Chapter 4 #2
The stadium sound cuts weirdly, like somebody shoved cotton into my ears.
I hear myself make a sound I do not recognize.
Then I’m on the turf with my fingers dug into the grass and my vision strobing under the lights.
No.
No no no.
Not like this.
Hands are on me immediately—trainer, teammate, somebody shouting for space. I can’t fully process the words because all I can feel is the sick wrongness in my leg.
I know injuries.
I know pain.
And this—this is not cramp pain.
Not overuse pain.
Not “walk it off” pain.
This is season ending pain.
I squeeze my eyes shut and breathe through my teeth.
“Isa. Stay still.”
“I know,” I gasp, tears falling like my dreams.
Somewhere above the field, the stands have gone wrong.
All that noise distorted into one thick wave of concern.
Then there’s more movement.
A shout.
The metallic slam of a gate.
And when I open my eyes, Tristan is on the field.
Actually on the field.
He’s vaulted the fence and crossed half the sideline before security or staff even process what’s happening, and no one stops him because the look on his face says trying would be a deeply stupid decision.
He drops to one knee beside me just outside the trainer’s space.
“Isa.”
I blink up at him.
Hair wrecked.
Face stripped bare.
Every line in him is alarm and focus and something so intense it nearly burns the edges off the pain.
“You cannot—” I start.
He cuts his eyes to the trainer.
“What happened?”
“Possible tear,” she says sharply. “Give us room.”
He does.
Half an inch.
Which is somehow worse.
Because now he’s there and not there, close enough that I can smell clean sweat and cold night air and the exact soap he uses, but not able to fix a thing.
My eyes sting instantly.
Not from the pain.
Or not only from the pain.
From the humiliation of it.
The terror.
The fact that the game is still happening around the edges and mine just stopped in one tearing second.
Tristan sees it.
He leans in just enough that his voice stays for me alone.
“Hey.” Then he takes my hand in his.
That one word nearly breaks me.
The trainer tests the leg again and I bite down so hard on the inside of my cheek I taste blood.
“Ambulance,” she says to someone behind her.
Oh God.
Not good, then.
The world gets blurry after that.
Cart.
Voices.
Coach’s face white around the edges of her anger.
A blanket over my lap.
The pain sharpening every time I move.
But through all of it, Tristan stays.
I know because every time I open my eyes, he’s there.
At the sideline.
Beside the tunnel.
Outside the ambulance doors.
Someone says family, and I laugh once because my family is in Texas and my mother is probably still at some charity thing in Dallas telling somebody I’d marry rich if I had any sense. My father was never interested in my soccer career. Only his tee times.
Then the ambulance doors open.
And Tristan climbs in.
Just like that.
No hesitation.
No asking permission from the universe.
No pretty-boy pause.
One second he’s outside.
The next he’s ducking in and taking the narrow bench opposite me while the EMT secures straps and starts asking questions.
I stare at him through pain and shock and flashing overhead lights.
“You have a game tomorrow.”
His eyes lock on mine.
“I know.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Too bad.”
The ambulance doors slam.
And then we’re moving.
The siren doesn’t go on.
Good.
I think I’d cry if it did.
The EMT talks.
Asks pain scale, asks mechanism, asks if I heard a pop.
I answer where I can.
Mostly I just hold onto the metal rail and breathe.
Tristan leans forward, forearms braced on his knees, eyes never leaving my face. He looks half feral, half furious at the existence of pain itself.
At one point the EMT says, “You family?”
And before I can answer, Tristan says, “I’m with her.”
That lands somewhere deep enough to hurt differently.
I’m with her.
Not polished.
Not explained.
Not labeled.
Just claimed.
And maybe Drew really is a neanderthal because the thought that comes into my head right then is immediate and desperate and bright:
See?
He chose me.
The hospital is bright and cold and humiliating in the way all emergency rooms are.
A wheelchair.
Forms.
Nurses.
The smell of antiseptic and old coffee and fear.
The doctor says what the trainer already knew.
Tear.
They won’t fully confirm until the imaging and follow-ups, but they’re talking surgery tones. Recovery timelines. Words like significant and unfortunate and we’ll do everything we can.
I stare at the wall while they talk.
My leg throbs under the blanket.
My hands won’t stop shaking.
Season.
The word keeps trying to form in my head and failing.
My season.
Gone.
Maybe.
And through all of it, Tristan stays.
He gets me ice chips when my mouth goes dry.
Signs something when they need a student emergency contact and I’m too dazed to process which form needs what.
Texts Coach from my phone because my fingers won’t work right.
Calls my mother because someone has to and I cannot survive that conversation without witnesses.
He stays through all of it.
Not looking at his watch.
Not checking his ego.
Not remembering he is Tristan Vale and has his own life and his own body and his own obligations waiting for him.
Just there.
Solid.
By the time they finally leave us alone in a little curtained room with too-thin blankets and a monitor humming softly beside me, it’s after midnight and the adrenaline crash has turned everything slow.
Tristan is sitting in the plastic chair by my bed with his elbows on his knees, looking wrecked in the fluorescent light.
I watch him for a minute.
The lock of hair has fallen across his forehead again.
He hasn’t noticed.
His hands are clasped so tightly together the knuckles look pale.
He feels me looking.
Lifts his head.
And the expression that crosses his face when our eyes meet is enough to make me forget every warning Drew threw at me like shrapnel.
“Hey,” he says quietly.
My throat tightens.
“Hey.”
For one second neither of us says anything.
The room hums around us.
The hallway beyond the curtain murmurs in low hospital voices.
My leg pulses.
My whole life feels suddenly fragile and half-shattered.
And still—he’s here.
I say the only thing I can.
“You came into the ambulance.”
One side of his mouth moves.
Not a smile.
Something softer.
More tired.
“Yeah.”
“You vaulted a fence.”
That gets a real, rough little laugh from him.
“Apparently.”
“You had no business doing that.”
“I know.”
I look at him for a long second.
“Why did you?”
That one lands.
I can see it land.
His face changes.
Opens and closes again around something he doesn’t quite know how to hand me yet.
And because I am hurting and exhausted and scared and seventeen kinds of emotionally compromised, I decide not to wait for him to be ready.
I decide for both of us.
Maybe Drew is wrong.
Maybe all of this uncertainty is just timing.
Maybe Tristan isn’t finished figuring himself out, but this—this hospital room, this ambulance, this fence, this look in his eyes—this is real enough for me.
So I reach for him.
His brows pull together.
“Isa—”
I catch the front of his hoodie and pull him down.
He comes easily.
Too easily.
And then I kiss him.
For one suspended second, I think this is it.
The kiss I’ve been building in my head for weeks.
The payoff.
The confirmation.
The thing that turns all this almost into finally.
Instead—it’s warm.
Warm like brandy on a cold winter night.
Warm like comfort.
Warm like care.
Not lightning.
Not the world cracking in two.
Not the firework collapse I wanted badly enough to embarrass myself for.
He kisses me back.
Gently.
Carefully.
His hand coming to the side of my face like I’m hurt in more ways than one and he knows it.
That tenderness nearly ruins me.
Because maybe fireworks are overrated.
Maybe this is what real choosing feels like.
Maybe all that heat and almost and restraint was only ever building toward this softer thing.
When he pulls back, he stays close.
Forehead almost touching mine.
Breathing the same air.
His eyes search mine with something complicated in them.
Something I do not want to decode right now.
So I don’t.
I smile instead.