decide whether to tell him to go to hell or thank him or throw a water bottle at his head, and all of those options feel like losing.
So I go with the only one that preserves what’s left of my pride.
I shoulder past him down the narrow hall, the smell of pine soap wafts from his skin. Oddly pleasant. I’m pissed for thinking it.
“I don’t need luck.”
Behind me, he says, “No. You need better taste.”
I don’t turn around.
By seven-thirty that night, the stadium lights are so bright they make everything look sharpened. I worked hard to get here and no one was going to take it for me.
The field glows green and unreal. The air has gone cool enough that every breath feels cleaner on the way in. The stands are fuller than usual—conference play, rivalry game, enough campus energy to turn a Friday night into an event instead of just another line on the schedule.
I should be focused.
But there’s a difference between game focus and inner peace, and Drew Travers managed to vandalize the second one before breakfast.
So now everything in me feels too tight.
My calves.
My jaw.
The place under my ribs where doubt likes to live when someone else is rude enough to point at it.
I retie my ponytail, bounce once on the balls of my feet, and look up toward the stands without meaning to.
And there he is.
Tristan.
Leaning against the rail halfway up in a dark hoodie and baseball cap, one arm folded over the bar, eyes on the field.
On me.
My pulse betrays me instantly.
That’s the problem with him.
He doesn’t need to do much.
Just look at me like I matter and all the little broken places in my logic start stitching themselves into something hopeful again.
Drew is wrong, he has to be.
Because men don’t watch you like that if you’re just a placeholder.
Men don’t show up, remember things, walk you home, sit with you at lunch, text after your matches, and look at you like that if nothing real is growing underneath it.
He came.
He’s here.
And whatever else is unfinished in him, he’ll just have to let it go.
The whistle blows.
Game body takes over.
The first twenty minutes are a knife fight.
Hard tackles.
Fast transitions.
Midfield pressure so ugly and relentless it feels like trying to breathe through denim.
I play well.
Better than well.
Mean.
That’s what Coach calls it when I’m in the exact right headspace.
Not reckless.
Not emotional.
I split lines.
Win second balls.
Cut hard enough to make defenders turn their hips too early.
Put one shot just over the bar in the twelfth minute and hear the whole front section inhale like they nearly got to watch the exact ending they came for.
At the half, we’re tied 1–1.
The locker room is all sweat and sharp voices and somebody re-taping an ankle while Coach redraws our spacing with the kind of fury that means she thinks we should already be better.
I sit on the bench, breathing through my nose, and tie my laces tighter.
One of the girls nudges me with her knee.
“Your basketball prince came.”
I look up too fast.
Bad move.
She grins.
“Knew it.”
“Shut up.”
“Would if I could. I can’t.”
My face is warm and I hate everyone.
But when we head back out, I still look.
He’s still there.
Still watching.
Second half starts faster.
Messier.
The “accidental” tackles come late now. Shoulders harder. Their center back starts grabbing at my jersey every time I turn. The ref is either blind or philosophically committed to suffering.
By the sixtieth minute, my left hamstring is talking.
Not screaming.
Not failing.
Talking.
A warning line.
A little pull.
A reminder that bodies keep score no matter how badly you want them not to.
I ignore it.
Athletes are basically professionals at bargaining with our own flesh.
One more run.
One more cut.
One more sprint.
One more chance.
At sixty-eight, I beat their outside back to the corner and send a cross so clean it should’ve ended in a goal. At seventy-two, I track back forty yards and steal one right off their midfielder’s foot.
At seventy-six, I look up after a whistle and catch Tristan gripping the rail so hard I can see the tension in his forearms even from the field.
That should not feel as good as it does.
Drew is wrong.
He is so wrong.
I know what being watched with concern looks like.
I know what being wanted looks like too.
And whatever Tristan is still figuring out, I am part of it.
I have to be.
Then the eighty-first minute happens.
It’s stupid how fast a season can turn.
One second I’m driving forward on the left side with space opening in front of me, the ball at my feet, one defender angling across, another half a step too slow to close.
I push it long.
Cut inside.
Plant.
And something in my leg rips.
The pain is white.
Blinding.
Instant.
A live wire tearing straight through the back of my thigh and down into my knee so violently that my whole body forgets how to stay vertical.
I go down hard.