Page 14 of Trade It All

It means I’m tired. Tired of this office feeling colder when she’s in it. Tired of looking at her and feeling absolutely nothing while another woman can’t even ask me a question in a hallway without my whole body tightening around the sound of her voice. Tired of pretending I don’t know what she gets out of this because it’s easier than saying it.

“You were never here for me,” I say, and I don’t soften it because there’s no point. “You were here for what comes with me. The name. The access. The money. The image.”

Her eyes flash. “That is not fair.”

“It’s true.”

“Wow.” She lets out a breathless laugh. “So that’s what you think of me?”

I meet her stare and don’t flinch. “I think if I didn’t have this job, this office, and the paycheck that comes with both, you never would have looked at me twice.”

She opens her mouth, then closes it again. The silence stretches.

When she speaks again, the denial is already back in place. Not because she believes it, but because it’s easier than standing in the middle of what just happened and admitting she saw it coming too.

“You don’t mean any of this,” she says, smoothing a hand down the front of her dress as if she can neaten the conversation the same way she neatens everything else. “You’re upset. Fine.You have your pregame routine, and I’m clearly not helping right now. We can talk later.”

It would almost be impressive, the way she rewrites reality in real time, if I didn’t find it exhausting.

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

But she’s already reaching for her purse.

“I know how you get before games,” she says, as if I didn’t just end things. “I’ll see you later.”

Like it’s settled. Like the world will reset itself by the time the final horn sounds and she’ll step back into whatever version of this relationship she prefers.

I don’t stop her. I don’t chase after the denial. I don’t repeat myself. I’m done spending energy on things that should already be over.

She leaves, shutting the door behind her with the same measured control she had when I walked in, and the silence that follows doesn’t feel sharp or empty. It feels clean.

I stand there for a minute, staring at the door, letting the stillness settle over the room. Then I drag a hand over the back of my neck and exhale, long and slow, trying to push the tension out through my shoulders. The game is still there. The routine is still there. The job is still there. Whatever just shifted in my personal life does not change the fact that I have a team to coach tonight and no room to be anything less than fully locked in.

My hand drops to my wrist without thought, thumb pressing against the underside of my watch until I feel the slight give of the band hidden beneath it.

The hair tie.

The damn thing has been there so long it feels like part of me now, more grounding than metal or leather or anything else I could wear. I brush it once beneath the watch face, just enough to know it’s still there, and hate how immediately my breathing evens out.

I don’t let myself think too hard about what that says. Instead, I straighten, grab the game notes from my desk, and head for the door. I have a pregame routine for a reason. Film. Meetings. Warmups. The rhythm of it settles my head, keeps the edges clean, keeps me from thinking about things that don’t belong in the middle of a home game. It should work tonight. It usually does. But as I step back into the hallway, one thought cuts through everything else anyway, settling low and certain in a place I can’t seem to shut off no matter how hard I try.

Maddie is somewhere in this building. And for the first time all morning, that feels like the only thing I actually want to see.

Chapter 5

Maddie

Ialwayswaitoutsidethe locker room.

It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve done this, how many games I’ve worked, how many clips I’ve filmed from this exact hallway with the same camera in my hands and a dozen ideas already lined up in my head. There’s still a part of me that pauses here—just outside the door—like I’m standing at the edge of something I’m allowed to step into, but not without permission.

It isn’t written anywhere. No one ever told me I had to wait. But it feels like a line all the same.

So I lean back against the wall and adjust the settings on my camera again, even though I already checked them twice on the way in. The overhead lights cast that same slightly harsh glow down the hallway, flattening everything into something a little too sharp, a little too real. People pass behind me—staff, trainers, someone carrying a crate of sticks—but none of it registers.

Not the way the locker room does. The way it hums behind that door, low and alive, like something building. Jake always comes to get me. Not because he has to. Because he does. Because somewhere along the way, it became understood that this part of their routine isn’t something I walk into on my own. It’s something I’m brought into, like they’re making space for me inside something that belongs to them first.

The door opens a few minutes later, and just like always, it’s him. Jake steps out already halfway dressed, his hair still damp, his expression easy in a way that makes my shoulders loosen before I even realize they were tight.