Page 589 of Bad Prince
Her eyes are soft now, but not in a pitying way.
Nothing in Stella has ever pitied me.
She just knows.
And suddenly, because she is here and because she always seems to somehow find the exact center of the thing, I hear myself say the part underneath all the rest.
“I wanted this one.”
The understatement hangs between us.
Final Four.
National title one game away.
A season built possession by possession until it becomes a version of your own skin.
She lifts our joined hands and presses them against my chest, right over the place that still feels carved out.
“I know,” she says again. Quieter this time. “And you still gave it everything.”
I swallow.
Because that’s the dangerous line after a loss: the one between being comforted and being dismissed.
But she never crosses it.
She doesn’t tell me it’s enough like that should stop the ache.
She just names what’s true.
You gave it everything.
And because she was there?—
because she saw the whole game, the fouls, the near-fight, the look to the stands, the final shot, the whole brutal shape of it?—
the words mean something.
I rest my forehead against hers.
For a second we just breathe.
The corridor hums around us.
Distant footsteps.
A rolling cart.
The fluorescent buzz overhead.
And then she says, very softly, “Come home with me.”
The words hit low and deep.
Not casual.
Not logistical.
