Trell took the last step up to the porch and sat down on the bench beside Duke. The wood bowed under the new weight.
Duke kept his eyes on the street. He held the blunt between two fingers, the cherry end glowing faint against the gray of the morning. Smoke drifted off the tip and dissolved before it reached the overhang. He brought it to his mouth, pulled once, held it, and let it go through his nose. His other hand sat flat on his thigh.
A few of the 39ers stood scattered in the yard, two of them talking low near the fence while a third leaned against a parked car with his arms folded. Every time a car passed on the street, heads turned. Eyes tracked the plates, the windows, the speed. Then the car was gone and the heads turned back and the conversations picked up where they left off.
Duke ashed the blunt against the boards beneath him. The embers fell and died between two planks. He rubbed the tip once against the grain, cleaning it, and then leaned back and looked at Trell.
"What's this I hear about you doing business with 110?"
Trell raised an eyebrow. "I ain't know I cliqued up with y'all that y'all decided who I was doing business with and who I wasn't."
Duke laughed. The sound came out low and full, rolling through his chest before it left his mouth. He shook his head, the motion easy, the blunt held loose against his leg.
"I like to think of it like you don't go work for Microsoft then ask Apple for their shit." He lifted the blunt and drew a small circle in the air with it, trailing smoke. "You know what I'm saying?"
Trell leaned back on the bench, putting his arm on the back of it. "I don't work for you, nigga."
The words landed flat and stayed there. One of the men near the fence glanced toward the porch, then looked away.
Duke looked over at Trell. His eyes narrowed a fraction. The blunt came back up to his mouth. He pulled on it, the cherry brightening, and ashed it again on the boards. The same spot. A small pile forming between the planks.
"That ain't the fucking point, nigga. It's the principles of the shit." He let the smoke leave through his teeth, a thin stream that caught the gray light and spread. "I know you got in some shit with some niggas from up in Arkansas but that don't mean I'm gonna be alright with you providing money to the other side, nigga."
Trell held his hands up, palms open, fingers spread. "To be upfront with you, they ain't even cliqued up with 110 no more. They crossed over."
Duke sucked his teeth. He brought the blunt back up, took a drag, and ashed it again. The pile between the planks grew.
Duke let the smoke sit in his lungs before he pushed it out through his nose, two columns that curled and joined and vanished. "If I ain't know your people, I'd shoot where you sit right now."
Trell stayed where he was, arm on the back of the bench.
"But off the strength," Duke continued, "knowing your daddy, your uncles, I ain't gonna do that to you."
Trell snorted a laugh. He tilted his head back and looked out at the yard, at the men standing in it, at the cars lining the curb.
"It's 'cause of that nigga Hank and my uncles that you ain't in fucking jail right now, my nigga."
Duke's mouth tightened. His thumb rubbed across the knuckle of his index finger, the blunt balanced between the other two, and the motion held for a beat before it stopped. He let the words sit in the air between them, let them take up space on the porch alongside the smoke and the sound of the block.
Then he held out a hand, palm flat, cutting the line of conversation before it could push further.
"Whatever you want to call it, they'd understand that you gotta have some guardrails in this shit." His voice held the same level it had carried the entire time, but the words pressed harder now. "Ain't no ifs, ands or buts about it. You young niggas always breaking the codes."
Trell leaned forward, removing his arm from the back of the bench and staring at Duke, unblinking.
"Ain't no fucking code but getting money."
The sentence sat between them. Duke's jaw worked once, and his eyes stayed on Trell.
Trell paused then patted Duke on his knee. The boards creaked under him as he shifted his weight forward.
"But off the strength," he said. The pause stretched. He lifted his head and looked at Duke again. "I'll stop doing business with 110."
Duke watched him. The blunt had burned down to the last inch, the smoke thinner now, the cherry dull. He just watched Trell.
Trell stood. The bench groaned as the weight left it. He stepped to the edge of the porch and went down the steps without pausing, his shoes hitting each one clean, the rhythm steady.
He walked to his car, pulled the handle, and dropped into the driver's seat. The door shut behind him. The engine turned over and the car pulled away from the curb, moving slow down the block past the 39ers in the yard, past the houses and the cars and the noise of the morning.
Duke looked at the space where Trell had been sitting. The bench sat empty, the wood worn smooth in the center. He brought the last of the blunt to his mouth and pulled on it, the cherry flaring one final time before he reached down and pressed it out against the boards.
