Page 23 of Hometown Touchdown
God. His voice. It was innocent, so steady. It almost made me change my mind.
Almost.
“I got in,” I said quietly. “Westhaven. Early admission.”
His mouth lifted, just barely. “That’s good, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah. It’s what I wanted.”
His brow pulled in. “So why do you look like you’re about to cry?”
And that was when it hit me—how much he didn’t understand. That he really thought I could leave and we’d still be us. Like nothing had to change.
“I’m thinking about leaving early.”
He blinked. “Early? How early? I thought we had two more weeks.”
I swallowed hard. “I already signed the lease. The apartment’s in Bellevue. Technically…I could leave tonight.”
He went still. Like the words needed a second to land.
“Tonight?” he echoed, voice low. His brows drew together, confusion clouding the corners of his face. “I thought we had two more weeks. I thought…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I didn’t think you were in such a rush to get out of here.”
He lowered himself to the floor in front of me, like he needed to be eye-level to make sense of it all. “Is this about us?”
He reached up and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear, and I almost lost it.
Because that was the moment—the quiet crack in the dam. The place where love and reality stopped lining up.
“Yeah, Knox, it is about us.” My voice was barely above a whisper. “I don’t think I can do this.”
He froze. “What?”
“I don’t know if I can go months without seeing you. And it will be ten times worse once you sign with a team. Your whole life is about to change.”
He stared at me, like I’d just spoken another language. “But I thought you were good with this. I would’ve waited to declareif I knew you felt this way. We were going to make it work until you were done with school.”
“I thought we could do it, Knox. But I don’t want to hold you back. You’ll be living in a completely different world than me. We’ll become different people.”
“Do you plan on changing? Because I don’t.” He dropped the frustration from his voice. “You’re it for me, Bunny. Us, you and me—this is my end game.”
“You say that now, but things can change.”
“Right now, it feels like you’re the one that’s changing.” He pauses, eyes searching mine for any hope. His face slowly sinks when the realization sets in that he won’t find any. “So that’s it? You’re leaving and…we’re just done?”
I looked down. “It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like, Brynn?” he asked, and there was no anger in his voice. Just something heavier. Something worse.
“You’re the one who always said I had to chase my dreams,” I said. “That I couldn’t stay here just because of you.”
“I didn’t mean like this.” His voice cracked, barely. “I thought we’d chase them together.”
I closed my eyes.
I couldn’t promise that. I couldn’t lie.
He sat back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of him, hands fisting his hoodie like he didn’t know what else to hold onto. “I thought we were it.”
