“There’s always a reason,” he says gently. Then, after he takes a sip of his tea, “What do you know about Sadie’s dad’s accident?”
The wordaccidentlands heavy.
I take a breath. “Just that Sadie came home after. To help.”
Matt nods. “That’s what most people say.”
He doesn’t rush the rest. I watch as Nadine sits on a swing, a small child on her lap with fuzzy orange hair clutching her dress as she pumps her legs to take them higher and faster, both grinning.
“She was away at college when her car broke down,” he continues. “Called her dad—and what do us dads do? We fix things for our kids. He left right away to drive to her. The wreck happened on the highway.”
I already know the ending, but hearing it laid out makes something in my chest tighten.
“Paralyzed. Wheelchair. Long recovery. His business was already struggling—you know how small towns are,” Matt says.
The air in my lungs is heavy.
“So she stayed,” I say.
“Yes,” Matt agrees.
“Out of guilt?” I ask.
Matt shrugs. “That’s what people assume, but no one’s asked her.”
I stare out at the yard, at the way one of Matt’s boys climbs up the slide instead of going down it.
Sadie.
I didn’t come home that Christmas.
Not because I didn’t care—but because I cared too much.
I’d heard she was back. Heard she’d left school. But people said it like a footnote, like it was temporary. Like Sadie Summers could simply pause her life and pick it back up later without consequence.
I knew better.
If I’d come home, I would’ve seen it on her face—I could read it better than anyone—and I would have seen the quiet way she takes responsibility for things that were never hers to carry. I would’ve offered help I didn’t know how to give. I would’ve stayed longer than planned. And worse—I would’ve started to wonder if football was worth the cost of leaving her behind.
Coach had just pulled me aside before break and told me my name was being whispered by scouts. “Not shouted yet,” he’d said. “But close.”
Close felt fragile. Close felt like something I could mess up.
So I stayed away.
The next two years blurred together in discipline and denial. Two-a-day workouts. Film study until my eyes burned. Keeping my grades clean so no one could question my focus. I treated my body like a machine and my heart like a liability.
I was drafted right out of college.
New York felt unreal—bright lights, fast mornings, and a version of myself I barely recognized. I played two seasons as a Giant, and from the outside, it looked like everything I’d chased had finally caught me.
Then came year three.
One hit. One wrong angle. One sound I still hear sometimes when I close my eyes.
The doctors talked about recovery timelines and probabilities, but what they didn’t tell me was how quiet life gets when the thing you built your identity around disappears overnight. I wasn’t just injured. I was unmoored. Angry. Ashamed. Terrified that without football, there was nothing exceptional left about me.
Things were dark for a while.
