By the time I reached her, she’d already stacked a few cones and was reaching for another net. I crouched down beside her, wordless, grabbing the opposite end to fold it up.
She looked up, startled. “Oh—Beckett. You don’t have to?—”
“I know,” I said. My voice came out rougher than I meant. “Doesn’t mean I won’t.”
Her eyes softened, the faintest flicker of surprise there before she masked it with a polite smile.
But I saw it.
And that was enough to make the ache in my chest twist tighter.
Because helping her didn’t fix anything.
It just reminded me how deep I was already in.
“You shouldn’t be moving this crap,” I said, dropping my towel on the sideline and crouching next to her. “It’s not your job.”
Ellery didn’t even look up. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not. That’s like fifty pounds of equipment.”
“Fifty’s not heavy.”
“You’re five foot nothing. Don’t start.”
She rolled her eyes but handed over half the load, anyway. I grabbed the stacked cones from her before she could argue, because if there was one thing I knew about her by now, it was that she’d rather break her back than admit she needed help.
“You know,” she said, adjusting the strap of her clipboard bag, “you don’t have to swoop in every time Kyle can’t make it.”
“Didn’t do it for him,” I said automatically.
She froze for half a heartbeat, then looked up at me — not surprised exactly, but… something else.
“I know,” she said softly.
Those two words did something weird to my chest.
We went back to stacking the rest of the gear in silence, the air heavy with heat and the faint buzz of crows from the trees lining the field. Sweat dripped down the back of my neck, and the smell of cut grass mixed with sunscreen and dust — the kind of summer scent that used to mean freedom. Now it just meant her.
I handed her the last stray cone. Our fingers brushed — a small, stupid thing, barely a second. But it hit like an electric jolt straight through my gut. She didn’t flinch, but she noticed. I could tell by the way she inhaled just a little too slow before she spoke again.
“You know,” she said, trying to play it off, “for someone who hates volunteering, you’re doing a lot of it.”
I huffed a laugh. “Yeah, well… hate’s a strong word.”
Her brow lifted. “So what is it then?”
“Complicated.”
“You mean inconvenient.”
That got a real laugh out of me — low, unguarded. “You’re not wrong.”
The smile she gave me after that wasn’t the polite, professional one she wore around donors or staff. It was softer. Smaller. Real. And that made it worse. Because the more real she got, the harder it was to keep pretending I didn’t care.
I shouldn’t want this. Shouldn’t care how she looked at me, or how her voice softened when she said my name. Shouldn’t give a damn about the way she wiped sweat off her brow and smiled like the world wasn’t caving in on her shoulders.
But I did.
