Page 45 of Next Level Up
She lets me pull her up from the chair. Her body’s limp in my arms, warm and vibrating with leftover adrenaline. We stumble together to the bed and fall backward into the pillows. She curls into me.
I press my nose into her hair and let her heart settle against mine. “You’re okay,” I whisper. “I’ve got you.”
She doesn’t say anything, her fingers tangle in my shirt like she never wants to let go.
We slip outside ten minutes after just laying there in silence, after her shoulders sag and the last of the adrenaline drains from her fingertips. She doesn’t argue when I say we should walk, it’s not really a suggestion. She just pulls my hoodie tighter around herself and follows me out the door.
The evening air is cooler than I expected, the kind that wakes up your lungs and slows everything down. Her fingers brush mine at first but don’t link. Not until we’ve made it to the second block, then she laces them, like she needs the contact more than she wants to admit. Neither of us talks.
We pass a row of houses with too-bright porch lights and cracked sidewalks. Some kid’s scooter is left abandoned on a lawn, a sprinkler kicks on somewhere behind a fence. The rhythm of our footsteps fills the silence between us.
And then she says it soft, like she’s afraid the words will crumble in her mouth. “I didn’t think I could win today.”
I stop. I let her momentum pull her half a step ahead before she glances back at me. I don’t let go of her hand.
“You didn’t have to,” I say quietly. “You just had to show up and you did more than that.”
Her brows draw in like she’s not sure whether she believes that or not. I know she wants to, but it’s still too sharp in her chest.
“I was so scared,” she says. “Not even just of losing, just of freezing. Of letting everyone down, letting you and Tate down.”
I step closer, brushing her hair behind her ear, fingers gentle against her cheek. “You didn’t let us down. You don’t have to carry this alone.”
Her breath hitches. Her eyes glisten in the dim light from a streetlamp. “I don’t know how to not.”
“Then let me help you learn.”
She nods slowly, and I press a kiss to her forehead.
Just as we turn to head back, I spot it something small and bright pushing up from the crack in the sidewalk. A dandelion, messy and stubborn and somehow beautiful in all its refusal to stay buried. I crouch to pick it, careful with the stem then hand it to her.
Her eyes go wide, a laugh caught behind her lips. “Seriously?”
“Best I could do on short notice,” I say, brushing her knuckles as I give it to her. “Besides, you’re the one always calling me a sap.”
She takes it and tucks it behind her ear. We turn back toward the apartment, hand in hand, a little steadier than before.
By the time we make it upstairs, the sun’s gone soft behind the buildings. She kicks off her shoes by the door without saying a word, heads straight for her room, and I follow. No more weight in her shoulders and no more panic in her breath.
She curls up on the bed, that little yellow dandelion still tucked behind her ear like a secret. I climb in beside her, pulling the blanket up, and she fits into my arms like she never left them. We don’t even get five minutes before knock sounds at the front door short, then a little louder, then followed by a familiar, impatient voice.
“Don’t make me break in,” Tate calls through the wood.
She groans softly against my chest. “It’s open!”
“Hope you two aren’t dead,” he says, walking in with a bag of hot fries and a bottle of soda tucked under one arm. He kicks the door shut with his foot, glancing over at us tangled in the bed like it’s the most unsurprising thing he’s seen all day. “Or worse getting too soft.”
Haven groans against my chest. “Tate …”
He tosses the chips onto the bed. “What? I brought snacks. Post-match rituals and all that.”
“You’re such a menace,” I mutter, but I’m smiling, and he knows it.
Tate shrugs and drops onto the edge of the bed, propping one knee up. “Saw the way you finished that match, pretty girl. Didn’t know you could move like that when you’re rattled.”
Haven shifts, pulling herself just enough out of my hold to look at him. “I wasn’t rattled.”
Tate arches a brow, sips his drink, and smirks behind the rim. “You flinched when you missed the reload. Carter had to whisper you back to life.”
