Dying to Live
-
Captain Canada
- Posts: 4972
- Joined: 01 Dec 2018, 00:15
Dying to Live
Offence certainly came correct on that one. Time to end this thing with a bang
Dying to Live
Earned Stillness
Royce stood outside the door for a moment before knocking.
He could hear music faintly through the walls—some playlist Roni had probably queued up on the living room speaker. Something with soft vocals and a piano loop. The kind of music that made a house feel like someone was in it. Like someone had been in it.
He didn’t knock after all. Just turned the handle and stepped inside.
The place smelled like clean laundry and lemon oil. Not store-bought. Not artificial. Just Rana. That careful way she kept things in order—order she had carved from chaos over the years, same as him. A different kind of survival.
He dropped his duffel bag by the door. Didn’t call out.
He didn’t have to.
Roni appeared first, barefoot, wearing a “St. Joseph’s Academy” sweatshirt three sizes too big. Her eyes lit up when she saw him.
“Ro!”
She nearly ran down the hallway.
Royce braced for it, catching her mid-leap as she wrapped her arms around his neck.
“You ain’t tell me you was coming tonight,” she said, muffled against his shoulder.
“Didn’t know until I left,” he murmured, holding her there for a second longer than usual. “Had to finish up some meetings.”
She pulled back with a grin and tugged on his hand. “Come see what I made.”
He followed her down the hallway toward his old room.
There was a piece of paper taped to the door—wavy from too much glue stick, the corners curling. OUR NFL STAR, it read in big block letters, traced over with gold and purple marker. A little football sketch in the bottom corner. A heart in the top.
Royce stared at it, one hand still resting on the doorframe. For a second, he didn’t move.
Roni nudged him with her elbow. “I told Rana we needed balloons, but she said we not doing all that.”
He smiled without showing teeth. “It’s perfect.”
Inside, the room looked like it always did—like someone had tried to keep it the same just in case he came back. A couple of his old LSU posters still hung on the wall, slightly tilted. The bed was made. There was a folded hoodie at the foot of it. His old speaker sat in the corner, still plugged in.
Roni hopped onto the mattress and sat cross-legged, watching him.
Royce sat down on the floor, back against the bed.
They didn’t say much after that.
She handed him her phone to show a video from a pep rally at school. He barely glanced at it. She didn’t mind.
They just stayed like that. Her scrolling. Him breathing.
Rana knocked once and stepped in. She wore leggings and a long t-shirt with bleach spots on it, hair wrapped, clippers in one hand, towel in the other.
“I figured you’d want this cleaned up before you start posing for cameras again,” she said, nodding toward his hairline.
Royce raised an eyebrow. “Since when you back on fades?”
“I never left. You just out here acting famous.”
He smirked. “You gon’ mess it up.”
Rana set the clippers on the dresser and draped the towel over his shoulders like it was second nature. Like it hadn’t been years since she’d done it.
“I used to do this when Mama was working doubles,” she said.
“I remember,” Royce said, voice low. “You used to cut my ear damn near every time.”
“Please. You got a big head, that wasn’t my fault.”
Roni snorted from the bed.
Royce didn’t argue.
The clippers buzzed to life. Rana tilted his chin with her fingertips and started in. The sound filled the room. A soft, humming static. Grounding.
Royce sat still, eyes forward.
No one talked about the Combine.
No one talked about the draft.
No one talked about what came next.
They didn’t need to.
Later, when the clippers were off and the floor was scattered with loose curls, Rana wiped his neck with a warm towel.
“There,” she said. “Now you look like yourself again.”
Royce looked up at her. “That what I need to be?”
Rana didn’t blink. “That’s all you ever needed to be.”
Roni reached over and handed him the sign from the door, now slightly bent.
“You can take it with you,” she said.
Royce took it in both hands.
He didn’t promise to keep it.
But he didn’t let go either.
~~~~~~~~~~
The rendering was nearly finished when Alix leaned back from the desk, her fingers aching from how long she’d been clenching the stylus. The light in the Roux office was dim—most of the interns gone, the hum of someone’s leftover playlist buzzing low from a Bluetooth speaker in the corner. She didn’t ask for the music to be turned off. It was barely there. Just enough to keep the stillness from pressing in too tightly.
She stared at the screen.
Not with critique. Not yet.
Just observation.
The boutique hotel’s digital form glowed under a painted night sky—charcoal blue behind soft amber windows, the outer brick washed in warm lighting that fell in careful shadows across the awning. Crepe myrtles lined the walkway, leaves captured in mid-motion. The porch light flicked golden along the curve of a weathered iron handrail. Not flashy. Not sleek. Just… still.
She hadn’t meant to finish it tonight. But when she started drawing the reflection of streetlights in the puddle beneath the stairs, she couldn’t stop. There was a peace in the detail. A quiet she hadn’t realized she needed to offer.
A knock.
Soft. Two quick taps against the glass doorframe before Co stepped in, hoodie pulled low over his head and a cup from the gas station down the street in his hand.
“You still here?” he asked.
Alix swiveled her chair toward him. “You bringing me coffee or just vibes?”
“Both.”
He set the cup down beside her keyboard and leaned over the back of her chair, eyes narrowing as he looked at the screen.
He didn’t say anything at first. Just tilted his head a little, watching the light spill across the digital cobblestone. The night version always made the building feel more alive to her. Not just occupied, but inhabited. Like someone had been there. Like someone had come back.
Co scratched his jaw, then said quietly, “This don’t even look like a hotel.”
Alix turned to glance at him. “No?”
He shook his head. “It looks like rest.”
Her chest pulled tight, but in that quiet way where emotion doesn’t overwhelm—it just settles.
She looked back at the rendering, her voice even. “That’s the point.”
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. Just full. Full of things neither of them needed to say out loud to understand.
Co leaned down a little more, his forearms resting lightly on the edge of her desk.
“You been working on this since we left that client meeting?”
Alix nodded. “I didn’t like the original version. Too clean. Too ‘destination.’ This one feels more like… something you return to.”
“Not just a place to stay,” he said.
“A place to land,” she finished.
He tapped a knuckle against the screen, gently. “You gonna pitch it like this?”
She paused.
“I think I have to.”
Co straightened up. “Good. Don’t let them make it shinier. This got soul.”
She laughed quietly. “High praise from someone who only drinks gas station coffee.”
“That’s how you know I’m honest.”
They stood there for a while. She saved the file. Closed her laptop. Reached for the coffee.
“I’ve been scared of it not being enough,” she admitted. “Of pitching something that’s too soft. Too personal.”
Co’s tone was low. “Then you hit the mark.”
She looked at him.
Really looked.
He didn’t back away from her gaze. Didn’t look too long, either. Just stayed in it. Solid.
Outside, the streetlights had started to hum against the early night. Traffic low. Wind barely moving.
Co pulled his hood back and glanced at the door. “You ready to go?”
Alix looked back at the screen one more time before closing it for good. “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go home.”
And when they stepped out into the cool air, she realized something:
For the first time in a long while, she wasn’t walking away from something.
She was walking toward it.
Royce stood outside the door for a moment before knocking.
He could hear music faintly through the walls—some playlist Roni had probably queued up on the living room speaker. Something with soft vocals and a piano loop. The kind of music that made a house feel like someone was in it. Like someone had been in it.
He didn’t knock after all. Just turned the handle and stepped inside.
The place smelled like clean laundry and lemon oil. Not store-bought. Not artificial. Just Rana. That careful way she kept things in order—order she had carved from chaos over the years, same as him. A different kind of survival.
He dropped his duffel bag by the door. Didn’t call out.
He didn’t have to.
Roni appeared first, barefoot, wearing a “St. Joseph’s Academy” sweatshirt three sizes too big. Her eyes lit up when she saw him.
“Ro!”
She nearly ran down the hallway.
Royce braced for it, catching her mid-leap as she wrapped her arms around his neck.
“You ain’t tell me you was coming tonight,” she said, muffled against his shoulder.
“Didn’t know until I left,” he murmured, holding her there for a second longer than usual. “Had to finish up some meetings.”
She pulled back with a grin and tugged on his hand. “Come see what I made.”
He followed her down the hallway toward his old room.
There was a piece of paper taped to the door—wavy from too much glue stick, the corners curling. OUR NFL STAR, it read in big block letters, traced over with gold and purple marker. A little football sketch in the bottom corner. A heart in the top.
Royce stared at it, one hand still resting on the doorframe. For a second, he didn’t move.
Roni nudged him with her elbow. “I told Rana we needed balloons, but she said we not doing all that.”
He smiled without showing teeth. “It’s perfect.”
Inside, the room looked like it always did—like someone had tried to keep it the same just in case he came back. A couple of his old LSU posters still hung on the wall, slightly tilted. The bed was made. There was a folded hoodie at the foot of it. His old speaker sat in the corner, still plugged in.
Roni hopped onto the mattress and sat cross-legged, watching him.
Royce sat down on the floor, back against the bed.
They didn’t say much after that.
She handed him her phone to show a video from a pep rally at school. He barely glanced at it. She didn’t mind.
They just stayed like that. Her scrolling. Him breathing.
Rana knocked once and stepped in. She wore leggings and a long t-shirt with bleach spots on it, hair wrapped, clippers in one hand, towel in the other.
“I figured you’d want this cleaned up before you start posing for cameras again,” she said, nodding toward his hairline.
Royce raised an eyebrow. “Since when you back on fades?”
“I never left. You just out here acting famous.”
He smirked. “You gon’ mess it up.”
Rana set the clippers on the dresser and draped the towel over his shoulders like it was second nature. Like it hadn’t been years since she’d done it.
“I used to do this when Mama was working doubles,” she said.
“I remember,” Royce said, voice low. “You used to cut my ear damn near every time.”
“Please. You got a big head, that wasn’t my fault.”
Roni snorted from the bed.
Royce didn’t argue.
The clippers buzzed to life. Rana tilted his chin with her fingertips and started in. The sound filled the room. A soft, humming static. Grounding.
Royce sat still, eyes forward.
No one talked about the Combine.
No one talked about the draft.
No one talked about what came next.
They didn’t need to.
Later, when the clippers were off and the floor was scattered with loose curls, Rana wiped his neck with a warm towel.
“There,” she said. “Now you look like yourself again.”
Royce looked up at her. “That what I need to be?”
Rana didn’t blink. “That’s all you ever needed to be.”
Roni reached over and handed him the sign from the door, now slightly bent.
“You can take it with you,” she said.
Royce took it in both hands.
He didn’t promise to keep it.
But he didn’t let go either.
~~~~~~~~~~
The rendering was nearly finished when Alix leaned back from the desk, her fingers aching from how long she’d been clenching the stylus. The light in the Roux office was dim—most of the interns gone, the hum of someone’s leftover playlist buzzing low from a Bluetooth speaker in the corner. She didn’t ask for the music to be turned off. It was barely there. Just enough to keep the stillness from pressing in too tightly.
She stared at the screen.
Not with critique. Not yet.
Just observation.
The boutique hotel’s digital form glowed under a painted night sky—charcoal blue behind soft amber windows, the outer brick washed in warm lighting that fell in careful shadows across the awning. Crepe myrtles lined the walkway, leaves captured in mid-motion. The porch light flicked golden along the curve of a weathered iron handrail. Not flashy. Not sleek. Just… still.
She hadn’t meant to finish it tonight. But when she started drawing the reflection of streetlights in the puddle beneath the stairs, she couldn’t stop. There was a peace in the detail. A quiet she hadn’t realized she needed to offer.
A knock.
Soft. Two quick taps against the glass doorframe before Co stepped in, hoodie pulled low over his head and a cup from the gas station down the street in his hand.
“You still here?” he asked.
Alix swiveled her chair toward him. “You bringing me coffee or just vibes?”
“Both.”
He set the cup down beside her keyboard and leaned over the back of her chair, eyes narrowing as he looked at the screen.
He didn’t say anything at first. Just tilted his head a little, watching the light spill across the digital cobblestone. The night version always made the building feel more alive to her. Not just occupied, but inhabited. Like someone had been there. Like someone had come back.
Co scratched his jaw, then said quietly, “This don’t even look like a hotel.”
Alix turned to glance at him. “No?”
He shook his head. “It looks like rest.”
Her chest pulled tight, but in that quiet way where emotion doesn’t overwhelm—it just settles.
She looked back at the rendering, her voice even. “That’s the point.”
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. Just full. Full of things neither of them needed to say out loud to understand.
Co leaned down a little more, his forearms resting lightly on the edge of her desk.
“You been working on this since we left that client meeting?”
Alix nodded. “I didn’t like the original version. Too clean. Too ‘destination.’ This one feels more like… something you return to.”
“Not just a place to stay,” he said.
“A place to land,” she finished.
He tapped a knuckle against the screen, gently. “You gonna pitch it like this?”
She paused.
“I think I have to.”
Co straightened up. “Good. Don’t let them make it shinier. This got soul.”
She laughed quietly. “High praise from someone who only drinks gas station coffee.”
“That’s how you know I’m honest.”
They stood there for a while. She saved the file. Closed her laptop. Reached for the coffee.
“I’ve been scared of it not being enough,” she admitted. “Of pitching something that’s too soft. Too personal.”
Co’s tone was low. “Then you hit the mark.”
She looked at him.
Really looked.
He didn’t back away from her gaze. Didn’t look too long, either. Just stayed in it. Solid.
Outside, the streetlights had started to hum against the early night. Traffic low. Wind barely moving.
Co pulled his hood back and glanced at the door. “You ready to go?”
Alix looked back at the screen one more time before closing it for good. “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go home.”
And when they stepped out into the cool air, she realized something:
For the first time in a long while, she wasn’t walking away from something.
She was walking toward it.
Dying to Live
All Roads Led Here
The hotel room didn’t feel like much. Neutral walls. Blackout curtains pulled shut against the Atlanta skyline. A thermostat set two degrees too cold. And in the middle of it all: silence.
Not peace.
Just pause.
Royce sat at the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, forearms resting loose.
He hadn’t turned the TV on.
Hadn’t checked his phone in over an hour.
The clock blinked: 3:23 PM.
Four hours until kickoff.
Sixty minutes left in a career.
And nothing in him felt dramatic about it. Just still.
He closed his eyes and let it come.
Terrebonne.
His first varsity snap was on a field still drying from the storm the night before. He’d worn hand-me-down cleats. Played special teams. Made tackles no one filmed.
No stars. No offers. Barely whispers.
Coaches said he was too heavy-footed. Not fluid enough. Not polished. They didn’t mention he was playing with grief already living in his house.. That Romeo carried them in public while Royce carried everything in private.
He’d hit people harder just to feel something.
And they called it instinct.
The alley.
He remembered the sound first. Not the shots—those came later.
He remembered Romeo’s voice shouting something, then breaking.
He remembered the blood blooming, sudden and bright. The blur of movement. The heat tearing through his side. The concrete.