~~~
Caine lay across the sofa with one arm behind his head, his thumb moving through his phone, scrolling past the same feeds he'd already scrolled through twice. The flight had put a stiffness in his neck that rolling his head once to the left and once to the right only half fixed.
Mireya came through the bedroom doorway. He caught her in his peripheral first, the movement pulling his eyes up from the screen.
She crossed the suite in a high waisted thong bikini, a top that covered what it needed to and nothing else, a sheer cover-up open over all of it, sunglasses already pushed up into her hair. Her slides slapped the tile with each step. She had her phone in one hand and a room key in the other.
Caine's eyebrow went up. He watched her walk.
"Where you going like that?"
Mireya looked back at him over her shoulder, her stride holding. "You must like what you see."
"You know I like what I see." He shifted on the sofa, phone dropping to his chest. "But where you going?"
"The pool while Camila is napping with tu mama. Clearly." She pulled the sunglasses down from her hair onto her face. "Intenta seguir el ritmo, papi."
Caine snorted a laugh. "How you even know they got a pool here?"
"I know how to read signs. And it’s a fucking luxury hotel in Miami." She pulled the suite door open and stepped through without turning around.
Caine sat up enough to watch her go. The door swung shut and he nodded once, slow, his mouth pulling at the corner before he settled back into the sofa and picked up his phone.
…
The elevator took her down to the pool level. She pushed through the glass doors and the heat hit her skin, thick and salted, carrying chlorine underneath it. She slipped her slides off at the edge of the deck and walked barefoot across the warm concrete, finding a lounger away from the clusters of couples and families, pulling the cushion flat before she stretched out on it.
She knew this pool. A different room, a different floor, a different man paying for it, but she knew it. The loungers were the same, the towel station with its white rolled stacks, the bar tucked under the overhang with the same type working the same bottles. Her body settled into the chair with a recognition her mind let pass without comment.
She reached for her phone and opened her texts, her thumb finding the thread with Trell and pulling it up. The last messages sat where she'd left them. She typed out the words, thumbs moving quick across the screen. Sorry again. She hit send and watched the bubble appear.
Sent.
She waited. Her eyes stayed on the space beneath the bubble where the delivered notification would show. The screen held. Nothing changed. She pressed her tongue against the inside of her cheek and tapped his name, pulling up the call screen. Her thumb hit the green icon.
The call failed before it rang. No connection, no voicemail, nothing. Just the screen dropping back to his contact.
She scrolled down to his second number and tried it. Same thing. She tried the third and got the same dead screen dropping back to his contact.
She lowered the phone to her lap. Her thumb pressed into the edge of the case. She looked at his name for a long moment, at the three numbers listed underneath it, at the call log showing three failed attempts stacked on top of each other.
Her left hand started to shake. A fine tremble that worked through her fingers and into her wrist. She grabbed it with her right, wrapping her fingers around the shaking ones and pressing them together in her lap until the trembling stopped. She held the grip for a few seconds past when it stilled.
She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the lounger. Her chest rose once, deep, and came down slow. The pool noise filled in around her. Water lapping against tile. The hum of a dozen conversations she could hear and none of it reaching her.
A shadow crossed her eyelids. The warmth on her face cut off and her body went tight, her shoulders pulling in, her fingers pressing harder into each other in her lap. She opened her eyes, slow, letting the light come back in stages.
A man stood over her. His eyes were already on her body, moving from her legs to her stomach to her chest before they found her face. He took his time with it and let her see him doing it.
She shifted on the lounger. Her hip turned, her back arched a fraction, her legs adjusted. The movement came before the thought, her body rearranging itself to give him a better angle. Instinct settled over her and sat there, comfortable and practiced.
"I saw you walk out here and just knew I had to come talk to you," he said.
Mireya smiled. Behind the sunglasses, it stopped at her mouth. "Oh yeah?"
He nodded, hands loose at his sides, weight easy on his feet. "Yeah. You here by yourself?"
"I can be."
He smiled back at her, his chin dipping once. "I'm Ryan."
Mireya put her hand out to him, fingers extended, her wrist turning so her palm faced down. "Luna."
Ryan took her hand. His grip wrapped around her fingers and held for a beat longer than a handshake needed. "Alright, Luna."
"Get me a drink and then come back so we can talk, papi."
~~~
The golf cart turned off the main road and onto a path that cut between two rows of palms. Erin drove with one hand on the wheel, the other already pointing before the buildings came into view.
