I try to breathe. In through my nose, out through my mouth. Just try to chill and fuckingthinkabout the game and my actions, reflect and come up with a logical solution for my own damn stupidity.
Yeah… I fumbled since I barely slept after that stupid article. First came the images of another guy touching Jace, ofMicktouching Jace, which I just couldn’t get out of my head, then I was doomscrolling through thirsty fan comments and taking screenshots and notes of all the shitty ones.
I swear I’m not actively looking for it anymore; I try to keep Ava’s comments in mind. Trust security. Trust their team. Let them do the job which the label pays them to do.
But I just stumbled into it and couldn’t fucking stop.
So of course I overslept,bigtime, and got stuck in the massive orange-packed, pre-game crowd outside of the stadium.
That was the cherry on the damn cake, since I don’t do crowds well, never have. Especially not when all that noise and attention suddenly shifts to me the second they spot me when I tried to get to the player’s entrance. Just thinking back to how they swarmed me makes my skin crawl.
I sigh as I quickly rinse off before getting out of the shower. Yeah, I’m fucking relaxed all right. Worked like a charm. I scoff, dry myself in record-speed, change into a fresh set of runninggear, and know exactly where I need to go to get rid of this last lingering tension of this horrible game.
Bouncing down the stairs, I scrub a hand through my damp hair and try to shake off the weight still clinging to my shoulders.
Yeah, Jace really was my anchor last year. My shield. My personal crowd-control unit. When he got here, the spotlight shifted to him—superstar that he already was becoming—and I liked it that way. I really did.
But now that he’s gone? The noise is back. The pressure. The constant eyes.
I’m sort of used to it. Being a semi-professional athlete for a while now forces you to be, but that doesn’t mean I fuckinglikeit. It’s exhausting having to talk to everyone who wants a piece of the captain, the quarterback, the poster boy for the Summerset Tigers.
Sometimes I just need to get away from it all, and barging right into the chaos this morning after I had a shitty night definitely didn’t help get my head in the game.
So that’s what I do; I get away. I need some solitude. Some quiet. A little time alone before my roommates barge back in here after the game, all loud and obnoxious and probably hyped as shit for the afterparty tonight at the other football house.
Yeah, I’m not staying to watch them pre-drink and hype themselves up. Even though I’m always happy to hang out with my friends, tonight I’ll pass.
I’ve got other plans.
I grab my phone from my duffle, strap it into my armband, and pop in my AirPods. I know I just played more than half a game, but I skipped cooldown, and there’s still too much frustration buzzing under my skin. The shower didn’t help. Apparently, the adrenaline from the game didn’t cut it this time either.
So… option three it is.
I head to my favorite spot in the whole damn town, hell, in the whole damn world. We live a little way from the stadium, on the edge of campus, closer to Summerset, and it’s quieter here. Which I’m fucking glad about right now, not nearly in any mental state to deal with the post-game crowd, or lingering fans who didn’t have tickets and opted for tailgating or bars instead.
Nope. I need the ocean, the vast, endlessspace. Nothing soothes me more than that place, so I’m jogging there at an easy, slow pace, I let my feet find their rhythm with the music droning in my ears.
Of course, it’s Encore’s album playing in my ears, Jace’s deep rumble curling around me like a damn safety net, grounding me, steadying me, as my feettap-tap-tapagainst the pavement.
The sky is already turning that soft, golden orange. Sunset’s on its way, brushing everything in warm light like it’s trying to soothe the world, trying to sootheme.And with every step, I see that ocean loom closer in the distance. With every lyric that spills from the man that means the world to me, I feel the stress bleed out of me.
Finally, my shoulders drop.
Finally, I feel my muscles loosen.
Finally, I can fuckingbreatheagain.
Jace. The answer isalwaysJace.
I let his voice wrap around me like the balm it’s always been, and it doesn’t take long before I reach the trail that hugs the beach and spot the thing that always puts an instant smile on my face.
I drop onto the weathered bench, our bench, the salty breeze cool on my heated skin, and my fingers immediately find the rough edge of theJace loves Tycarving, scratched into the wood with his keys the day before he left. The day he vowed to me—vowed to the sand, the sea, and the sun—that we’d be okay. That we could handle this. That long distance wouldn’t break us.
And somehow, we could and it didn’t.
Don’t ask me how, but we fucking survived. So far, at least. Yes, there were hurdles, there stillare. Besides Mick, there’s still the pending deportation, but it’s been pretty quiet about that the last couple of weeks, and I feel it in my very gut that we’ll survive that, too.
The most important thing is, that right now, we’re still together, we’re still us.