Then nothing.
Not the hospital.
Not the stretcher.
Not the white ceiling or the IVs or the whispering.
He woke up three days later. Full of morphine and absence.
Romeo was already gone.
And he didn’t cry.
Not then.
Just stared at the wall for hours, wondering why he lived. Why he had to stay behind.
Rehab in Baton Rouge.
He couldn’t walk for six weeks. Couldn’t twist. Couldn’t breathe too deep.
Rana came when she could. Roni curled up next to him on the couch one afternoon and stayed asleep until sunset.
He’d sit on the floor with his fists clenched and legs trembling, trying to get his body back before anyone saw how far it had slipped.
They said he should take a year off.
He didn’t.
U-High was supposed to be a reset. He knew the whispers when he got there—troubled kid, sympathy transfer, body too beat up already.
But he hit like a truck. Diagnosed plays before they unfolded. And when scouts asked about the limp in his gait, he just smirked and let his film speak.
LSU called late.
Too late for the rankings to change.
But just in time for everything else.
Four seasons. Countless tackles. Game-winning plays. Records broken. Awards stacked. An SEC titles. A Sugar Bowl, a Orange Bowl. And now, for the third time in this season:
Georgia.
But this time—for everything.
He opened his eyes.
The room hadn’t moved. Still cold. Still quiet. Still waiting.
So was he.
He rose slowly, walked to the window, pulled back the curtains.
He thought about Romeo. Not just the loss. But the moments before.
The ones that still hurt the most.
The laughter. The fights. The mirror he no longer had.
Sixty minutes.
That’s what was left.
And maybe he didn’t need a speech or a prayer or a spotlight. Maybe all he needed was the stillness.
Because every scar, every silence, every inch he’d earned to get here—it was already stitched into the tapestry that was his life.
All he had to finish the chapter.
…
“Live from NRG Stadium in Houston, welcome to the College Football Playoff National Championship—and tonight, it’s a rubber match steeped in SEC history. The LSU Tigers. The Georgia Bulldogs. Round three.”
“These two teams know each other too well. Georgia came into Baton Rouge early in the season and escaped with a win—barely. Royce Lafitte and that LSU defense kept them in striking distance the whole night, but the Tigers came up just short.”
“But in the SEC Championship? That was a different story. LSU dominated from start to finish in Atlanta. Royce Lafitte was everywhere. The Tigers imposed their will in the trenches. And tonight—it’s the decider.”
“Third meeting. Two heavyweights. No more talk. Just sixty minutes for everything.”
“LSU. Georgia. For the national title. Let’s ride.”
…
"LSU lines up in the I-formation—third down and four from their own thirty-one. Rickie Collins under center, Durham the tailback. Here’s the snap… handoff to Caden Durham off the left side—he’s hit at the line! Ball's out! Ball is out! Loose on the turf!"
"That ball got punched free, looked like a Georgia defender got a clean shot right on the breadbasket—"
"Scramble for it at the twenty-eight—and Georgia's got it! VICARI SWAIN falls on the football and he’s up and running! Swain down the sideline, cuts inside the ten! Tripped up at the three-yard line!"
"That’s a massive momentum swing! Caden Durham never saw the second man coming. Textbook peanut punch and Vicari Swain—Johnny-on-the-spot—scoops it clean and takes it twenty-eight yards the other way!"
"Georgia’s defense comes up with a huge turnover early in this national championship—and they are set up with a chance to strike first in Houston!"
…
“Georgia facing a 4th and 9 here from the LSU sixteen-yard line after the drive stalls out in the red zone. That brings out Eldra Salaam to attempt a 33-yard field goal—this would give the Bulldogs the early lead in what’s already shaping up to be a defensive battle.”
“LSU’s front tightened up when it mattered—great containment by Gio and Jay on that last second down. Now it’s on Salaam, who’s been reliable all season.”
“Snap down, hold is clean… the kick is up—and it’s good. Eldra Salaam drills it from thirty-three yards out, and Georgia strikes first here in the national championship.”
“That’s a win for LSU’s defense, all things considered. Georgia had first down inside the twenty and had to settle for three. You’ll take that every time.”
“6:28 to go in the first quarter—Bulldogs on the board first. LSU coming up next.”
…
Royce crouched just inside the hash, eyes locked on the backfield.
Georgia hadn’t subbed—same tight set, two receivers bunched close, running back offset right. The quarterback, Puglisi, barked a hard count that didn’t even make Royce flinch. He watched the left guard’s stance instead—too light on his knuckles. Pass all the way.
Royce shifted a half-step forward. Not enough to show pressure. Just enough to make the center think.
Snap.
He exploded off the line.
No hesitation.
The back tried to chip him—weak contact—and Royce swam past it, shoulders low, hips square. The left tackle lunged, off balance, and Royce dipped under him like he was built from smoke.
Puglisi saw him too late.
Royce wrapped him mid-torso and drove through. The collision wasn’t loud—it was final.
The crowd surged. Flags stayed down. Second and ten became third and fifteen.
Royce didn’t celebrate. Didn’t flex. Just stood up over the turf, eyes already scanning for the next call.
There were still plays to run. Still a game to finish.
…
“First and ten, LSU at the Georgia 37-yard line. Rickie Collins in the shotgun, Duke Diamond wide to the boundary side. Tight coverage—Georgia not giving him much space.”
“You can press Duke all you want, but if you miss that jam? It’s over.”
“Snap to Collins—play-action fake—he looks right, fires deep down the sideline for Diamond… caught at the five—he’s in! TOUCHDOWN LSU!”
“He torched him! One move at the line and Duke Diamond had daylight! Collins threw it on a rope and Diamond did the rest!”
“Thirty-seven yards! Rickie Collins to Duke Diamond—and just like that, the Tigers are back on top in the national championship!”
…
“First and ten for LSU, ball sitting right at the Georgia forty-eight. Tigers lead it 7–3 with 3:47 left in the second quarter. Rickie Collins in the gun, Duke Diamond out wide to the right—tight coverage, single high safety.”
“They’ve been waiting for this look. If Duke gets a clean break off the line, this might be six.”
“Collins takes the snap—three-step drop—he’s looking for Diamond, now lets it fly down the sideline… Diamond’s got a step… makes the catch at the five—into the end zone! TOUCHDOWN LSU!”
“What a strike! That’s a perfect read, perfect ball, and Duke Diamond does what he does—turns separation into points!”
“A forty-eight yard dagger from Rickie Collins to Duke Diamond, and LSU extends the lead to 13–3 over Georgia with 3:47 left before the half!”
“That’s two future pros right there—Collins stood tall in the pocket and threw it like he was born for this stage!”
…
“Third and eighteen for Georgia—ball spotted at their own twenty-one. LSU showing pressure with two high safeties behind. Puglisi in the shotgun, trips left.”
“They’ve gotta be careful here—LSU’s front four has been winning one-on-one matchups all night.”
“Snap to Puglisi—drops back… pressure coming—Womack off the edge! He beats the tackle, wraps him up—SACKED! Da’Shawn Womack drops him back at the thirteen-yard line!”
“Oh, that’s big-time! Womack didn’t just beat the block—he exploded off the line. That’s raw power and perfect timing!”
“A loss of eight on the sack—and Georgia is going to have to punt it away again! LSU’s defense slams the door shut on third and long!”
…
“Fourth and two from the Georgia sixteen, and LSU sends out Aeron Burrell for a thirty-three yard field goal attempt. Looking to add to their 17–3 lead here in the third quarter.”
“Solid drive by the Tigers to chew some clock and get into scoring range. Not the touchdown they wanted, but points keep pressure on Georgia.”
“Snap, hold, kick is on the way—and it’s good! Aeron Burrell connects from thirty-three yards out, and LSU tacks on three more.”
“Clean operation all around. Burrell stays perfect on the night, and LSU’s lead continues to grow here in the second half.”
…
“Georgia takes over with decent field position—first and ten from the LSU forty-six. 6:08 to go in the third quarter. Ryan Puglisi in the shotgun, trips to the left.”
“Georgia needs something here. Down two scores, and the pressure is starting to mount.”
“Snap to Puglisi—drops back, looking over the middle—fires a dart—and it’s picked off! INTERCEPTED! CONNOR NEWHOUSE AT THE FORTY! DOWN THE SIDELINE—NEWHOUSE AT THE TWENTY—TEN—TOUCHDOWN LSU!”
“Oh my! Connor Newhouse jumped the route like he wrote it! That’s six the other way, and LSU is rolling!”
“A forty-six yard pick-six by Connor Newhouse, and the Tigers’ defense strikes again here in the national championship!”
…
“LSU knocking on the door again—first and ten from the Georgia thirteen, just over three minutes to play in the third quarter. Rickie Collins in the shotgun, back to his left.”
“Collins has been sharp through the air tonight, but don’t sleep on his legs—he can hurt you if you give him a crease.”
“Snap to Collins—he keeps it! Quarterback draw up the middle—*Collins breaks a tackle at the ten—he’s at the five—dives for the pylon—TOUCHDOWN LSU!”
“What a read and what a finish! Rickie Collins took that right up the gut, shook a linebacker, and finished through contact!”
“A thirteen-yard touchdown run by Rickie Collins, and LSU continues to pour it on here in the national championship!”
…
Midway through the fourth quarter, the noise inside NRG Stadium was thick—loud, but not tense. It was suffocating, the kind of sound that didn’t come from anxiety, but from something closer to awe. LSU led Georgia 38–3, and the crowd smelled blood.
Royce stood at midfield, bent slightly at the waist, one hand resting on his thigh pad, the other tugging at the front of his jersey. His breath steamed beneath his facemask as he glanced toward the Georgia huddle—what was left of it.
Ryan Puglisi had just hit the turf again, sacked on a busted third down by Jay, who burst through the B-gap untouched. Royce had covered the tight end on the play, but he didn’t even finish the route. No one believed the ball was coming out.
Puglisi stayed down a moment too long.
Not injured.
Just slow.
When the trainers jogged out, he waved one hand, motioned to the sideline.
Royce straightened up, teeth bared in a crooked grin.
“Oh, they fucking quitting,” he barked, loud enough for every helmet in earshot to hear. “They tapping out! Look at that—he done! Bunch of fraud ass niggas”
The defensive line erupted.
Da’Shawn clapped his hands together, walking toward the Georgia sideline. “Yo, who next?! Don’t get quiet now!”
Gio jogged past Royce and shouted over his shoulder, “Better warm up the waterboy!”
Even the coaches didn’t bother to stifle the noise.
Royce looked back toward the line of scrimmage, where Georgia’s backup quarterback—some freshman with wide eyes and shaky hands—had his helmet on and was getting shoulder pats he hadn't earned yet.
“Don’t worry,” Royce called, nodding in his direction. “We got something for you, too, bitch.”
The freshman didn’t look up.
Didn’t need to.
Royce could feel it in the way they moved—hesitant, soft-footed, uncertain. Georgia wasn’t running plays anymore. They were running time off the clock. Trying to survive.
The snap count came late and rushed. A draw. Half-hearted.
Royce didn’t even chase it.
He just stood in the middle of it all—still breathing steady, still watching.
They weren’t just beating Georgia.
They were breaking them.
And he didn’t say it out loud, but he thought it:
Let the nation watch this. Let ‘em see who we are.
…
“Rickie Collins lines up in the victory formation—LSU with a 38 to 17 lead over Georgia, and just one more snap between the Tigers and a national title.”
“They’ve waited a long time for this moment. All the heartbreak, all the rebuilds—this team, this defense, this quarterback—they earned every second of it.”
“Collins takes the snap… drops to a knee… and that will do it! The LSU Tigers are your national champions—their first since 2020, and they do it with dominance, with swagger, and with a defense that defined this season from start to finish.”
“No one can say they backed into this one. They ran the gauntlet, took down Georgia when it mattered most, and left no doubt tonight in Houston.”
“Final score: LSU 38, Georgia 17. Tigers at the top of the mountain once again.”
…
A few strands of confetti floated down from the rafters—purple and gold catching in the stadium lights—but the cannons hadn’t gone off. Not yet. Not until the clock hit zero.
Royce was already on one knee at the thirty-yard line, helmet resting next to his foot, both hands braced against the turf. He wasn’t praying. He wasn’t celebrating.
He was breathing.
Deep, deliberate, bone-deep breaths like he was trying to make space for everything this moment held. Like the air itself might help him believe it was real.
Around him, the chaos began to bloom.
The sideline erupted. Helmets tossed into the air. Gatorade flying. Rickie sprinting to the end zone with his arms up. Gio and Dorian jumping in a chest bump that went too high and left them both tumbling. Coaches hugging like they’d survived something. Like they knew.
But Royce stayed down, one knee still pressing into the turf that had held him for the last sixty minutes—for the last four years.
He looked up only when the noise swelled into something too big to hold off. The cannons boomed. The sky inside the stadium bloomed with glitter.
A championship.
He wasn’t a player anymore.
Not a college one.
He was a champion.
He looked around—the field was a blur of bodies and cameras and gold streamers curling around cleats and ankles. Roni was somewhere in that tunnel, probably crying. Rana too. Maybe Coach Lanning was looking for him, somewhere in that swarm of players and staff, already shaking hands with the committee, already getting pulled into interviews he didn’t want to give.
Maybe the broadcast had already cut to a shot of him kneeling. Maybe they were spinning the story already—from Terrebonne to the title.
He didn’t care.
He just tilted his head back, let the roar wash over him, and whispered to the dome above him—
"We made it, Rome."
And for the first time since he’d lost his brother…
Royce felt whole.
The hotel room didn’t feel like much. Neutral walls. Blackout curtains pulled shut against the Atlanta skyline. A thermostat set two degrees too cold. And in the middle of it all: silence.
Not peace.
Just pause.
Royce sat at the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, forearms resting loose.
He hadn’t turned the TV on.
Hadn’t checked his phone in over an hour.
The clock blinked: 3:23 PM.
Four hours until kickoff.
Sixty minutes left in a career.
And nothing in him felt dramatic about it. Just still.
He closed his eyes and let it come.
Terrebonne.
His first varsity snap was on a field still drying from the storm the night before. He’d worn hand-me-down cleats. Played special teams. Made tackles no one filmed.
No stars. No offers. Barely whispers.
Coaches said he was too heavy-footed. Not fluid enough. Not polished. They didn’t mention he was playing with grief already living in his house.. That Romeo carried them in public while Royce carried everything in private.
He’d hit people harder just to feel something.
And they called it instinct.
The alley.
He remembered the sound first. Not the shots—those came later.
He remembered Romeo’s voice shouting something, then breaking.
He remembered the blood blooming, sudden and bright. The blur of movement. The heat tearing through his side. The concrete.
Then nothing.
Not the hospital.
Not the stretcher.
Not the white ceiling or the IVs or the whispering.
He woke up three days later. Full of morphine and absence.
