Page 70 of Wedge

His breath stops. Then his arm tightens around me, and I feel his lips press hard against my hair.

I sleep.

We’re both quiet on the walk to the range, not a bad quiet, just tender, the kind that comes after crying yourself empty and sleeping like the dead. Stephen keeps a hand at the small of my back the whole way, not saying much, like he knows words aren’t what either of us needs this morning. I need the touch and I think he does, too.

“You good?” he asks at the range.

“Raw,” I reply honestly. “Not bad-raw. Just… tender.” I roll a shoulder, testing it. “I think I’m going to talk to my therapist after this, work through some things. You?”

“Same. Think I need a therapist, too.” He hands me a wedge, hesitates, then adds, quieter, “Didn’t sleep much after you did. Kept checking you were still there.”

I don’t have a response for that, so I just lean into him for a moment, cheek to his chest, and he wraps an arm around me right there on the range, in front of God and anyone else paying attention, and neither of us cares anymore.

I’m paired with Jeremy Battoli today, and he shows up at the first tee looking about as tightly wound as I feel, nodding at me with the kind of nervous respect guys give each other when they both know exactly what’s on the line. Still has the crisp polo, perfect haircut. I brace myself.

“Carter,” he says, shaking my hand. “Heard yesterday ended rough.”

Damn, gossip travels fast here. My round was okay, it was that fucking woman… Shut it down A, focus. “Heard you had a good one.” Not going to give this stiff, preppy guy anything.

“Trying to keep it going.” He glances past me toward Stephen, who is doing something with the yardage books, and something flickers across his face I can’t quite place. “Good luck out there.”

“You too.”

The first two holes go badly. I’m too fucking tight. I shank my drive into the trees on one and have to chip out sideways for a bogey, then three-putt from thirty feet on two, hands still disconnected from the rest of me. Jeremy pars both and gives me a sympathetic wince.

“Slow starts happen,” he offers, surprising me. “I shot seventy-nine on my first Second Stage attempt. Rough day, gets you all week if you let it.”

“Two over already,” I mutter, walking to three.

“It’s early.” Stephen’s voice is steady, no panic in it. “Sixteen holes left. After last night, you’re allowed a slow start.”

Careful pars on three and four. Then on five, a wedge I actually commit to drops for birdie, and something loosens in my body that’s been tight since I first heard her voice in that lobby.

“There he is,” Stephen murmurs with a long pat on my shoulder, and this time it doesn’t feel like a phrase he’s using to manage me. It feels like relief, like he needed that as much as I did.

Jeremy catches the tail end of it, raises an eyebrow at me on the walk to six. “You two have a whole language, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“That’s… nice.” He says it simple, no edge to it. There’s something wistful underneath that I don’t have time to examine before we’re on the tee box for six.

Clean pars on six and seven, then a twelve-footer drops on eight, and by nine I’ve clawed back to even, Jeremy at two under beside me.

“Even,” Stephen says, checking the card. “After that start? Hell of a recovery. Good work.”

“Not over yet.”

“It’s not. That’s the good part.”

We get snacks at the turn and make our way to ten.

He’s right. The back nine opens up in a way the front never did: a birdie on ten, a long putt that breaks exactly the way Stephen’s notebook said it would, another on twelve. Jeremy matches me shot for shot, both of us climbing the board together, an easy rivalry that feels less like competition than two guys pushing each other higher.

“You’re playing angry today,” Jeremy says at the thirteenth tee, not unkindly. “Good angry. Whatever happened, use it.”

I don’t correct him. I’m not angry, exactly. Not at Stephen or even at that woman, just something rawer than usual, but it’s close enough.

A perfect three-wood and a two-putt birdie on fifteen push me to three under for the day. Jeremy whistles low.