"Campus is pretty walkable. Most of your academic buildings are on this side coming off Stanford." She swung her finger toward a complex rising off a green area, stucco and glass catching the afternoon light. "That's the student center complex. There's a patio behind there I can show you later that sits on Lake Osceola. A real nice place to sit and unwind by the water."
Caine leaned back in the cart, one arm across the seat behind him. "That don't smell like a swamp?"
Erin raised an eyebrow, her head turning toward him. "I don't think so."
He shrugged. "I just figured way down here that would smell like a swamp, especially in the summer."
"I guess I got used to it." She turned back to the path, steering around a group of students crossing with backpacks. "It's just like Louisiana here in terms of climate. You'll enjoy it."
The cart rolled through a roundabout. Erin pointed to the left where a church faced the road, its steeple sharp against the sky. "That's St. Augustine Catholic Parish if you're religious." She looked at him. "Are you?"
Caine snorted a laugh and shook his head. "Nah."
"Me either, but it's the South so I always point it and the other religious buildings out." She paused, letting the cart come around the curve, then pointed ahead to a cluster of buildings set back from the road behind low hedges and wrought iron. "Those are the townhouses. I was lucky enough to get one. Swinging you over there to check those out is on the list after you meet with the coaches."
Caine looked over at her.
She looked back. She winked.
He turned forward again, his mouth pulling at the corner, and watched the campus slide past as Erin accelerated toward the athletic complex.
…
The indoor practice facility opened up around them when they walked through the doors, the ceiling high enough to swallow sound, the turf stretching the full length of a regulation field with lines painted fresh and white. Caine's eyes went to the far end where a rack of blocking sleds sat angled against the wall, then up to the mezzanine level running the length of the building, glass-fronted offices looking down over the field.
Coach Cristobal walked beside him along the sideline, hands clasped behind his back. Shannon Dawson kept pace on Caine's other side, gesturing as he spoke. Stephen Field and Jorge Baez trailed a few steps behind, close enough to hear, far enough to let the coaches work.
"We have facilities here that you're going to struggle to find anywhere in the country," Coach Dawson said. He swept his hand across the field, taking in the turf, the ceiling, the weight room visible through a set of glass doors at the near end. "The amount of money that we've put into all of this sets our athletes up to compete at the highest level week in and week out."
Cristobal's stride stayed even. He picked up where Dawson left off without breaking the rhythm of the walk. "We've been watching you since last year when we came up against y'all in the CFP. It wasn't a pretty night for the team, but you didn't stop fighting and we can respect that from a kid and that's the kind of fire that we want in our quarterback."
Caine nodded. His ribs remembered that game before his mind finished processing the sentence. Every snap, somebody in orange and green trying to put him through the turf. "That dude Reuben Bain was giving us hell all fucking night."
Cristobal nodded. "That's two more positives you'll get here. One, that you'll be practicing against NFL caliber players because you know that the U's reputation for defense is something that can't be matched." He trailed off, a slight smile working onto his face. "And two, you won't have to face those types of edge rushers anymore."
Caine snorted a laugh. "Can't lie and say I ain't thinking that's a better thing than you think it is."
Dawson cut in. He stopped walking and turned to face Caine, his hand gesturing toward the mezzanine level above them, the offices lined up behind the glass. "The coaches all have offices up there. Why don't we go talk some Xs and Os?"
~~~
They stood at midfield. Coach Riley held a cup of coffee in one hand, steam threading up from the lid into the December air. Huard and Savage flanked Caine on the other side, Bowden a step behind them, all five of them facing the same direction. Riley turned toward the endzone where the Olympic Torch rose above the peristyle.
"I like to start some of my meetings with players out here because I don't think there are too many more historic cathedrals of college football than the Coliseum." His free hand came up, gesturing toward the Torch, the empty seats climbing away from them on every side. "Some of the greatest players this game has ever seen have played right here on this field. And we think you can be the next one in a long line of them."
Caine looked up at the Torch, then let his eyes come down across the bowl, across the rows and rows of seats, across the press boxes and the tunnels and the open sky above all of it.
"You already know I'm like every other kid who grew up watching old Reggie Bush highlights."
Riley laughed. "Calling them old highlights makes me feel old." He gestured toward Caine with the cup, the coffee shifting behind the lid. "The reason we see you fitting here is because you're coming from a passing-oriented offense. There is no learning curve for you going from that to what we do here."
Huard stepped in, his voice carrying the practiced clarity of a man who'd given this pitch before but meant it each time. "What's on paper, the measurables, the stats, it's all what we're looking for. What we're not going to get from a high school quarterback."
