Page 173 of Wild Card 13

For a moment, the words refused to become language.

“Dear Lucy Thomas,” I began, reading out loud. “Thank you for—” My eyes skipped ahead. “We are pleased—” Everything inside me stopped. Then kickstarted again so quickly it hurt. “We are pleased to offer you admission to Aldenmere University’s incoming class,” I choked out. My knees went weak, and tears blurred the page in my hands. I made a sound I did not recognize. “I got in.”

Naomi screamed first. A full, sharp, delighted sound that made Dad jolt and Arlo clap both hands over his ears. “I knew it!” Naomi shouted, then grabbed me so hard the letter crumpled between us. “I knew it. I knew it. I knew it.”

“I got in,” I whispered, disbelief at my own statement whisking away. “Holy crap.”

Naomi held me tighter, laughing into my hair while I tried to breathe around the impossible size of it. Joy opened inside me so quickly there was no containing it. It filled my throat and my lungs and the backs of my eyes. It made the walls of my room look brighter. Made the afternoon feel sharper. Made every tiny ordinary thing suddenly part of the moment. The perfume bottle on my dresser. The half-empty package of makeup wipes. The green dress waiting in the corner. Arlo’s stunned smile. Dad’s hand covering his mouth.

I had done it.

I had wanted something impossibly far away, and it had wanted me back.

Then, just as fast, fear slipped beneath the joy.

Boston. Not St. Croix.

Not a weekend drive.

Not close enough for a casual Wednesday dinner or a quickgame after class or Ty showing up outside my dorm with a grin and bad parking and some ridiculous excuse about needing to see me.

My fingers tightened around the letter.

Naomi pulled back enough to look at my face, and her smile softened around the edges. “Hey,” she said quietly. “No. Not yet.”

I swallowed. “What?”

“No future panic during victory hour.”

“I’m not panicking.”

Dad crossed the room then. He moved carefully, like I might startle if he came too quickly. When he reached me, he looked down at the letter in my hand, then at my face.

For one second, he was not the owner of anything. Not Ezra Thomas, former player, executive, man whose name changed the temperature in arenas.

He was just my dad. His eyes were wet. “Oh, sweetheart,” he said. Then he pulled me into his arms.

I closed my eyes as his hand cupped the back of my head. He smelled like cedar soap and coffee. His dress shirt was crisp against my cheek. He held me tighter than usual, tighter than he had in months, and something inside me cracked open with relief so intense it almost hurt.

“I’m proud of you,” he whispered into my hair.

My face crumpled. I tried not to let it. I failed.

Dad did not mention my mother. Neither did I. But her absence sat in the room with us anyway, quiet and shaped like the place where another pair of arms should have been.

Arlo cleared his throat loudly. When I looked over, he was blinking too much.

“Are you crying?” I asked.

“No,” he scoffed, throwing his arms across his chest in a perfect teenaged-boy tantrum.

Dad released me slowly, then touched the corner of the letter as if he needed proof too. “Aldenmere.”

I nodded.

His smile came slowly, proud and sad and trying not to be sad at all. “Boston.”

“Near Boston,” I corrected automatically.