Romeo was already gone.
And he didn’t cry.
Not then.
Just stared at the wall for hours, wondering why he lived. Why he had to stay behind.
Rehab in Baton Rouge.
He couldn’t walk for six weeks. Couldn’t twist. Couldn’t breathe too deep.
Rana came when she could. Roni curled up next to him on the couch one afternoon and stayed asleep until sunset.
He’d sit on the floor with his fists clenched and legs trembling, trying to get his body back before anyone saw how far it had slipped.
They said he should take a year off.
He didn’t.
U-High was supposed to be a reset. He knew the whispers when he got there—troubled kid, sympathy transfer, body too beat up already.
But he hit like a truck. Diagnosed plays before they unfolded. And when scouts asked about the limp in his gait, he just smirked and let his film speak.
LSU called late.
Too late for the rankings to change.
But just in time for everything else.
Four seasons. Countless tackles. Game-winning plays. Records broken. Awards stacked. An SEC titles. A Sugar Bowl, a Orange Bowl. And now, for the third time in this season:
Georgia.
But this time—for everything.
He opened his eyes.
The room hadn’t moved. Still cold. Still quiet. Still waiting.
So was he.
He rose slowly, walked to the window, pulled back the curtains.
He thought about Romeo. Not just the loss. But the moments before.
The ones that still hurt the most.
The laughter. The fights. The mirror he no longer had.
Sixty minutes.
That’s what was left.
And maybe he didn’t need a speech or a prayer or a spotlight. Maybe all he needed was the stillness.
Because every scar, every silence, every inch he’d earned to get here—it was already stitched into the tapestry that was his life.
All he had to finish the chapter.
…
“Live from NRG Stadium in Houston, welcome to the College Football Playoff National Championship—and tonight, it’s a rubber match steeped in SEC history. The LSU Tigers. The Georgia Bulldogs. Round three.”
“These two teams know each other too well. Georgia came into Baton Rouge early in the season and escaped with a win—barely. Royce Lafitte and that LSU defense kept them in striking distance the whole night, but the Tigers came up just short.”
“But in the SEC Championship? That was a different story. LSU dominated from start to finish in Atlanta. Royce Lafitte was everywhere. The Tigers imposed their will in the trenches. And tonight—it’s the decider.”
“Third meeting. Two heavyweights. No more talk. Just sixty minutes for everything.”
“LSU. Georgia. For the national title. Let’s ride.”
…
"LSU lines up in the I-formation—third down and four from their own thirty-one. Rickie Collins under center, Durham the tailback. Here’s the snap… handoff to Caden Durham off the left side—he’s hit at the line! Ball's out! Ball is out! Loose on the turf!"
"That ball got punched free, looked like a Georgia defender got a clean shot right on the breadbasket—"
"Scramble for it at the twenty-eight—and Georgia's got it! VICARI SWAIN falls on the football and he’s up and running! Swain down the sideline, cuts inside the ten! Tripped up at the three-yard line!"
"That’s a massive momentum swing! Caden Durham never saw the second man coming. Textbook peanut punch and Vicari Swain—Johnny-on-the-spot—scoops it clean and takes it twenty-eight yards the other way!"
"Georgia’s defense comes up with a huge turnover early in this national championship—and they are set up with a chance to strike first in Houston!"
…
“Georgia facing a 4th and 9 here from the LSU sixteen-yard line after the drive stalls out in the red zone. That brings out Eldra Salaam to attempt a 33-yard field goal—this would give the Bulldogs the early lead in what’s already shaping up to be a defensive battle.”
“LSU’s front tightened up when it mattered—great containment by Gio and Jay on that last second down. Now it’s on Salaam, who’s been reliable all season.”
“Snap down, hold is clean… the kick is up—and it’s good. Eldra Salaam drills it from thirty-three yards out, and Georgia strikes first here in the national championship.”
“That’s a win for LSU’s defense, all things considered. Georgia had first down inside the twenty and had to settle for three. You’ll take that every time.”
“6:28 to go in the first quarter—Bulldogs on the board first. LSU coming up next.”
…
Royce crouched just inside the hash, eyes locked on the backfield.
Georgia hadn’t subbed—same tight set, two receivers bunched close, running back offset right. The quarterback, Puglisi, barked a hard count that didn’t even make Royce flinch. He watched the left guard’s stance instead—too light on his knuckles. Pass all the way.
Royce shifted a half-step forward. Not enough to show pressure. Just enough to make the center think.
Snap.
He exploded off the line.
No hesitation.
The back tried to chip him—weak contact—and Royce swam past it, shoulders low, hips square. The left tackle lunged, off balance, and Royce dipped under him like he was built from smoke.
Puglisi saw him too late.
Royce wrapped him mid-torso and drove through. The collision wasn’t loud—it was final.
The crowd surged. Flags stayed down. Second and ten became third and fifteen.
Royce didn’t celebrate. Didn’t flex. Just stood up over the turf, eyes already scanning for the next call.
There were still plays to run. Still a game to finish.
…
“First and ten, LSU at the Georgia 37-yard line. Rickie Collins in the shotgun, Duke Diamond wide to the boundary side. Tight coverage—Georgia not giving him much space.”
“You can press Duke all you want, but if you miss that jam? It’s over.”
“Snap to Collins—play-action fake—he looks right, fires deep down the sideline for Diamond… caught at the five—he’s in! TOUCHDOWN LSU!”
“He torched him! One move at the line and Duke Diamond had daylight! Collins threw it on a rope and Diamond did the rest!”
“Thirty-seven yards! Rickie Collins to Duke Diamond—and just like that, the Tigers are back on top in the national championship!”
…
“First and ten for LSU, ball sitting right at the Georgia forty-eight. Tigers lead it 7–3 with 3:47 left in the second quarter. Rickie Collins in the gun, Duke Diamond out wide to the right—tight coverage, single high safety.”
“They’ve been waiting for this look. If Duke gets a clean break off the line, this might be six.”
“Collins takes the snap—three-step drop—he’s looking for Diamond, now lets it fly down the sideline… Diamond’s got a step… makes the catch at the five—into the end zone! TOUCHDOWN LSU!”
“What a strike! That’s a perfect read, perfect ball, and Duke Diamond does what he does—turns separation into points!”
“A forty-eight yard dagger from Rickie Collins to Duke Diamond, and LSU extends the lead to 13–3 over Georgia with 3:47 left before the half!”
“That’s two future pros right there—Collins stood tall in the pocket and threw it like he was born for this stage!”
…
“Third and eighteen for Georgia—ball spotted at their own twenty-one. LSU showing pressure with two high safeties behind. Puglisi in the shotgun, trips left.”
“They’ve gotta be careful here—LSU’s front four has been winning one-on-one matchups all night.”
“Snap to Puglisi—drops back… pressure coming—Womack off the edge! He beats the tackle, wraps him up—SACKED! Da’Shawn Womack drops him back at the thirteen-yard line!”
“Oh, that’s big-time! Womack didn’t just beat the block—he exploded off the line. That’s raw power and perfect timing!”
“A loss of eight on the sack—and Georgia is going to have to punt it away again! LSU’s defense slams the door shut on third and long!”
…
“Fourth and two from the Georgia sixteen, and LSU sends out Aeron Burrell for a thirty-three yard field goal attempt. Looking to add to their 17–3 lead here in the third quarter.”
“Solid drive by the Tigers to chew some clock and get into scoring range. Not the touchdown they wanted, but points keep pressure on Georgia.”
“Snap, hold, kick is on the way—and it’s good! Aeron Burrell connects from thirty-three yards out, and LSU tacks on three more.”
“Clean operation all around. Burrell stays perfect on the night, and LSU’s lead continues to grow here in the second half.”
…
“Georgia takes over with decent field position—first and ten from the LSU forty-six. 6:08 to go in the third quarter. Ryan Puglisi in the shotgun, trips to the left.”
“Georgia needs something here. Down two scores, and the pressure is starting to mount.”
“Snap to Puglisi—drops back, looking over the middle—fires a dart—and it’s picked off! INTERCEPTED! CONNOR NEWHOUSE AT THE FORTY! DOWN THE SIDELINE—NEWHOUSE AT THE TWENTY—TEN—TOUCHDOWN LSU!”
“Oh my! Connor Newhouse jumped the route like he wrote it! That’s six the other way, and LSU is rolling!”
“A forty-six yard pick-six by Connor Newhouse, and the Tigers’ defense strikes again here in the national championship!”
…
“LSU knocking on the door again—first and ten from the Georgia thirteen, just over three minutes to play in the third quarter. Rickie Collins in the shotgun, back to his left.”
“Collins has been sharp through the air tonight, but don’t sleep on his legs—he can hurt you if you give him a crease.”
“Snap to Collins—he keeps it! Quarterback draw up the middle—*Collins breaks a tackle at the ten—he’s at the five—dives for the pylon—TOUCHDOWN LSU!”
“What a read and what a finish! Rickie Collins took that right up the gut, shook a linebacker, and finished through contact!”
“A thirteen-yard touchdown run by Rickie Collins, and LSU continues to pour it on here in the national championship!”
…
Midway through the fourth quarter, the noise inside NRG Stadium was thick—loud, but not tense. It was suffocating, the kind of sound that didn’t come from anxiety, but from something closer to awe. LSU led Georgia 38–3, and the crowd smelled blood.
Royce stood at midfield, bent slightly at the waist, one hand resting on his thigh pad, the other tugging at the front of his jersey. His breath steamed beneath his facemask as he glanced toward the Georgia huddle—what was left of it.
Ryan Puglisi had just hit the turf again, sacked on a busted third down by Jay, who burst through the B-gap untouched. Royce had covered the tight end on the play, but he didn’t even finish the route. No one believed the ball was coming out.
Puglisi stayed down a moment too long.
Not injured.
Just slow.
When the trainers jogged out, he waved one hand, motioned to the sideline.
Royce straightened up, teeth bared in a crooked grin.
“Oh, they fucking quitting,” he barked, loud enough for every helmet in earshot to hear. “They tapping out! Look at that—he done! Bunch of fraud ass niggas”
The defensive line erupted.
Da’Shawn clapped his hands together, walking toward the Georgia sideline. “Yo, who next?! Don’t get quiet now!”
Gio jogged past Royce and shouted over his shoulder, “Better warm up the waterboy!”
Even the coaches didn’t bother to stifle the noise.
Royce looked back toward the line of scrimmage, where Georgia’s backup quarterback—some freshman with wide eyes and shaky hands—had his helmet on and was getting shoulder pats he hadn't earned yet.
“Don’t worry,” Royce called, nodding in his direction. “We got something for you, too, bitch.”
The freshman didn’t look up.
Didn’t need to.
Royce could feel it in the way they moved—hesitant, soft-footed, uncertain. Georgia wasn’t running plays anymore. They were running time off the clock. Trying to survive.
The snap count came late and rushed. A draw. Half-hearted.
Royce didn’t even chase it.
He just stood in the middle of it all—still breathing steady, still watching.
They weren’t just beating Georgia.
They were breaking them.
And he didn’t say it out loud, but he thought it:
Let the nation watch this. Let ‘em see who we are.
…
“Rickie Collins lines up in the victory formation—LSU with a 38 to 17 lead over Georgia, and just one more snap between the Tigers and a national title.”
“They’ve waited a long time for this moment. All the heartbreak, all the rebuilds—this team, this defense, this quarterback—they earned every second of it.”
“Collins takes the snap… drops to a knee… and that will do it! The LSU Tigers are your national champions—their first since 2020, and they do it with dominance, with swagger, and with a defense that defined this season from start to finish.”
“No one can say they backed into this one. They ran the gauntlet, took down Georgia when it mattered most, and left no doubt tonight in Houston.”
“Final score: LSU 38, Georgia 17. Tigers at the top of the mountain once again.”
…
A few strands of confetti floated down from the rafters—purple and gold catching in the stadium lights—but the cannons hadn’t gone off. Not yet. Not until the clock hit zero.
Royce was already on one knee at the thirty-yard line, helmet resting next to his foot, both hands braced against the turf. He wasn’t praying. He wasn’t celebrating.
He was breathing.
Deep, deliberate, bone-deep breaths like he was trying to make space for everything this moment held. Like the air itself might help him believe it was real.
Around him, the chaos began to bloom.
The sideline erupted. Helmets tossed into the air. Gatorade flying. Rickie sprinting to the end zone with his arms up. Gio and Dorian jumping in a chest bump that went too high and left them both tumbling. Coaches hugging like they’d survived something. Like they knew.
But Royce stayed down, one knee still pressing into the turf that had held him for the last sixty minutes—for the last four years.
He looked up only when the noise swelled into something too big to hold off. The cannons boomed. The sky inside the stadium bloomed with glitter.
A championship.
He wasn’t a player anymore.
Not a college one.
He was a champion.
He looked around—the field was a blur of bodies and cameras and gold streamers curling around cleats and ankles. Roni was somewhere in that tunnel, probably crying. Rana too. Maybe Coach Lanning was looking for him, somewhere in that swarm of players and staff, already shaking hands with the committee, already getting pulled into interviews he didn’t want to give.
Maybe the broadcast had already cut to a shot of him kneeling. Maybe they were spinning the story already—from Terrebonne to the title.
He didn’t care.
He just tilted his head back, let the roar wash over him, and whispered to the dome above him—
"We made it, Rome."
And for the first time since he’d lost his brother…
Royce felt whole.
Dying to Live
That’s Not Me
The road to Dixon Correctional didn’t sneak up on Royce—it loomed. The fields gave way to gravel and fencing like the land itself had quit pretending to be soft. There was no confusion about where he was going. He’d put the address in the GPS out of habit, not need. He remembered the turns. The stretches of road without signal. The final bend where the prison rose up like a wound that never healed.
The parking lot was mostly empty. It was early. Cold. The kind of gray Louisiana morning that made everything feel heavy, even before you added the weight you’d brought with you.
Royce pulled in and cut the engine. Didn’t move.
The last time he’d come here, he had walked in.
He’d sat across from his father. Looked him in the eyes. Told him things he’d never said out loud—not to anyone. Rage and ache and history laid bare like broken glass on the floor between them. There’d been no hugging. No closure. Just air finally cleared by force. A reckoning, not a reunion.
And now?
Now he didn’t need to go back in.
He sat in the car, windows rolled up, breath fogging the glass. His eyes found the fence—tall, chainlink, topped with curls of razor wire that glinted faintly in the pale morning light. Beyond it, movement. A few inmates walking the yard. A guard posted up near the gate. The world still turning, even in here.
He thought about the man inside. The voice he’d grown up fearing. The silence that had raised him more than words ever did. He’d carried that weight for years, confusing it for identity. Letting it shape the way he hit, the way he led, the way he guarded himself even when no one was coming.
But that part of him was done.
He didn’t need answers anymore. He had faced them.