"Or any other quarterback in the portal," Riley added.
Caine's mouth tipped up. "Or any quarterback on your roster if y'all season is anything to go by. Respectfully."
Riley's head went back. Huard barked a laugh.
Riley shook his head, the smile still sitting on his face. "They said you tell it like it is, too. That's something you need in a high level quarterback. Someone who's not afraid to make decisions. Call their shots." He tipped the coffee cup toward Caine. "Like on all those fourth down conversions you pulled off this season."
Caine nodded. "A lot of things I been, but scared ain't never been one, Coach."
Riley let that land. He looked at Caine for a beat, then turned and gestured in the direction of the tunnel at the far end. "Let's head to the performance center and chat some more."
They started walking. Huard fell in beside Caine, matching his stride as they crossed the turf toward the tunnel mouth.
"I heard you speak Spanish," Huard said. "That'll fit in well here with the community in South Los Angeles."
Caine nodded. "Down in Miami, too."
Huard's chin dipped once. "But Miami isn't USC."
Riley, a step ahead of them, spoke without turning around. "That it ain't."
…
Alumni Park spread out in front of him. Caine walked the path alone, hands in his pockets. The campus held that between-semesters feel where the buildings stood open, but the bodies were gone, the paths carrying only the occasional person crossing from one place to another without hurry.
He stopped at the Tommy Trojan statue. He looked up at it. The bronze caught the afternoon light along the sword and the shield, the figure standing over the intersection of walkways with a permanence that made the trees around it look temporary.
The 110 pushed its noise over the rooftops, a steady hum of tires and engines and distance that sat underneath everything else. A breeze came through and moved the collar of his jacket against his neck.
He turned toward the sound of voices coming up behind him, an animated conversation that punctuated the air.
Two girls walked the path behind him in AKA sweaters, the light breeze pressing the fabric against their arms. One of them leaned into the other as she spoke, her gestures wide, her laughter breaking through every third or fourth word. The other shook her head at whatever was being said, her own laugh rolling underneath it.
The one closest to Caine turned her head. Her eyes found his and held.
They kept walking and she kept looking, and he kept looking back. The distance opened between them, their bodies moving in opposite directions while their eyes stayed locked across the gap. The student union came up behind her and she disappeared around its corner, her head turning forward at the last second to rejoin the conversation.
Caine nodded to himself then turned and started in the other direction.
~~~
Camila ran three steps ahead, then stopped, then crouched. Her fingers closed around something in the sand and she held it up, turning it in the light. A shell, small and white, its ridges catching the sun. She dropped it into the pocket of her shorts where it clinked against the others she'd already collected.
"Be careful you don't pick up any glass, mi amor," Mireya said.
"Okay, mami."
Camila moved on, her sandals leaving crooked prints in the wet sand. Mireya matched her pace, stopping when she stopped, walking when she walked. The breeze off the water pushed Mireya's hair across her face and she tucked it behind her ear.
Camila stopped again. This time she stayed standing, her body going still, her eyes locked on the water. A wave built far out and rolled in, the white lip curling over itself before it crashed and spread flat across the sand, rushing toward her feet. She stepped back and watched it retreat, pulling shells and foam with it. The next one came and she watched that one too, her mouth open, her hands hanging at her sides.
Mireya walked over and knelt behind her, her knees pressing into the damp sand. She pulled Camila back against her chest, wrapping both arms around her. Camila's shoulders fit under her chin. Mireya pointed out at the water, her arm extending past Camila's head.
"You see all that water, baby?"
Camila nodded.
"That's the Pacific Ocean. It's the biggest ocean in the world. It goes all the way to China."
Camila gasped. Her whole body pulled in with the breath, her shoulders rising against Mireya's arms. "¿En serio?"
Mireya laughed, the sound breaking loose and warm against the top of Camila's head. "En serio, mi amor. When we were in Miami, that was the Atlantic Ocean."
She looked out past Camila at the water. Another wave built and rolled and broke. The foam hissed across the sand and reached for their feet before pulling back. Mireya's chin settled against Camila's hair, her arms tightening around her daughter's body.
"Mami's been out there in this ocean. On a jetski. We went way, way, way out."
Camila's head tipped back to look up at her. "Nuh uh!"
Mireya nodded. "I did. One day, I'll take you out there. We'll get on a big boat. Would you want to do that, baby?"
Camila nodded, her whole upper body moving with it, her curls bouncing against Mireya's jaw. Her hands gripped Mireya's forearms and she bounced once on her heels, the sand shifting under her sandals.
