“Yeah,” I replied without hesitation. “Just not in the way I thought I’d be.”
She turned to look at me. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I should be thinking about tape jobs or who’s gonna try to take my head off in the first period. But all I’ve been thinking about is…”
You.
I stopped before I said it out loud.
“…Everything else,” I finished, eyes stuck on the water.
She nodded a little. “Yeah. Me, too.”
There was no way she was worried about my team not winning the Frozen Four at all.
But fuck, the way she said that? Like it meant more than it should’ve. Like maybe I wasn’t the only one lying in bed at night thinking about this… whatever this was.
But I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to mess it up.
A second later, she said, real quiet, “Do you think we’ll still talk after this?”
I blinked. “After what?”
She gave a half-shrug. “After the season. After school. After, like… everything.”
I didn’t expect that question to hit like a truck.
“I hope so,” I said. The thought of not talking to her ever again made me want to hurl.
She didn’t answer. Just leaned her head on my shoulder. And for a second, the world kind of stilled.
No games. No pressure. Just Alana, soft and close, and our breathing falling into sync like it always somehow did.
I didn’t say I loved her.
Didn’t even really let myself think it.
But in that moment—on a beat-up hill by a muddy lake, in the place she used to run to when everything sucked—I felt it. All of it.
She didn’t bring me here because she had to.
She brought me because she wanted to.
Because I wasn’t just some guy she hung out with in the kitchen or made out with in the backseat of my car.
I was her person.
At least… I really hoped I was.
40
EDEN
My heart thrummed loud and steady in my chest, my nerves shooting through the roof as I tried my best to drown out the cheers from our fans as well as the ones from our opponents.
I played my fair share of nail-biting games before, but none of them came close to the way this year’s Frozen Four finals were making me feel.
Earlier today, I was glad to find out that I was going to play, that I didn’t have to spend my lasteverNCAA game sitting on the stupid bench. But right now, I wished Coach had benched me.