He didn’t need to ask why. He already knew it wouldn’t change what had happened.
He looked out through the windshield—through the gate, the wire, the concrete.
Then leaned back in his seat, eyes steady, and whispered—barely louder than a breath:
“That’s not me.”
He sat with it. Let it settle.
And then he turned the key, eased the car into reverse, and pulled out slow.
Not in a rush.
Not running.
Just done.
~~~~~~~~~~
The last print slid out of the processor with a quiet mechanical sigh. Effie caught it at the edges, careful not to smudge the still-drying ink, and held it up to the soft fluorescent light of the campus lab.
The image was simple: an unmade bed, sunlight crawling across the far pillow, the sheets twisted mid-motion like someone had stepped away and never returned.
She didn’t title this one.
It didn’t need it.
She placed it gently with the others—six photographs total, printed large and matte. All black and white. All empty. A door left ajar with light bleeding through the crack. A cracked window with a pair of shoes tucked underneath it. A sink with only one toothbrush in the holder.
The final project was due in the morning.
Her professor had called it “conceptual space in domestic memory.” Most students brought portraits of childhood bedrooms, playrooms, cluttered kitchens full of noise and people.
Effie didn’t.
Hers was called “Unfinished Rooms.”
She hadn’t meant for it to be about Paz. Not directly. There were no candles. No altars. No portraits framed in grief. But it was still there, in the negative space, in the things left behind and not quite put back together.
Rooms could mourn, too.
She packed the photos into a flat portfolio case and zipped it shut. The lab was nearly empty now, the clock ticking past eleven. Only the hum of the air vents and the occasional shuffle of someone else’s footsteps down the hall reminded her that she wasn’t alone.
She walked home in the dark.
No music in her ears. No camera slung around her neck.
Just the click of her boots against pavement and the weight of her project hanging from her shoulder.
Her apartment was quiet when she got in. Not silent—just quiet in that familiar, settled way.
She placed the portfolio against the wall by her desk and looked around. Her own unfinished room.
Plants on the windowsill that still leaned toward morning light. A framed photo of the Louisiana coast that had never quite hung straight. A half-burned candle on the kitchen counter, its scent too faint now to name.
She didn’t cry.
She hadn’t for this project—not like she had with the first ones. She’d already burned through the messy grief. The sharp kind that took up all the space. What remained now was quieter. Still painful. But bearable.
Effie walked over to the small wall beside her bed and taped up one of the prints.
Not the one of the bed.
The door.
Light pouring through the seam. Just a sliver. Just enough.
She stepped back and looked at it. Let the breath ease from her chest.
It wasn’t about Paz.
But it was about the way things linger.
How rooms inhale memory and exhale it slow. How absence shapes space as much as presence. How healing isn’t always loud.
Sometimes it’s six images.
Sometimes it’s a sliver of light.
Sometimes it’s learning how to live in a room that no longer waits.
Effie didn’t name the photo.
But she knew what it meant.
She turned off the light and let the room hold the rest.
~~~~~~~~~~
The air on Nevada’s campus was sharp with late-winter chill, the kind that bit at the fingertips but wasn’t cold enough to demand a jacket zipped all the way up. Malik kept his hands tucked in his hoodie pocket, headphones in, hood pulled low. The sidewalk was mostly quiet this time of day—late afternoon, right before the evening rush. His last seminar of the semester was on the far side of campus, and he didn’t mind the walk.
The beat in his ears was low and slow, nothing with words. Just rhythm to keep his feet moving. Just enough to steady his thoughts.
He passed the quad—sparse now, students huddled in twos and threes under trees or on the benches near the statue of the founder. Someone tossed a frisbee. Someone else paced with a phone pressed to their ear. Malik barely registered them. He’d walked this route so many times now it didn’t feel like moving forward. It just felt like motion.
At the corner before his building, he stopped.
A bulletin board sat mounted against the stone wall outside the administration office. Layers of flyers tacked one over the other—edges curling, corners torn, staples and push-pins clinging wherever they could.
Grad School Information Session – March 15
Service Year Corps – Now Accepting Applicants
Senior Career Fair – Apply Early, Dress Sharp
Meet Your Future Self – Panel Discussion on Post-Grad Transitions
Malik didn’t reach for a single one.
Didn’t pull a tab or scan a code or even lean closer.
He just stared for a moment, then pulled out his phone, snapped a picture of the whole board, and typed a message beneath it.
Almost there.
Sent to: Mom
He watched the “Delivered” check mark pop up, then slipped the phone back into his pocket and kept walking.
Dinner that night was loud in the way locker rooms get loud. Not chaotic—just familiar. The clatter of trays, the scrape of cleats still hanging from gym bags, the way everybody talked over everybody else without needing to slow down.
Malik sat at the end of one of the long tables, tray loaded with grilled chicken, rice, and two extra rolls he didn’t ask for but didn’t turn down. A couple of the younger defensive backs were arguing about who ran the fastest forty last spring. A linebacker from Texas was telling a story about getting locked out of his apartment in nothing but a towel.
The noise didn’t bother him.
It grounded him.
“Yo, ‘Lik,” someone called down the table—Jordy, redshirt safety, all energy and elbows. “You coming back next year or what?”
The table quieted a little, just enough to let the moment hang.
Malik took a slow bite, chewed, then shrugged.
“Yeah,” he said. “But it ain’t make or break.”
Another pause.
He looked up, voice calm. Certain.
“I’m walking across that stage regardless.”
A few guys nodded. Someone clapped the table.
“Hell yeah,” one of them said.
Malik didn’t smile big. Just a small curve at the corner of his mouth as he went back to eating.
He didn’t need to explain what he meant.
Football was a piece of the story.
But it wasn’t the whole thing.
And when the time came, he’d know how to let it go.
On his own terms.
With his own name called.
And that stage waiting.
~~~~~~~~~~
Arianna sat cross-legged on the floor, her back resting against the cool wall of her bedroom. The air smelled like lavender and old graphite—half from the candle burning low on her desk, half from the open notebooks scattered around her like petals fallen out of order. Some were warped, their spines bowed from being tossed into bags or left too long under cups of tea. Others were still crisp at the edges, but faded on the covers, their titles scrawled in ink she barely recognized anymore.
It was quiet in the room. No music. Just the hush of a night not trying to say too much.
She picked up a teal-covered notebook—one from her first semester out here, before she’d even told anyone she was writing seriously. Before open mics. Before Tulane. The pages were soft with wear, corners dog-eared from being thumbed through on buses and during 2 a.m. phone calls she didn’t take anymore.
When she opened it, her breath caught—not in pain, exactly. Just recognition.
The margins were full of names.
She didn’t say them out loud. She didn’t need to.
Some had been friends. One had been love. One had been a version of herself she wasn’t sure she missed. She let her thumb trail over the ink, faded but still legible.
She flipped to the back.
There, in tight black pen, a poem.
Three years old.
It was angry. Not precise-anger. Not elegant. Just gripping—wild metaphors smashed into each other, consonants pressed against the margins like they were trying to break out. It was messy, gasping, furious in a way that made her chest tighten as she read.
She didn’t cringe.
Didn’t roll her eyes or close the book.
Instead, she read it aloud. Under her breath. A whisper and a breath all at once, like saying it might help her remember who she was when she wrote it.
The last line hit like it did the first time: “I want to burn clean, but all I’ve ever learned is smoke.”
She didn’t change it.
Just closed the notebook slowly, reverently, and set it aside.
Then, she pulled her laptop into her lap and opened a blank document.
No title.
Just the blinking cursor. Waiting.
Her fingers hovered for a second. Then typed:
I kept thinking my story had to start over.
Maybe it just had to keep going.
She let the words sit.
Didn’t rush. Didn’t hit save.
She leaned back against the wall, legs still folded, arms loose in her lap. The glow from the screen cast long shadows across the room. A new page. But not a new beginning.
Just another chapter. One she’d earned. One she’d write with both hands open.
The road to Dixon Correctional didn’t sneak up on Royce—it loomed. The fields gave way to gravel and fencing like the land itself had quit pretending to be soft. There was no confusion about where he was going. He’d put the address in the GPS out of habit, not need. He remembered the turns. The stretches of road without signal. The final bend where the prison rose up like a wound that never healed.
The parking lot was mostly empty. It was early. Cold. The kind of gray Louisiana morning that made everything feel heavy, even before you added the weight you’d brought with you.
Royce pulled in and cut the engine. Didn’t move.
The last time he’d come here, he had walked in.
He’d sat across from his father. Looked him in the eyes. Told him things he’d never said out loud—not to anyone. Rage and ache and history laid bare like broken glass on the floor between them. There’d been no hugging. No closure. Just air finally cleared by force. A reckoning, not a reunion.
And now?
Now he didn’t need to go back in.
He sat in the car, windows rolled up, breath fogging the glass. His eyes found the fence—tall, chainlink, topped with curls of razor wire that glinted faintly in the pale morning light. Beyond it, movement. A few inmates walking the yard. A guard posted up near the gate. The world still turning, even in here.
He thought about the man inside. The voice he’d grown up fearing. The silence that had raised him more than words ever did. He’d carried that weight for years, confusing it for identity. Letting it shape the way he hit, the way he led, the way he guarded himself even when no one was coming.
But that part of him was done.
He didn’t need answers anymore. He had faced them.
He didn’t need to ask why. He already knew it wouldn’t change what had happened.
He looked out through the windshield—through the gate, the wire, the concrete.
Then leaned back in his seat, eyes steady, and whispered—barely louder than a breath:
“That’s not me.”
He sat with it. Let it settle.
And then he turned the key, eased the car into reverse, and pulled out slow.
Not in a rush.
Not running.
Just done.
~~~~~~~~~~
The last print slid out of the processor with a quiet mechanical sigh. Effie caught it at the edges, careful not to smudge the still-drying ink, and held it up to the soft fluorescent light of the campus lab.
The image was simple: an unmade bed, sunlight crawling across the far pillow, the sheets twisted mid-motion like someone had stepped away and never returned.
She didn’t title this one.
It didn’t need it.
She placed it gently with the others—six photographs total, printed large and matte. All black and white. All empty. A door left ajar with light bleeding through the crack. A cracked window with a pair of shoes tucked underneath it. A sink with only one toothbrush in the holder.
The final project was due in the morning.
Her professor had called it “conceptual space in domestic memory.” Most students brought portraits of childhood bedrooms, playrooms, cluttered kitchens full of noise and people.
Effie didn’t.
Hers was called “Unfinished Rooms.”
She hadn’t meant for it to be about Paz. Not directly. There were no candles. No altars. No portraits framed in grief. But it was still there, in the negative space, in the things left behind and not quite put back together.
Rooms could mourn, too.
She packed the photos into a flat portfolio case and zipped it shut. The lab was nearly empty now, the clock ticking past eleven. Only the hum of the air vents and the occasional shuffle of someone else’s footsteps down the hall reminded her that she wasn’t alone.
She walked home in the dark.
No music in her ears. No camera slung around her neck.
Just the click of her boots against pavement and the weight of her project hanging from her shoulder.
Her apartment was quiet when she got in. Not silent—just quiet in that familiar, settled way.
She placed the portfolio against the wall by her desk and looked around. Her own unfinished room.
Plants on the windowsill that still leaned toward morning light. A framed photo of the Louisiana coast that had never quite hung straight. A half-burned candle on the kitchen counter, its scent too faint now to name.
She didn’t cry.
She hadn’t for this project—not like she had with the first ones. She’d already burned through the messy grief. The sharp kind that took up all the space. What remained now was quieter. Still painful. But bearable.
Effie walked over to the small wall beside her bed and taped up one of the prints.
Not the one of the bed.
The door.
Light pouring through the seam. Just a sliver. Just enough.
She stepped back and looked at it. Let the breath ease from her chest.
It wasn’t about Paz.
But it was about the way things linger.
How rooms inhale memory and exhale it slow. How absence shapes space as much as presence. How healing isn’t always loud.
Sometimes it’s six images.
Sometimes it’s a sliver of light.
Sometimes it’s learning how to live in a room that no longer waits.
Effie didn’t name the photo.
But she knew what it meant.
She turned off the light and let the room hold the rest.
~~~~~~~~~~
The air on Nevada’s campus was sharp with late-winter chill, the kind that bit at the fingertips but wasn’t cold enough to demand a jacket zipped all the way up. Malik kept his hands tucked in his hoodie pocket, headphones in, hood pulled low. The sidewalk was mostly quiet this time of day—late afternoon, right before the evening rush. His last seminar of the semester was on the far side of campus, and he didn’t mind the walk.
The beat in his ears was low and slow, nothing with words. Just rhythm to keep his feet moving. Just enough to steady his thoughts.
He passed the quad—sparse now, students huddled in twos and threes under trees or on the benches near the statue of the founder. Someone tossed a frisbee. Someone else paced with a phone pressed to their ear. Malik barely registered them. He’d walked this route so many times now it didn’t feel like moving forward. It just felt like motion.
At the corner before his building, he stopped.
A bulletin board sat mounted against the stone wall outside the administration office. Layers of flyers tacked one over the other—edges curling, corners torn, staples and push-pins clinging wherever they could.
Grad School Information Session – March 15
Service Year Corps – Now Accepting Applicants
Senior Career Fair – Apply Early, Dress Sharp
Meet Your Future Self – Panel Discussion on Post-Grad Transitions
Malik didn’t reach for a single one.
Didn’t pull a tab or scan a code or even lean closer.
He just stared for a moment, then pulled out his phone, snapped a picture of the whole board, and typed a message beneath it.
Almost there.
Sent to: Mom
He watched the “Delivered” check mark pop up, then slipped the phone back into his pocket and kept walking.
Dinner that night was loud in the way locker rooms get loud. Not chaotic—just familiar. The clatter of trays, the scrape of cleats still hanging from gym bags, the way everybody talked over everybody else without needing to slow down.
Malik sat at the end of one of the long tables, tray loaded with grilled chicken, rice, and two extra rolls he didn’t ask for but didn’t turn down. A couple of the younger defensive backs were arguing about who ran the fastest forty last spring. A linebacker from Texas was telling a story about getting locked out of his apartment in nothing but a towel.
The noise didn’t bother him.
It grounded him.
“Yo, ‘Lik,” someone called down the table—Jordy, redshirt safety, all energy and elbows. “You coming back next year or what?”
The table quieted a little, just enough to let the moment hang.
Malik took a slow bite, chewed, then shrugged.
“Yeah,” he said. “But it ain’t make or break.”
Another pause.
He looked up, voice calm. Certain.
“I’m walking across that stage regardless.”
A few guys nodded. Someone clapped the table.
“Hell yeah,” one of them said.
Malik didn’t smile big. Just a small curve at the corner of his mouth as he went back to eating.
He didn’t need to explain what he meant.
Football was a piece of the story.
But it wasn’t the whole thing.
And when the time came, he’d know how to let it go.
