Page 63 of The Longest Shot
She looks like a soldier entering enemy territory.
She stops ten feet away, maintaining distance like I might be contagious. Her posture screams distrust—weight on her back foot, ready to bolt—as if I've orchestrated this whole thing to expose her, and suddenly the lights will go on and Galloway will emerge with campus security.
For once, I don't crack a joke about the spy movie aesthetic of our meeting spot or how we should have code names. I just let the bag slide off my shoulder, letting it hit the ground with a softthudthat seems to echo off the brick walls, then nudge it toward her with my foot.
It's an offering.
An apology.
An alliance made good.
And, maybe, the promise of a future of some kind.
She approaches it like it might explode and kneels without taking her eyes off me. Opening the bag, her phone appears in her hand, the flashlight casting harsh white light that turns her face into a study in shadows and exhaustion. And I can see the exact moment suspicion gives way to gratitude and relief.
The mask doesn’t just crack, it shatters, and for three seconds I see Morgan Riley, the girl I knew for two weeks at that summer camp, unguarded and soft. Not the Morgue, not the ice queen captain… just a girl who once knew how to trust.
Her shoulders collapse inward, and then her eyes go glassy with something that might be tears if she were the kind of person who cried. The exhaustion breaks through, and suddenly she looks so fucking young, so fucking tired, that it makes my chest cave in.
The feeling that spreads through me is better than any goal I’ve ever saved and better than the horn sounding for a win in overtime. Hell, it's better than the roar of ten thousand fans chanting my name or the cheers when we won the championship.
She stands, face blank again. “Thank you," she says.
I nod, knowing now isn't the time to press or crack a joke. “Do you need help?—”
“No.”
Of course not.
Morgan doesn’t need help,especiallywhen she does. She’d carry the world on her back before she’d ask someone to hold even an ounce of it. It’s like watching someone try to juggle chainsaws while insisting they’re perfectly fine, thanks forasking, they’ve got it under control even as the blood starts to flow.
"Hey, extra surprise," I say, grabbing Schmidt's stick and holding it out.
Her eyes go wide, because she knowsexactlyhow much that stick costs. And as she reaches for the stick, her knuckles brush the back of my hand, the tiniest contact. Such a whisper of skin on skin shouldn’t matter and shouldn't register, but we both pull our hands back like we've been shocked.
Our eyes meet in the darkness, and suddenly the alley isn’t an alley anymore. It’s the stairwell. The cold air is her gasping breath against my mouth when I sucked that spot on her neck that made her whole body shudder. The steam from the compressors is the heat radiating off our bodies when I pressed against her.
Her lips part slightly, just enough that I can see the tip of her tongue touch her bottom lip, and I know—Iknow—she’s right there with me. Remembering the desperate clash of teeth and tongues. The way she pulled me closer instead of pushing me away.
“I should go," she says, her voice cracking on the last word.
“Morgan—”
“Don’t.” A warning. A plea. A prayer. "Thank you, James."
She disappears into the steam, swallowed by the night and the distance she’s so careful to maintain between us. I stand alone in the alley, the back of my hand still tingling from that brief touch, my body humming with a current that has nothing to do with the cold.
The familiar itch for noise and for distraction starts crawling up my spine. Two weeks ago I would’ve headed straight to the loudest party with the most people and the strongest drinks. I would have performed until the silence couldn’t touch me, until I was too drunk to remember why quiet felt like drowning.
Now I just stand here, letting the quiet exist around me.
It doesn’t feel like victory. There’s no crowd cheering, no teammates slapping my back, no scoreboard declaring me the winner. There’s just the steam and the cold and the phantom pressure of her knuckles against my hand. But there’s something else too, something solid in my chest where the panic usually lives.
It takes me a moment to recognize it because it’s been so long since I felt it without an audience to validate it. It's pride. Quiet, private pride that has nothing to do with anyone else’s approval and everything to do with the look on her face when she saw that stick and the bag of supplies.
My phone buzzes. For a wild, stupid moment, I think it’s her, already texting about Thursday, maybe. Or telling me she remembers the beach or the stairwell too, and wants to remember what I felt like inside her before I ruined everything by?—
But it’s a message from Nash:
