I clear my throat. "Have you seen Madison?"
Carter hesitates, and that’s all I need to know before my chest locks up again.
His voice is careful when he answers. "She’s here. She was in the waiting room when I got here."
I latch onto that. "So she’s coming back?"
Carter’s expression shifts with a flicker of something he’s trying to hide, and I feel the answer in my gut before he even says it. "She looked like she was about to leave."
I freeze.
Carter leans forward, his voice low, like he knows this is going to wreck me. "I don’t know, man. She was talking to your dad when we got here, then just…stayed out there. Said we could go ahead and see you first."
I swallow hard, trying to keep my expression neutral, trying to breathe through the weight settling in my chest.
She was here. She came.
But she’s still running, still keeping that space between us, still deciding for me that whatever we had isn’t worth saving.
And that?
That hurts more than anything I’ve ever felt before.
More than the hit.
More than every bruise on my body combined.
Because at the end of the day, the physical pain?
That'll heal.
Losing her? That won’t.
The locker room feels different now.
It’s quiet, no usual pre-game buzz or post-practice shit-talking.There’s only the hum of fluorescent lights overhead and the distant echo of weights clanking in the training room.
I walk down the hallway toward Coach’s office, my duffel bag slung over my shoulder, my head still pounding with a dull ache that hasn’t completely gone away.
It’s been three days since Pacific Coast Academy won its first championship title in years.
Three days since I woke up in the hospital.
Three days since Madison sat in that waiting room and didn’t come to see me.
I grit my teeth, pushing the thought away as I knock on Coach Harding’s office door.
"Come in."
I push the door open, stepping inside. Coach is behind his desk, scrolling through something on his tablet, but he looks up the second I enter.
"Montgomery." He leans back in his chair, studying me. "How’s the head?"
I shift my bag onto the floor, dropping into the chair across from him. "Still there."
He raises a brow. "You get clearance from the doc yet?"
"Tomorrow morning."