On his own terms.
With his own name called.
And that stage waiting.
~~~~~~~~~~
Arianna sat cross-legged on the floor, her back resting against the cool wall of her bedroom. The air smelled like lavender and old graphite—half from the candle burning low on her desk, half from the open notebooks scattered around her like petals fallen out of order. Some were warped, their spines bowed from being tossed into bags or left too long under cups of tea. Others were still crisp at the edges, but faded on the covers, their titles scrawled in ink she barely recognized anymore.
It was quiet in the room. No music. Just the hush of a night not trying to say too much.
She picked up a teal-covered notebook—one from her first semester out here, before she’d even told anyone she was writing seriously. Before open mics. Before Tulane. The pages were soft with wear, corners dog-eared from being thumbed through on buses and during 2 a.m. phone calls she didn’t take anymore.
When she opened it, her breath caught—not in pain, exactly. Just recognition.
The margins were full of names.
She didn’t say them out loud. She didn’t need to.
Some had been friends. One had been love. One had been a version of herself she wasn’t sure she missed. She let her thumb trail over the ink, faded but still legible.
She flipped to the back.
There, in tight black pen, a poem.
Three years old.
It was angry. Not precise-anger. Not elegant. Just gripping—wild metaphors smashed into each other, consonants pressed against the margins like they were trying to break out. It was messy, gasping, furious in a way that made her chest tighten as she read.
She didn’t cringe.
Didn’t roll her eyes or close the book.
Instead, she read it aloud. Under her breath. A whisper and a breath all at once, like saying it might help her remember who she was when she wrote it.
The last line hit like it did the first time: “I want to burn clean, but all I’ve ever learned is smoke.”
She didn’t change it.
Just closed the notebook slowly, reverently, and set it aside.
Then, she pulled her laptop into her lap and opened a blank document.
No title.
Just the blinking cursor. Waiting.
Her fingers hovered for a second. Then typed:
I kept thinking my story had to start over.
Maybe it just had to keep going.
She let the words sit.
Didn’t rush. Didn’t hit save.
She leaned back against the wall, legs still folded, arms loose in her lap. The glow from the screen cast long shadows across the room. A new page. But not a new beginning.
Just another chapter. One she’d earned. One she’d write with both hands open.
Dying to Live
I’m Straight
The afternoon light spilled across Royce’s apartment in quiet sheets, cutting warm lines over the couch, the rug, the edges of the coffee table where Effie had scattered her notes. She was barefoot, one knee tucked under her as she reached for a glass of water she’d half-finished an hour ago. Her laptop hummed softly on the ottoman, screen dimmed to black.
She wasn’t looking for anything when she saw it.
The photo sat half-buried behind a stack of folded shirts on a short bookcase in the corner—no frame, just resting there like it had been placed with intention once and forgotten just enough.
She picked it up gently, careful with the curling edges.
Four figures. The lightness of a moment caught before everything fractured. Rashida, striking even in stillness, one hand on Romeo’s shoulder. Romeo in the middle, wide grin, arms roped around both Royce and a younger Roni, who looked like she was mid-laugh. And Royce—he looked younger than the others, even though he wasn’t. Shoulders narrower, jaw softer, mouth set like he hadn’t figured out how to smile naturally in photos yet.
Effie stared at it, thumb resting along the bottom edge.
Behind her, Royce’s voice broke the silence—low, like it was meant only for her.
“I used to stare at that,” he said from the couch, not looking up. “Thinking if I figured out what I did wrong, she’d come back.”
Effie turned, still holding the photo.
She didn’t ask who he meant. She didn’t need to.
The air between them held enough context to speak for itself. Rashida’s absence was always felt more than spoken. A silence too large to name. A cut too deep to trace without reopening it.
“And now?” Effie asked, her voice soft.
Royce shifted, leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees. He ran a hand over his face—not tired, just settled.
“Now I know who I am,” he said, “without needing her to say it.”
The words weren’t bitter. They weren’t even sad. Just true.
Effie nodded slowly and looked back down at the photo. There was a time he would’ve hidden this from her. Or bristled when she picked it up. But not now. Not here. Not in the version of his life where he could sit still with himself and not come apart.
She walked over and set the photo back where she found it, this time standing it upright against the books like it belonged.
“Looks better like that,” she murmured.
Royce didn’t say anything.
He just reached for her hand as she sat beside him, fingers brushing hers, not asking for anything.
They didn’t need to talk it out.
This was the talking.
The sitting. The quiet. The knowing.
Effie leaned into him, shoulder to shoulder, and let the moment hold.
No ghosts to chase.
No names to summon.
Just two people, still here. Still whole.
~~~~~~~~~~
The wind sliced through Elayn Hunt like it had something to prove.
It wasn’t snowing, but it might as well have been. Cold clung to the bones, not just the skin. The kind of cold that didn’t demand movement so much as it mocked stillness. But still—Poochie sat.
In the far corner of the rec yard, half-shaded by the crumbling edge of a cinderblock wall, he was hunched on a metal bench gone dull with rust. His hoodie hung off him like it had been made for a bigger version of himself—one who still ate like he had two-a-days and something worth getting bigger for. It was thin, stretched at the cuffs. The wind slipped through it easy.
Across from him stood a basketball hoop. Or what was left of one.
No net. Rust crept like ivy up the bent pole. The backboard was cracked and canted, as if even it had given up waiting for another shot to drop.
Poochie wasn’t watching the hoop, not really. Just the space beneath it. Like he could still see ghosts running the baseline, hear sneakers squeak against asphalt.
A pebble sat near his foot. He flicked it with the side of his shoe, let it rattle across the concrete like the tail end of a play that never started.
“Hey,” a voice piped up, tentative.
Poochie didn’t move.
The kid had been sitting there for five minutes. New intake. Barely eighteen, skin too clean, eyes too open. His jumpsuit still looked stiff. Like the name tag hadn’t settled against his chest yet.
“You used to play football at Catholic, right?”
For a while, silence.
The kind that could stretch forever or end in a broken jaw, depending on the day.
Poochie kept his eyes on the court. Another flick of the pebble.
Then: “Yeah,” he said. “I used to be a lotta things.”
The kid nodded once, like he understood even though he didn’t.
Didn’t press.
Didn’t ask if Poochie had been good, or what happened, or how the hell a four-star recruit ended up behind chainlink and watchtowers.
He didn’t need to.
Sometimes the story was already written in the way a man sat, the way his shoulders curved inward like they were trying to forget the weight they used to carry.
Poochie stood slowly. Not stiff, just tired in the joints. Walked toward the far fence where the yard met a stand of leafless trees beyond the razor wire.
He didn’t look at the guard tower. Didn’t track the motion sensors or the CO in the corner.
Just stared through the fence. At nothing in particular.
A long silence.
Then from across the yard, the call:
“Count!”
Men stirred. Moved.
Some muttered. Others shuffled. A few hustled like it might win them something.
Poochie didn’t flinch.
Didn’t rush.
Just turned, hands sinking deep into his pockets, and started walking back toward the building.
Behind him, the yard emptied.
Ahead, the metal door creaked open and waited.
He stepped through it.
The door clanged shut.
That was it.
No speech.
No redemption.
Just the echo of what never got to be.
~~~~~~~~~~
The sun fell slower here.
Not sluggish—just deliberate. Like it knew how to linger in the right places. How to spill gold across the cracked asphalt of the laundromat parking lot, how to catch in the creases of warm towels before folding itself behind the horizon.
Shayla stood at the open trunk of her car, a woven basket balanced on her hip, the scent of dryer sheets and faint bleach clinging to the edges of her hoodie. The last load was still warm. She folded without rushing—socks, hand towels, a faded hoodie with a tear along the hem. Her rhythm was careful, not because she loved the task, but because she hadn’t rushed much of anything in a while.
Across the lot, the last customer of the evening wrangled a toddler into a car seat. Someone else lit a cigarette by the vending machines. The world here moved quieter. A little older. A little worn-in.
She didn’t know many people in this town.
Her aunt had taken her in when the options got thin. One bedroom, twin bed, a shelf of church devotionals and plastic cups from gas stations stacked neatly by the sink. It wasn’t much, but it had a door she could close and nobody asking what she was doing with her time.
That mattered.
There was the woman at the library too—Jocelyn—who wore oversized glasses and spoke in that soft, insistent tone that could talk people into believing in themselves again. She was the one who mentioned the GED tutoring program. Who said, “They don’t need saints, just steady hands.”
Shayla hadn’t said yes right away.
She never said yes right away anymore.
But she took the brochure.
That was something.
She locked her car, climbed the steps to her walk-up slowly, basket still warm against her side. Inside, she kicked off her shoes and flicked on the small lamp in the corner. It cast a half-circle of amber light across the room—enough.
The kitchen table wasn’t much of a table. More like a square of pressed wood with two chairs that scraped when you moved them. But it held weight.
Tonight, it held a small stack of papers, slightly crooked:
A course guide.
A loan application.
Handwritten notes—messy, mostly in blue pen.
One printout with a crease across the title: Community-Based Alternatives to Incarceration.
Shayla dropped her keys in the bowl by the door and walked over. She thumbed through the pile, stopped on the page she’d bookmarked earlier with a folded receipt.
She sat down.
Ran her finger along the sentence that had caught her the first time.
“Empowerment requires more than opportunity—it requires agency.”
The words didn’t preach.
They just sat there. Solid. Plain.
She picked up a pen. Not to annotate. Not yet.
Just to feel it in her hand.
The kind of pen you use when your words finally get to mean something.
She looked around the room. Still smelled like lavender from the dryer sheets. Her laundry was done. The night was hers. No one waiting on her. No one watching. No one choosing.
For the first time in years, Shayla wasn’t shrinking herself to fit someone else’s plan.
She traced the line again, then flipped to a blank page in the back and began to write.
Not because she had to.
Because she could.
This chapter—this city, this path—it didn’t arrive with fanfare or a speech.
Just a quiet room. A stack of papers. And a pen that belonged to her.
The afternoon light spilled across Royce’s apartment in quiet sheets, cutting warm lines over the couch, the rug, the edges of the coffee table where Effie had scattered her notes. She was barefoot, one knee tucked under her as she reached for a glass of water she’d half-finished an hour ago. Her laptop hummed softly on the ottoman, screen dimmed to black.
She wasn’t looking for anything when she saw it.
The photo sat half-buried behind a stack of folded shirts on a short bookcase in the corner—no frame, just resting there like it had been placed with intention once and forgotten just enough.
She picked it up gently, careful with the curling edges.
Four figures. The lightness of a moment caught before everything fractured. Rashida, striking even in stillness, one hand on Romeo’s shoulder. Romeo in the middle, wide grin, arms roped around both Royce and a younger Roni, who looked like she was mid-laugh. And Royce—he looked younger than the others, even though he wasn’t. Shoulders narrower, jaw softer, mouth set like he hadn’t figured out how to smile naturally in photos yet.
Effie stared at it, thumb resting along the bottom edge.
Behind her, Royce’s voice broke the silence—low, like it was meant only for her.
“I used to stare at that,” he said from the couch, not looking up. “Thinking if I figured out what I did wrong, she’d come back.”
Effie turned, still holding the photo.
She didn’t ask who he meant. She didn’t need to.
The air between them held enough context to speak for itself. Rashida’s absence was always felt more than spoken. A silence too large to name. A cut too deep to trace without reopening it.
“And now?” Effie asked, her voice soft.
Royce shifted, leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees. He ran a hand over his face—not tired, just settled.
“Now I know who I am,” he said, “without needing her to say it.”
The words weren’t bitter. They weren’t even sad. Just true.
Effie nodded slowly and looked back down at the photo. There was a time he would’ve hidden this from her. Or bristled when she picked it up. But not now. Not here. Not in the version of his life where he could sit still with himself and not come apart.
She walked over and set the photo back where she found it, this time standing it upright against the books like it belonged.
“Looks better like that,” she murmured.
Royce didn’t say anything.
He just reached for her hand as she sat beside him, fingers brushing hers, not asking for anything.
They didn’t need to talk it out.
This was the talking.
The sitting. The quiet. The knowing.
Effie leaned into him, shoulder to shoulder, and let the moment hold.
No ghosts to chase.
No names to summon.
Just two people, still here. Still whole.
~~~~~~~~~~
The wind sliced through Elayn Hunt like it had something to prove.
It wasn’t snowing, but it might as well have been. Cold clung to the bones, not just the skin. The kind of cold that didn’t demand movement so much as it mocked stillness. But still—Poochie sat.
In the far corner of the rec yard, half-shaded by the crumbling edge of a cinderblock wall, he was hunched on a metal bench gone dull with rust. His hoodie hung off him like it had been made for a bigger version of himself—one who still ate like he had two-a-days and something worth getting bigger for. It was thin, stretched at the cuffs. The wind slipped through it easy.
Across from him stood a basketball hoop. Or what was left of one.
No net. Rust crept like ivy up the bent pole. The backboard was cracked and canted, as if even it had given up waiting for another shot to drop.
Poochie wasn’t watching the hoop, not really. Just the space beneath it. Like he could still see ghosts running the baseline, hear sneakers squeak against asphalt.
A pebble sat near his foot. He flicked it with the side of his shoe, let it rattle across the concrete like the tail end of a play that never started.
“Hey,” a voice piped up, tentative.
Poochie didn’t move.
The kid had been sitting there for five minutes. New intake. Barely eighteen, skin too clean, eyes too open. His jumpsuit still looked stiff. Like the name tag hadn’t settled against his chest yet.
“You used to play football at Catholic, right?”
For a while, silence.
The kind that could stretch forever or end in a broken jaw, depending on the day.
Poochie kept his eyes on the court. Another flick of the pebble.
Then: “Yeah,” he said. “I used to be a lotta things.”
The kid nodded once, like he understood even though he didn’t.
Didn’t press.
Didn’t ask if Poochie had been good, or what happened, or how the hell a four-star recruit ended up behind chainlink and watchtowers.
He didn’t need to.
Sometimes the story was already written in the way a man sat, the way his shoulders curved inward like they were trying to forget the weight they used to carry.
Poochie stood slowly. Not stiff, just tired in the joints. Walked toward the far fence where the yard met a stand of leafless trees beyond the razor wire.
He didn’t look at the guard tower. Didn’t track the motion sensors or the CO in the corner.
Just stared through the fence. At nothing in particular.
A long silence.
Then from across the yard, the call:
“Count!”
Men stirred. Moved.
Some muttered. Others shuffled. A few hustled like it might win them something.
Poochie didn’t flinch.
Didn’t rush.
Just turned, hands sinking deep into his pockets, and started walking back toward the building.
Behind him, the yard emptied.
Ahead, the metal door creaked open and waited.
He stepped through it.
The door clanged shut.
That was it.
No speech.
No redemption.
Just the echo of what never got to be.
