Page 597 of Bad Prince

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Then the sound comes back all at once.

Gold.

We won gold.

The court disappears under bodies.

My teammates are on me, around me, screaming into my hair, grabbing my face, sobbing, laughing, collapsing into one another in a mess of red-white-and-blue and sweat and disbelief.

I can’t hear anything clearly.

Can’t see anything cleanly.

The world is all salt and lights and impact.

Then somehow, through the blur, I look up.

And I find him.

Still standing.

Still staring at me like his chest can’t contain what’s in it.

One hand over his mouth now.

The other curled tight at his side.

His whole face lit with something so raw and proud and shaken that it nearly knocks the air out of me harder than the match ever could.

I point at him before I even realize I’m doing it.

Then at my wrist.

His eyes drop.

See the bracelet.

And the smile that breaks over his mouth then?—

God.

That smile is not public.

Not polished.

Not prince.

That smile is a man watching the woman he loves become immortal for one shining second and knowing he had the privilege of standing close enough to witness it.

I put a hand over my mouth and cry for real then.

Because maybe I lost in college.

Maybe the playoff whistle felt like death.

Maybe there was a version of me once who thought the season ending meant the story was over.

It wasn’t.

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