~~~~~~~~~~
The sun fell slower here.
Not sluggish—just deliberate. Like it knew how to linger in the right places. How to spill gold across the cracked asphalt of the laundromat parking lot, how to catch in the creases of warm towels before folding itself behind the horizon.
Shayla stood at the open trunk of her car, a woven basket balanced on her hip, the scent of dryer sheets and faint bleach clinging to the edges of her hoodie. The last load was still warm. She folded without rushing—socks, hand towels, a faded hoodie with a tear along the hem. Her rhythm was careful, not because she loved the task, but because she hadn’t rushed much of anything in a while.
Across the lot, the last customer of the evening wrangled a toddler into a car seat. Someone else lit a cigarette by the vending machines. The world here moved quieter. A little older. A little worn-in.
She didn’t know many people in this town.
Her aunt had taken her in when the options got thin. One bedroom, twin bed, a shelf of church devotionals and plastic cups from gas stations stacked neatly by the sink. It wasn’t much, but it had a door she could close and nobody asking what she was doing with her time.
That mattered.
There was the woman at the library too—Jocelyn—who wore oversized glasses and spoke in that soft, insistent tone that could talk people into believing in themselves again. She was the one who mentioned the GED tutoring program. Who said, “They don’t need saints, just steady hands.”
Shayla hadn’t said yes right away.
She never said yes right away anymore.
But she took the brochure.
That was something.
She locked her car, climbed the steps to her walk-up slowly, basket still warm against her side. Inside, she kicked off her shoes and flicked on the small lamp in the corner. It cast a half-circle of amber light across the room—enough.
The kitchen table wasn’t much of a table. More like a square of pressed wood with two chairs that scraped when you moved them. But it held weight.
Tonight, it held a small stack of papers, slightly crooked:
A course guide.
A loan application.
Handwritten notes—messy, mostly in blue pen.
One printout with a crease across the title: Community-Based Alternatives to Incarceration.
Shayla dropped her keys in the bowl by the door and walked over. She thumbed through the pile, stopped on the page she’d bookmarked earlier with a folded receipt.
She sat down.
Ran her finger along the sentence that had caught her the first time.
“Empowerment requires more than opportunity—it requires agency.”
The words didn’t preach.
They just sat there. Solid. Plain.
She picked up a pen. Not to annotate. Not yet.
Just to feel it in her hand.
The kind of pen you use when your words finally get to mean something.
She looked around the room. Still smelled like lavender from the dryer sheets. Her laundry was done. The night was hers. No one waiting on her. No one watching. No one choosing.
For the first time in years, Shayla wasn’t shrinking herself to fit someone else’s plan.
She traced the line again, then flipped to a blank page in the back and began to write.
Not because she had to.
Because she could.
This chapter—this city, this path—it didn’t arrive with fanfare or a speech.
Just a quiet room. A stack of papers. And a pen that belonged to her.
Dying to Live
Inheritance
Royce stood offstage, palms slick.
He could hear the hum of the room—folding chairs shifting, the low buzz of phones being silenced, the occasional cough or whisper muffled under the weight of anticipation. Most of the attendees were younger than him. A few older. College kids. Aspiring entrepreneurs. Mentors. A handful of small business owners in button-downs and sneakers trying to look comfortable in a room full of potential.
Delpit had invited him. Said it was just a panel, nothing heavy.
Then told him the night before they wanted him to close.
“Not with a script,” Delpit had said. “With truth.”
Now here he was, standing behind the curtain, knees stiff, mouth dry.
He hadn’t worn a suit—just dark jeans, clean sneakers, a black hoodie. The same hoodie, he realized, that he’d worn the day he left Dixon’s parking lot. That fact settled deep in his chest like something full-circle.
A stagehand gave him a nod. Time.
Royce stepped into the light.
The applause was polite, not thunderous. But real. People leaned in. Phones lifted.
He didn’t walk to the podium.
He pulled the mic from the stand and held it loose at his side for a beat.
Then he started, eyes fixed on the edge of the stage.
“I grew up in a house where we didn’t talk about dreams,” he said. “We talked about bills. What we didn’t have. What could go wrong. Safety nets weren’t a thing—‘cause falling wasn’t optional. You just kept climbing.”
The room stilled.
“I wasn’t the best kid,” he admitted. “Angry. Closed off. I knew how to hit before I knew how to ask for help. Football was supposed to be the way out.”
He paused. His free hand slipped into his pocket.
“But it didn’t save me.”
A few heads tilted.
Royce’s voice stayed steady. “What saved me was learning how to bet on myself when nobody else would. When the offers didn’t come. When my brother died. When I got shot. When people wrote me off and I had to decide if I was gonna stay where they left me.”
He looked up.
“And even when I made it—whatever ‘made it’ means—there was still this voice in my head saying, be grateful, but don’t take up too much space.”
He glanced around the room. Let the quiet stretch just enough.
“That voice is a lie,” he said. “You don’t need to wait for permission to build something. You don’t need a trust fund or a perfect pitch. You just need to know who you are, and be willing to risk being seen.”
He exhaled.
“That’s what betting on yourself really is. Saying, I’m not done yet. I matter enough to start something.”
He didn’t end with a quote. Didn’t give a call to action.
He just nodded once. “That’s all I got.”
Applause swelled—not polite this time. Real.
Royce stepped offstage and let the sound fall behind him.
Delpit was waiting in the wings, arms folded, smile low and real.
“That wasn’t a speech,” he said, voice quiet.
Royce blinked. “No?”
Delpit shook his head. “That was a map.”
Royce looked back at the stage, now empty, just spotlights cooling.
And for the first time that night, he let himself smile.
~~~~~~~~~~
The dream came quiet.
No thunder. No panic. No flash of blue lights behind her eyelids or crowd splitting in a blur of screams like it had for so long. Just stillness. Like a breath held, not out of fear, but recognition.
In the dream, Effie and Paz were sitting side by side on the floor. Not a specific floor—just a patch of carpet warmed by sunlight. The kind of sun that slid across skin without demanding attention. Their backs rested against a low couch, legs stretched in opposite directions. Bare feet. Socks mismatched. A speaker crackled somewhere behind them, lo-fi music filtering into the space like dust caught in amber.
Effie didn’t speak. Neither did Paz—not at first.
They just sat there.
Effie knew it was a dream. Not in the sharp, wake up now way. But in that soft, aching knowing you carry in sleep when the world feels too gentle to be real. She didn’t look directly at Paz. But she knew it was her. Not the frozen version from memory. Not the casket. Not the photos.
This Paz was whole.
Older, maybe. Or maybe just settled in a way memory never let her be.
The music shifted in the background. A few piano notes looped like a conversation they didn’t have to finish.
Paz turned her head, resting it lightly against the back of the couch, eyes half-lidded like she was watching the ceiling breathe.
Then she said it. One word. Not pleading. Not urgent. Just… real.
“Stay.”
Effie didn’t answer.
She didn’t move.
But somehow, the silence didn’t feel like absence.
It felt like presence. Like an offering.
She woke up just after that. No start. No gasp.
Just eyes open to her dim bedroom and the shape of morning trying to make its way through the blinds.
The sheets were bunched at her waist. Her phone buzzed once on the nightstand—she didn’t reach for it. She lay still, listening.
There was no music. No ghost.
But the quiet held something.
For the first time in years, she didn’t feel chased by her grief. Didn’t feel like she owed it anything.
She sat up slowly, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and pressed her feet to the floor.
She didn’t say the name out loud.
But she didn’t have to.
The silence had already said enough.
~~~~~~~~~~
The sidewalk cracked beneath their steps in the same places it always had.
Roots had buckled it years ago—maybe even before Arianna and Mike had ever walked it. Back then, their backpacks were too big for their frames and Mike always walked with one foot in the grass, saying the concrete made too much noise. Now he was taller, heavier in the shoulders, hoodie sleeves pushed up his forearms. And Arianna walked straighter, eyes forward, a shoebox tucked tight under her arm.
They passed the iron gate of Legion Park Elementary slowly.
The sign was new—fresh lettering, maybe donated by some alumnus who made good and came back with a check. But the building behind it hadn’t changed. Same chipped red brick. Same fogged-up windows with streaks of tape from old signs long peeled away. A basketball goal still leaned forward on the far end of the blacktop like it was bowing under the weight of memory.
Mike looked over at her. His voice was soft, not heavy.
“You ready to leave?”
Arianna didn’t answer at first. Just shifted the box in her arms and watched two kids race past the fence, backpacks bouncing, mouths open wide with laughter neither of them could hear.
Inside the shoebox: four folded poems. Two spiral-bound notebooks with hearts inked into the margins. A half-faded name badge from her first open mic. And a dried flower—pressed between the pages of a book she hadn’t opened in years. She didn’t even remember which one. It had fallen out when she was packing. She kept it.
Not because it was precious.
Because it was hers.
She looked at Mike.
“Not leave,” she said quietly. “Just carry different things now.”
He nodded once. No argument.
The wind picked up a little, moving around them like it knew how to give space. They kept walking, slow. No rush. No destination spoken out loud.
He reached out and took the box from her without asking, cradling it under one arm.
She let him.
For a moment.
Then took it back.
Her hands were steadier now.
The school faded behind them, the shouts of kids chasing each other across cracked pavement echoing like a language they used to know.
And just like that, they kept going.
Not gone.
Just further.
~~~~~~~~~~
The kitchen smelled like onions and garlic before the burner was even lit.
It had been months since the stove had seen real heat. Ma Beulah’s hands had stayed idle, her voice quieter than it used to be, her walk more cautious—like she was afraid even the house might collapse under too much motion. But this morning, Toni had walked in to find the counters cleared, the big black cast-iron pot pulled from the cabinet under the sink, and the sink half full with rinsed bell peppers.
Ma Beulah didn’t say anything.
Just slid a paring knife across the counter in Toni’s direction and nodded toward the cutting board.
Toni washed her hands and got to work.
They moved around each other like memory—not quick, but familiar. Toni sliced the green bell pepper clean in half, removed the seeds with her thumb, then cut in long, practiced strips the way her mother had once shown her. The way her grandmother had once shown her mother.
Ma Beulah stirred roux at the stove with slow, steady strokes, the wooden spoon gliding in rhythmic circles. Her silver bangles clicked softly every time she turned her wrist.
They didn’t speak for over an hour. The only sounds were the sizzle of vegetables hitting the pan, the click of the oven timer, the fan rattling on low above the stove.
And still, it didn’t feel empty.
Just full of things too deep for small talk.
When the cornbread was cooling and the okra had softened into the gumbo, Ma Beulah wiped her hands on a dish towel and turned toward Toni.
Her eyes weren’t wet. But they were full.
“You got your mama’s hands,” she said, voice low. “But not her hurt.”
Toni didn’t respond. Didn’t need to.
She just reached out and wrapped her fingers around Ma Beulah’s, warm and dry and trembling just a little. She gave them a gentle squeeze.
That was enough.
Later, back at her apartment, the quiet wasn’t heavy.
It felt clean. Like something had finally shifted back into place.
Toni sat at her desk, lamp casting a wide circle of amber light across her journal. The same one she’d kept sealed for months. Maybe years.
No caption. No filter. No apology.
She uncapped her pen and, without hesitating, wrote the first line:
I lost six years. But not myself. And never again.
She paused, looking at the words. A slow smile tugged at the corners of her mouth—nothing big. Just enough.
Then she kept writing.
Royce stood offstage, palms slick.
He could hear the hum of the room—folding chairs shifting, the low buzz of phones being silenced, the occasional cough or whisper muffled under the weight of anticipation. Most of the attendees were younger than him. A few older. College kids. Aspiring entrepreneurs. Mentors. A handful of small business owners in button-downs and sneakers trying to look comfortable in a room full of potential.
Delpit had invited him. Said it was just a panel, nothing heavy.
Then told him the night before they wanted him to close.
“Not with a script,” Delpit had said. “With truth.”
Now here he was, standing behind the curtain, knees stiff, mouth dry.
He hadn’t worn a suit—just dark jeans, clean sneakers, a black hoodie. The same hoodie, he realized, that he’d worn the day he left Dixon’s parking lot. That fact settled deep in his chest like something full-circle.
A stagehand gave him a nod. Time.
Royce stepped into the light.
The applause was polite, not thunderous. But real. People leaned in. Phones lifted.
He didn’t walk to the podium.
He pulled the mic from the stand and held it loose at his side for a beat.
Then he started, eyes fixed on the edge of the stage.
“I grew up in a house where we didn’t talk about dreams,” he said. “We talked about bills. What we didn’t have. What could go wrong. Safety nets weren’t a thing—‘cause falling wasn’t optional. You just kept climbing.”
The room stilled.
“I wasn’t the best kid,” he admitted. “Angry. Closed off. I knew how to hit before I knew how to ask for help. Football was supposed to be the way out.”
He paused. His free hand slipped into his pocket.
“But it didn’t save me.”
A few heads tilted.
Royce’s voice stayed steady. “What saved me was learning how to bet on myself when nobody else would. When the offers didn’t come. When my brother died. When I got shot. When people wrote me off and I had to decide if I was gonna stay where they left me.”
He looked up.
“And even when I made it—whatever ‘made it’ means—there was still this voice in my head saying, be grateful, but don’t take up too much space.”
He glanced around the room. Let the quiet stretch just enough.
“That voice is a lie,” he said. “You don’t need to wait for permission to build something. You don’t need a trust fund or a perfect pitch. You just need to know who you are, and be willing to risk being seen.”
He exhaled.
“That’s what betting on yourself really is. Saying, I’m not done yet. I matter enough to start something.”
He didn’t end with a quote. Didn’t give a call to action.
He just nodded once. “That’s all I got.”
Applause swelled—not polite this time. Real.
Royce stepped offstage and let the sound fall behind him.
Delpit was waiting in the wings, arms folded, smile low and real.
“That wasn’t a speech,” he said, voice quiet.
Royce blinked. “No?”
Delpit shook his head. “That was a map.”
Royce looked back at the stage, now empty, just spotlights cooling.
And for the first time that night, he let himself smile.
~~~~~~~~~~
The dream came quiet.
No thunder. No panic. No flash of blue lights behind her eyelids or crowd splitting in a blur of screams like it had for so long. Just stillness. Like a breath held, not out of fear, but recognition.
In the dream, Effie and Paz were sitting side by side on the floor. Not a specific floor—just a patch of carpet warmed by sunlight. The kind of sun that slid across skin without demanding attention. Their backs rested against a low couch, legs stretched in opposite directions. Bare feet. Socks mismatched. A speaker crackled somewhere behind them, lo-fi music filtering into the space like dust caught in amber.
Effie didn’t speak. Neither did Paz—not at first.
They just sat there.
Effie knew it was a dream. Not in the sharp, wake up now way. But in that soft, aching knowing you carry in sleep when the world feels too gentle to be real. She didn’t look directly at Paz. But she knew it was her. Not the frozen version from memory. Not the casket. Not the photos.
This Paz was whole.
Older, maybe. Or maybe just settled in a way memory never let her be.
The music shifted in the background. A few piano notes looped like a conversation they didn’t have to finish.
Paz turned her head, resting it lightly against the back of the couch, eyes half-lidded like she was watching the ceiling breathe.
Then she said it. One word. Not pleading. Not urgent. Just… real.
“Stay.”
Effie didn’t answer.
She didn’t move.
But somehow, the silence didn’t feel like absence.
It felt like presence. Like an offering.
She woke up just after that. No start. No gasp.
Just eyes open to her dim bedroom and the shape of morning trying to make its way through the blinds.
The sheets were bunched at her waist. Her phone buzzed once on the nightstand—she didn’t reach for it. She lay still, listening.
There was no music. No ghost.
But the quiet held something.
For the first time in years, she didn’t feel chased by her grief. Didn’t feel like she owed it anything.
She sat up slowly, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and pressed her feet to the floor.
She didn’t say the name out loud.
But she didn’t have to.
The silence had already said enough.
~~~~~~~~~~
The sidewalk cracked beneath their steps in the same places it always had.
Roots had buckled it years ago—maybe even before Arianna and Mike had ever walked it. Back then, their backpacks were too big for their frames and Mike always walked with one foot in the grass, saying the concrete made too much noise. Now he was taller, heavier in the shoulders, hoodie sleeves pushed up his forearms. And Arianna walked straighter, eyes forward, a shoebox tucked tight under her arm.
They passed the iron gate of Legion Park Elementary slowly.
The sign was new—fresh lettering, maybe donated by some alumnus who made good and came back with a check. But the building behind it hadn’t changed. Same chipped red brick. Same fogged-up windows with streaks of tape from old signs long peeled away. A basketball goal still leaned forward on the far end of the blacktop like it was bowing under the weight of memory.
Mike looked over at her. His voice was soft, not heavy.
“You ready to leave?”
Arianna didn’t answer at first. Just shifted the box in her arms and watched two kids race past the fence, backpacks bouncing, mouths open wide with laughter neither of them could hear.
Inside the shoebox: four folded poems. Two spiral-bound notebooks with hearts inked into the margins. A half-faded name badge from her first open mic. And a dried flower—pressed between the pages of a book she hadn’t opened in years. She didn’t even remember which one. It had fallen out when she was packing. She kept it.
Not because it was precious.
Because it was hers.
She looked at Mike.
“Not leave,” she said quietly. “Just carry different things now.”
He nodded once. No argument.
The wind picked up a little, moving around them like it knew how to give space. They kept walking, slow. No rush. No destination spoken out loud.
He reached out and took the box from her without asking, cradling it under one arm.
She let him.
For a moment.
Then took it back.
Her hands were steadier now.
The school faded behind them, the shouts of kids chasing each other across cracked pavement echoing like a language they used to know.
And just like that, they kept going.
Not gone.
Just further.
~~~~~~~~~~
The kitchen smelled like onions and garlic before the burner was even lit.
It had been months since the stove had seen real heat. Ma Beulah’s hands had stayed idle, her voice quieter than it used to be, her walk more cautious—like she was afraid even the house might collapse under too much motion. But this morning, Toni had walked in to find the counters cleared, the big black cast-iron pot pulled from the cabinet under the sink, and the sink half full with rinsed bell peppers.
Ma Beulah didn’t say anything.
Just slid a paring knife across the counter in Toni’s direction and nodded toward the cutting board.
Toni washed her hands and got to work.
They moved around each other like memory—not quick, but familiar. Toni sliced the green bell pepper clean in half, removed the seeds with her thumb, then cut in long, practiced strips the way her mother had once shown her. The way her grandmother had once shown her mother.
Ma Beulah stirred roux at the stove with slow, steady strokes, the wooden spoon gliding in rhythmic circles. Her silver bangles clicked softly every time she turned her wrist.
They didn’t speak for over an hour. The only sounds were the sizzle of vegetables hitting the pan, the click of the oven timer, the fan rattling on low above the stove.
And still, it didn’t feel empty.
Just full of things too deep for small talk.
When the cornbread was cooling and the okra had softened into the gumbo, Ma Beulah wiped her hands on a dish towel and turned toward Toni.
Her eyes weren’t wet. But they were full.
“You got your mama’s hands,” she said, voice low. “But not her hurt.”
Toni didn’t respond. Didn’t need to.
She just reached out and wrapped her fingers around Ma Beulah’s, warm and dry and trembling just a little. She gave them a gentle squeeze.
That was enough.
Later, back at her apartment, the quiet wasn’t heavy.
It felt clean. Like something had finally shifted back into place.
Toni sat at her desk, lamp casting a wide circle of amber light across her journal. The same one she’d kept sealed for months. Maybe years.
No caption. No filter. No apology.
She uncapped her pen and, without hesitating, wrote the first line:
I lost six years. But not myself. And never again.
She paused, looking at the words. A slow smile tugged at the corners of her mouth—nothing big. Just enough.
Then she kept writing.
Dying to Live
Turning Doubters to Believers
The lights at Lucas Oil didn’t buzz with anticipation. They glared.
Nothing sacred about this place—not today. No music, no roar of fans, no band ready to strike up a fight song. Just high ceilings, laser timers, stopwatches, and men with clipboards trying to reduce every life story into a tenth of a second.
Royce stood behind the 40-yard dash line in black compression gear, shoulders rolling slow as he warmed them up. No pads. No helmet. Just a number on his chest and heat in his chest. Not nerves.
Focus.
Delpit had told him, “It’s not about proving you belong. It’s about showing them how late they are to the truth.”
He crouched into a four-point stance. Weight forward. Eyes low.
The line didn’t intimidate him. Not after everything else. Not after painkillers in Baton Rouge locker rooms. Not after waking up post-surgery wondering if he’d ever run again. Not after standing in Dixon’s parking lot, looking through the fence.
When he fired off, the first three strides were a controlled explosion.
By the ten-yard mark, he was up to speed.
At twenty, flying.
At forty, it was over.
He jogged through the finish, hands open, breathing calm.
Behind him, murmurs. One scout whistled. Another pulled out his phone.
On the screen: 4.37
For a linebacker.
That wasn’t just fast.
That was history.
The buzz trailed him to the bench press.
He wasn’t here to outlift defensive tackles. He wasn’t here for a flex-off. What he did bring was balance—form locked in, elbows tight, core braced. Thirteen reps. Smooth. Controlled.
He knew the reaction already.
Only thirteen?
Then the tape would roll.
They’d see him crash down on a pulling guard like it was instinct. They’d watch him wrap up running backs 20 pounds heavier and drive through their core. He didn’t need to show off. He needed to show them he was finished being overlooked.
10’11” on the broad jump.
A slow nod from the linebacker coach in the corner.
4.18 on the short shuttle.
That turned heads.
Not because it was flashy.
Because it was clean.
Royce didn’t waste steps. His cuts were tight. The kind of movement that made coordinators in AFC front offices nudge each other and whisper, “That’s third down versatility right there.”
He knew they weren’t just looking for the freaks.
They were looking for finishers.
Players who didn’t guess.
Players who diagnosed.
Then came drills.
Read-and-react.
Backpedal to flat.
Drop to curl.
Buzz to hook zone.
Punch the bag. Find your leverage. Flip the hips. Redirect.
Royce didn’t smile. Didn’t need to. Every movement said, I’ve lived this. Every drill ran smoother than the last.
His hands—violent and sharp.
His feet—balanced, urgent, precise.
His eyes—already ahead of the play.
He didn’t drift. Didn’t false step. Didn’t give them anything to nitpick.
A position coach leaned toward a coordinator and said under his breath, “That’s a plug-and-play weakside starter. No redshirt, no project.”
Then came the gauntlet of interviews.
Each one in a different suite, a different setup—some sterile and efficient, others casual, with Gatorade on the table and hoodies on the back of chairs. But the energy never changed. This was chess.
Front offices weren’t just testing knowledge.
They were probing for cracks.
One team had him stand in front of a whiteboard. “Draw up your third-down check versus bunch right, stack behind the tackle.”
Royce didn’t blink. Marker in hand, he mapped out the rotation, sketched the call, labeled the linebacker responsibilities and where the trap blitz could come if the safety rolled late.
“Why not bump the nickel?” the DBs coach asked, arms folded.
Royce turned, calm. “Because I’ve already called a 2-read. I don’t want the nickel outside leverage if I’ve got slant-flat coming. You’ll get rubbed out the window. I’d rather keep him inside-out and trust backside help.”
There was a pause.
The coordinator grinned. “You sure you want to play linebacker and not coach it?”
Royce smiled back, just barely. “Ask me again in fifteen years.”
In another room, the tone was different—less football, more everything else.
A personnel director tapped the table slowly. “Walk us through the fight. The shooting. Start to finish.”
Royce’s jaw flexed once. He leaned forward.
“I started it,” he said. “Not the whole thing. Some beef between my brother and this other dude. I always backed my brother. I was his keeper. We both paid for it.”
The room stayed quiet.
Royce didn’t flinch.
“And now?” someone finally asked.
Royce shrugged. “Now I carry what’s mine. But I don’t lead with it.”
Another team tried the NIL angle.
“You’ve made seven figures already. What keeps you hungry?”
Royce raised an eyebrow. “Money ain’t keep my family together. It’s not why I line up across from grown men and choose violence. That’s not hunger. That’s who I am.”
The head coach leaned forward. “You play angry?”
Royce shook his head. “I play clear.”
The last interview of the night was quiet.
Just two scouts and a linebackers coach.
One of them asked, “What scares you?”
Royce didn’t answer right away.
He looked at the table, then back at them.
“I came from the bottom. Roaches in the kitchen and SNAP,” he said. “What scares me? Failure. Going back.”
They nodded.
Didn’t ask more.
Sometimes the best answers didn’t need follow-ups.
Back in the hotel, Royce sat on the bed, phone buzzing with notifications he didn’t bother to check. He let the voices from those rooms echo a little.
“He’s pro-ready.”
“No red flags in the room.”
“Smartest linebacker we’ve talked to all day.”
It wasn’t arrogance that settled in his chest.
It was clarity.
For years, they’d only seen the violence in him. The numbers. The hit stick highlights.
Now they were finally seeing the mind. The poise. The restraint it took to survive it all.
The combine would write the headlines tomorrow:
“Lafitte soars with 4.37 40”
“Linebacker interviews through the roof”
“Biggest riser out of Indy?”
Royce didn’t need to read them.
He already knew what the tape couldn’t say.
He wasn’t just ready for the league.
He was already built for it.
The lights at Lucas Oil didn’t buzz with anticipation. They glared.
Nothing sacred about this place—not today. No music, no roar of fans, no band ready to strike up a fight song. Just high ceilings, laser timers, stopwatches, and men with clipboards trying to reduce every life story into a tenth of a second.
Royce stood behind the 40-yard dash line in black compression gear, shoulders rolling slow as he warmed them up. No pads. No helmet. Just a number on his chest and heat in his chest. Not nerves.
Focus.
Delpit had told him, “It’s not about proving you belong. It’s about showing them how late they are to the truth.”
He crouched into a four-point stance. Weight forward. Eyes low.
The line didn’t intimidate him. Not after everything else. Not after painkillers in Baton Rouge locker rooms. Not after waking up post-surgery wondering if he’d ever run again. Not after standing in Dixon’s parking lot, looking through the fence.
When he fired off, the first three strides were a controlled explosion.
By the ten-yard mark, he was up to speed.
At twenty, flying.
At forty, it was over.
He jogged through the finish, hands open, breathing calm.
Behind him, murmurs. One scout whistled. Another pulled out his phone.
On the screen: 4.37
For a linebacker.
That wasn’t just fast.
That was history.
The buzz trailed him to the bench press.
He wasn’t here to outlift defensive tackles. He wasn’t here for a flex-off. What he did bring was balance—form locked in, elbows tight, core braced. Thirteen reps. Smooth. Controlled.
He knew the reaction already.
Only thirteen?
Then the tape would roll.
They’d see him crash down on a pulling guard like it was instinct. They’d watch him wrap up running backs 20 pounds heavier and drive through their core. He didn’t need to show off. He needed to show them he was finished being overlooked.
10’11” on the broad jump.
A slow nod from the linebacker coach in the corner.
4.18 on the short shuttle.
That turned heads.
Not because it was flashy.
Because it was clean.
Royce didn’t waste steps. His cuts were tight. The kind of movement that made coordinators in AFC front offices nudge each other and whisper, “That’s third down versatility right there.”
He knew they weren’t just looking for the freaks.
They were looking for finishers.
Players who didn’t guess.
Players who diagnosed.
Then came drills.
Read-and-react.
Backpedal to flat.
Drop to curl.
Buzz to hook zone.
Punch the bag. Find your leverage. Flip the hips. Redirect.
Royce didn’t smile. Didn’t need to. Every movement said, I’ve lived this. Every drill ran smoother than the last.
His hands—violent and sharp.
His feet—balanced, urgent, precise.
His eyes—already ahead of the play.
He didn’t drift. Didn’t false step. Didn’t give them anything to nitpick.
A position coach leaned toward a coordinator and said under his breath, “That’s a plug-and-play weakside starter. No redshirt, no project.”
Then came the gauntlet of interviews.
Each one in a different suite, a different setup—some sterile and efficient, others casual, with Gatorade on the table and hoodies on the back of chairs. But the energy never changed. This was chess.
Front offices weren’t just testing knowledge.
They were probing for cracks.
One team had him stand in front of a whiteboard. “Draw up your third-down check versus bunch right, stack behind the tackle.”
Royce didn’t blink. Marker in hand, he mapped out the rotation, sketched the call, labeled the linebacker responsibilities and where the trap blitz could come if the safety rolled late.
“Why not bump the nickel?” the DBs coach asked, arms folded.
Royce turned, calm. “Because I’ve already called a 2-read. I don’t want the nickel outside leverage if I’ve got slant-flat coming. You’ll get rubbed out the window. I’d rather keep him inside-out and trust backside help.”
There was a pause.
The coordinator grinned. “You sure you want to play linebacker and not coach it?”
Royce smiled back, just barely. “Ask me again in fifteen years.”
In another room, the tone was different—less football, more everything else.
A personnel director tapped the table slowly. “Walk us through the fight. The shooting. Start to finish.”
Royce’s jaw flexed once. He leaned forward.
“I started it,” he said. “Not the whole thing. Some beef between my brother and this other dude. I always backed my brother. I was his keeper. We both paid for it.”
The room stayed quiet.
Royce didn’t flinch.
“And now?” someone finally asked.
Royce shrugged. “Now I carry what’s mine. But I don’t lead with it.”
Another team tried the NIL angle.
“You’ve made seven figures already. What keeps you hungry?”
Royce raised an eyebrow. “Money ain’t keep my family together. It’s not why I line up across from grown men and choose violence. That’s not hunger. That’s who I am.”
The head coach leaned forward. “You play angry?”
Royce shook his head. “I play clear.”
The last interview of the night was quiet.
Just two scouts and a linebackers coach.
One of them asked, “What scares you?”
Royce didn’t answer right away.
He looked at the table, then back at them.
“I came from the bottom. Roaches in the kitchen and SNAP,” he said. “What scares me? Failure. Going back.”
They nodded.
Didn’t ask more.
Sometimes the best answers didn’t need follow-ups.
Back in the hotel, Royce sat on the bed, phone buzzing with notifications he didn’t bother to check. He let the voices from those rooms echo a little.
“He’s pro-ready.”
“No red flags in the room.”
“Smartest linebacker we’ve talked to all day.”
It wasn’t arrogance that settled in his chest.
It was clarity.
For years, they’d only seen the violence in him. The numbers. The hit stick highlights.
Now they were finally seeing the mind. The poise. The restraint it took to survive it all.
The combine would write the headlines tomorrow:
“Lafitte soars with 4.37 40”
“Linebacker interviews through the roof”
“Biggest riser out of Indy?”
Royce didn’t need to read them.
He already knew what the tape couldn’t say.
He wasn’t just ready for the league.
He was already built for it.
Dying to Live
Closure and Continuance
The magazine wasn’t glossy. The paper was matte, thick enough to feel deliberate. The cover was blank—no title, no credits, no headline begging for attention. Just a soft grayscale image of a door cracked open, light pooling across a wooden floor. Stillness made visible.
Effie set it on the kitchen counter like it was something she’d almost chosen not to share.
Royce leaned against the other side of the counter, a glass of water still in his hand, condensation sliding down the side. The air in the apartment was quiet, not heavy. Just expectant.
She didn’t introduce it.
She just opened it.
Royce stepped closer and turned the pages.
The images came slow, each one without explanation.
A burned-out hallway.
A bed with only one pillow dented.
The corner of a mirror reflecting nothing but empty light.
A window cracked, wind lifting a sheer curtain just enough to suggest movement without confirming it.
He flipped carefully, fingers at the edge of each page like he was afraid of smudging something sacred.
There were no captions. No dates. No subjects looking into the lens.
Only space. Texture. Grief rendered through angles and shadows. Some images were stark—sharp contrast, deliberate framing. Others blurred at the edges, soft grain swallowing the shapes.
He didn’t ask who it was about.
Didn’t ask if this was Paz.
Didn’t need to.
Effie watched him read the pages with his eyes, not his mouth. That was part of why she brought it to him. He didn’t fill silence just to claim it. He left room in a conversation.
“It’s not about anyone,” she said, her voice quiet but certain. “Not really.”
He looked up.
“It’s about what never leaves,” she continued. “And what I finally learned to let stay.”
Royce didn’t nod. Just sat with it.
He flipped to the final spread—two full pages of nearly black shadow, and then, tucked in the corner of the back cover, a grainy photo.
A self-portrait.
Effie’s arm stretched out, framing the shot. She sat next to Royce in the back of what looked like an old city bus or maybe a diner booth—he couldn’t quite tell. The light was bad. Their faces weren’t centered. It was imperfect.
But it was theirs.
A moment they didn’t pose for so much as accept.
Royce ran his thumb just beneath the edge of the image, then set the zine gently on the counter.
Effie stepped forward, breath soft. She looked down at the photo, then up at him.
“That’s forward,” she whispered.
And it was.
Not resolution.
Not closure.
Forward.
No title page needed.
~~~~~~~~~~
The light in Alix’s bedroom came in warm and angled, filtering through gauzy curtains that softened everything it touched. The air smelled faintly of sawdust and pencil lead—her project materials still stacked in neat corners of the room, rulers and color swatches poking out of a canvas tote bag near her desk. Her laptop was closed. Her shoes were off.
On the wall above her dresser, she’d already hung the rendering.
It wasn’t printed on fine paper. Just matte, trimmed carefully by hand, mounted against a cream background. The boutique hotel she’d spent months designing filled the frame in delicate charcoal lines and soft light—a vision rendered not in grandeur, but in care. The building stood low and wide, its windows generous, its entryway wrapped in native greenery. A small porch. A shaded bench. A quiet welcome.
It didn’t look like a hotel.
It looked like rest.
Alix stood back, head tilted, arms crossed as she examined the spacing. She was quiet, but not uncertain.
Beside her, Co held the level steady against the wall, brow furrowed with concentration as he adjusted the top edge of the second frame.
This one was empty.
Just a clean white mat bordered by simple black wood. A handwritten label at the bottom read:
Next.
“You sure this is straight?” Co asked, not glancing at her.
“It is now,” she said. “You kept tilting it left.”
He stepped back, still holding the level in one hand, eyes narrowed. “You always this bossy about walls?”
“Only mine.”
They both smiled—but it was small, easy. Not performative.
Alix reached up and pressed the corner of the empty frame once, gently. Then let her hand fall.
“What’s going in this one?” Co asked.
She looked at him, not sideways, but fully—shoulders turned, weight balanced.
“Whatever we build,” she said.
There was no pause. No smirk. No flirtation layered in the words.
Just a kind of quiet decision.
Co didn’t nod. He didn’t have to.
They stood there, side by side, looking at the two frames. One filled with a future drawn by her own hands. The other still waiting. Not for fate, not for perfection. Just for whatever came next, if they kept showing up.
They didn’t say anything else
They didn’t need to.
They just stood still.
Still.
Together.
~~~~~~~~~~
The house was still.
Soft light spilled through the slats in the blinds, striping the floorboards in long lines of gold and pale gray. Somewhere in the distance, a neighbor’s wind chimes stirred in the breeze, lazy and off-beat. The kettle hissed low in the kitchen, steam curling from the spout, curling into the silence.
Jazlyn stood at the bathroom sink, toothbrush paused mid-air.
There it was.
Taped right to the corner of her mirror in Malik’s slanted handwriting:
Back porch. Hoodie weather. Bring your tea.
She blinked at it. Smiled slow.
Outside, the day looked like it hadn’t made up its mind—half-cloud, soft chill, the kind of Sunday morning that asked for stillness. She poured her tea, wrapped both hands around the mug, and grabbed the old gray hoodie draped over the arm of the couch—Malik’s, sleeves slightly too long, still smelling faintly like laundry and late-night drives.
When she stepped out the back door, the wind greeted her gently, tugging at the hem of her hoodie.
And there he was.
Malik stood at the edge of the porch, hands tucked behind his back, rocking on his heels. He was in sweatpants and a long sleeve tee, hair a little messy, beard trimmed, but not tight—like he’d meant to clean up but couldn’t wait.
He turned when he heard the door.
His grin cracked open like a secret let loose.
But his eyes—those gave him away.
Nervous.
Wired.
Wide with that kind of focus he usually reserved for the first snap of a fourth-quarter drive.
“Hey,” he said, voice a little higher than usual.
“Hey,” she echoed, already stepping closer, mug cupped between her palms.
He didn’t waste time.
Didn’t stall.
Just brought his hands forward.
The ring box was small, plain—nothing extravagant. But he held it like it mattered more than anything he’d ever won.
And it did.
“I don’t know where football ends,” he said. “Or what next season even looks like. I don’t know how long I’ll be playing, or where I’ll be.”
She was already crying.
Soft, quiet tears gathering in her lashes, slipping down her cheeks without fuss.
Malik took a breath, lips pressing tight before he continued.
“But I know where I want to start something.”
She laughed through it. A wet, cracking sound that turned into a whisper before she could speak again.
Her head bobbed once. Then again.
She was nodding before he ever asked.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Yeah,” she breathed, already stepping into his arms.
The tea sloshed slightly as she set it down on the porch rail. His hands trembled when they wrapped around her. Not from doubt. From everything pouring out at once.
They stood like that, tucked into the quiet.
No spotlight.
No fireworks.
Just a porch, a hoodie, and the start of something that didn’t need perfect timing—just the right kind of yes.
The magazine wasn’t glossy. The paper was matte, thick enough to feel deliberate. The cover was blank—no title, no credits, no headline begging for attention. Just a soft grayscale image of a door cracked open, light pooling across a wooden floor. Stillness made visible.
Effie set it on the kitchen counter like it was something she’d almost chosen not to share.
Royce leaned against the other side of the counter, a glass of water still in his hand, condensation sliding down the side. The air in the apartment was quiet, not heavy. Just expectant.
She didn’t introduce it.
She just opened it.
Royce stepped closer and turned the pages.
The images came slow, each one without explanation.
A burned-out hallway.
A bed with only one pillow dented.
The corner of a mirror reflecting nothing but empty light.
A window cracked, wind lifting a sheer curtain just enough to suggest movement without confirming it.
He flipped carefully, fingers at the edge of each page like he was afraid of smudging something sacred.
There were no captions. No dates. No subjects looking into the lens.
Only space. Texture. Grief rendered through angles and shadows. Some images were stark—sharp contrast, deliberate framing. Others blurred at the edges, soft grain swallowing the shapes.
He didn’t ask who it was about.
Didn’t ask if this was Paz.
Didn’t need to.
Effie watched him read the pages with his eyes, not his mouth. That was part of why she brought it to him. He didn’t fill silence just to claim it. He left room in a conversation.
“It’s not about anyone,” she said, her voice quiet but certain. “Not really.”
He looked up.
“It’s about what never leaves,” she continued. “And what I finally learned to let stay.”
Royce didn’t nod. Just sat with it.
He flipped to the final spread—two full pages of nearly black shadow, and then, tucked in the corner of the back cover, a grainy photo.
A self-portrait.
Effie’s arm stretched out, framing the shot. She sat next to Royce in the back of what looked like an old city bus or maybe a diner booth—he couldn’t quite tell. The light was bad. Their faces weren’t centered. It was imperfect.
But it was theirs.
A moment they didn’t pose for so much as accept.
Royce ran his thumb just beneath the edge of the image, then set the zine gently on the counter.
Effie stepped forward, breath soft. She looked down at the photo, then up at him.
“That’s forward,” she whispered.
And it was.
Not resolution.
Not closure.
Forward.
No title page needed.
~~~~~~~~~~
The light in Alix’s bedroom came in warm and angled, filtering through gauzy curtains that softened everything it touched. The air smelled faintly of sawdust and pencil lead—her project materials still stacked in neat corners of the room, rulers and color swatches poking out of a canvas tote bag near her desk. Her laptop was closed. Her shoes were off.
On the wall above her dresser, she’d already hung the rendering.
It wasn’t printed on fine paper. Just matte, trimmed carefully by hand, mounted against a cream background. The boutique hotel she’d spent months designing filled the frame in delicate charcoal lines and soft light—a vision rendered not in grandeur, but in care. The building stood low and wide, its windows generous, its entryway wrapped in native greenery. A small porch. A shaded bench. A quiet welcome.
It didn’t look like a hotel.
It looked like rest.
Alix stood back, head tilted, arms crossed as she examined the spacing. She was quiet, but not uncertain.
Beside her, Co held the level steady against the wall, brow furrowed with concentration as he adjusted the top edge of the second frame.
This one was empty.
Just a clean white mat bordered by simple black wood. A handwritten label at the bottom read:
Next.
“You sure this is straight?” Co asked, not glancing at her.
“It is now,” she said. “You kept tilting it left.”
He stepped back, still holding the level in one hand, eyes narrowed. “You always this bossy about walls?”
“Only mine.”
They both smiled—but it was small, easy. Not performative.
Alix reached up and pressed the corner of the empty frame once, gently. Then let her hand fall.
“What’s going in this one?” Co asked.
She looked at him, not sideways, but fully—shoulders turned, weight balanced.
“Whatever we build,” she said.
There was no pause. No smirk. No flirtation layered in the words.
Just a kind of quiet decision.
Co didn’t nod. He didn’t have to.
They stood there, side by side, looking at the two frames. One filled with a future drawn by her own hands. The other still waiting. Not for fate, not for perfection. Just for whatever came next, if they kept showing up.
They didn’t say anything else
They didn’t need to.
They just stood still.
Still.
Together.
~~~~~~~~~~
The house was still.
Soft light spilled through the slats in the blinds, striping the floorboards in long lines of gold and pale gray. Somewhere in the distance, a neighbor’s wind chimes stirred in the breeze, lazy and off-beat. The kettle hissed low in the kitchen, steam curling from the spout, curling into the silence.
Jazlyn stood at the bathroom sink, toothbrush paused mid-air.
There it was.
Taped right to the corner of her mirror in Malik’s slanted handwriting:
Back porch. Hoodie weather. Bring your tea.
She blinked at it. Smiled slow.
Outside, the day looked like it hadn’t made up its mind—half-cloud, soft chill, the kind of Sunday morning that asked for stillness. She poured her tea, wrapped both hands around the mug, and grabbed the old gray hoodie draped over the arm of the couch—Malik’s, sleeves slightly too long, still smelling faintly like laundry and late-night drives.
When she stepped out the back door, the wind greeted her gently, tugging at the hem of her hoodie.
And there he was.
Malik stood at the edge of the porch, hands tucked behind his back, rocking on his heels. He was in sweatpants and a long sleeve tee, hair a little messy, beard trimmed, but not tight—like he’d meant to clean up but couldn’t wait.
He turned when he heard the door.
His grin cracked open like a secret let loose.
But his eyes—those gave him away.
Nervous.
Wired.
Wide with that kind of focus he usually reserved for the first snap of a fourth-quarter drive.
“Hey,” he said, voice a little higher than usual.
“Hey,” she echoed, already stepping closer, mug cupped between her palms.
He didn’t waste time.
Didn’t stall.
Just brought his hands forward.
The ring box was small, plain—nothing extravagant. But he held it like it mattered more than anything he’d ever won.
And it did.
“I don’t know where football ends,” he said. “Or what next season even looks like. I don’t know how long I’ll be playing, or where I’ll be.”
She was already crying.
Soft, quiet tears gathering in her lashes, slipping down her cheeks without fuss.
Malik took a breath, lips pressing tight before he continued.
“But I know where I want to start something.”
She laughed through it. A wet, cracking sound that turned into a whisper before she could speak again.
Her head bobbed once. Then again.
She was nodding before he ever asked.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Yeah,” she breathed, already stepping into his arms.
The tea sloshed slightly as she set it down on the porch rail. His hands trembled when they wrapped around her. Not from doubt. From everything pouring out at once.
They stood like that, tucked into the quiet.
No spotlight.
No fireworks.
Just a porch, a hoodie, and the start of something that didn’t need perfect timing—just the right kind of yes.
Dying to Live
most interceptions by a linebacker 
Impressive resume ahead of declaring for the draft.
Impressive resume ahead of declaring for the draft.