Mireya steadied her, pulling her back flush against her chest. "¿No vas a tener miedo?"
Camila shook her head just as hard, her chin swinging side to side. "I'm brave, mami."
Mireya's arms pulled tighter. Her fingers pressed into Camila's stomach where the fabric of her shirt had bunched up. "I know you are, baby."
They stayed like that. The waves kept coming. Camila leaned her weight back into Mireya's chest, settling in, her hands resting on Mireya's forearms.
"Mami, where's daddy going to live now?"
Mireya's fingers stilled against Camila's shirt. She looked down at the top of her daughter's head, at the part running crooked through her curls, at the sand caught in the strands near her temple. "That's what he's trying to figure out, mi amor. He's talking about it right now."
Camila's feet pushed forward in the sand, digging two small trenches. "He gonna play football?"
Mireya nodded. "He is."
Camila nodded to herself, her chin dipping once, something working behind her eyes that she was too young to have words for. Then she looked back out at the ocean.
"I like the Specific Ocean."
Mireya laughed. The sound came out harder than she expected, pushing through something that had been sitting in her chest. She pressed her mouth against the top of Camila's head and held it there. "We'll work on saying that, mi amor."
The words faded into the sound of the water. The next wave broke and ran toward them, close enough that the foam touched the toes of Camila's sandals before it pulled back. Mireya kept her arms where they were. Camila kept her eyes on the ocean. The breeze pushed through again, carrying salt and the faint smell of seaweed drying somewhere down the shore.
~~~
The snow crunched under her boots with every step. Sara pulled the scarf tighter around her neck, the one she'd had to buy at the airport because nothing she owned was built for this. The wool scratched against her jaw. Her breath left her mouth in a white plume that dissolved before it cleared her face.
The parking lot gave way to a path that sloped down toward the river. Trees lined it on both sides, bare branches holding snow in the crooks where they forked. She followed the path to a landing where benches faced the water and sat down.
The Huron River moved in front of her, dark and flat where the current ran slow, choppy where it picked up near the bank. A flock of ducks cut across the surface in a loose line, their bodies sitting easy on the water, heads turning but never hurrying. Not a single one of them seemed to register the cold. They just moved through it, legs working underneath where nobody could see.
"Just like Caine and Mireya," Sara said. Her voice carried across the water and came back to her thinned out. "Calm on the surface, paddling like fucking hell to keep going under the water."
She blew out a breath. The steam hung in front of her for a second, twisting, then broke apart. She tucked her chin deeper into the scarf and let her eyes follow the ducks as they drifted downstream.
Miami had been warm enough that Camila ran around the hotel in bare feet. Los Angeles had the sun on her shoulders when she stood outside the Coliseum waiting for Caine to finish. And now Michigan, where the air cut through every layer she had on and the river looked like it was deciding whether to freeze.
Three cities in a week. Three sets of coaches in rooms that smelled like new carpet and money. Three presentations with numbers projected on screens, numbers that would have made her laugh two years ago when she was pulling doubles at the hotel just to keep the lights on. Eight million. Nine million. Figures attached to her son's name, to his arm, to how fast he could read a defense and put the ball where it needed to go.
She'd told him the same thing at every airport. Standing near the gate while Mireya chased Camila through the terminal, Sara would pull him close enough that only he could hear her.
"Es una carcel diferente, mijo. They promise you freedom, but they put a rope around your neck with these big numbers."
He'd nod. He'd say he knows. He'd tell her he was going to be okay because no white men in suits were going to play him. And Sara would look at him, her hand on his arm, and say those were the ones to watch out for the most.
He'd nod again. He always nodded. She never knew how much of it landed.
Her phone buzzed against her hip, muffled through the peacoat. She reached for it and the gloves fought her, the leather too thick to get into the pocket. She pulled her right glove off with her teeth and held it in her mouth while her bare fingers found the phone and worked it free.
Nicole's name was on the screen.
How's Michigan?
Sara held the phone up and angled it toward the river. The snow on the banks, the dark water, the ducks still moving through it. She took the picture and sent it back.
Fucking cold.
The reply came fast.
Sara, we're Southerners. We're not meant to be in the snow. Tell Caine to scratch that off the list now.
Sara snorted a laugh. The sound pushed out of her nose and dissolved into the cold air over the river. She shook her head once and slid the phone back into her pocket. Her bare hand stayed out for a second, the cold biting at her fingers, before she pulled the glove back on and pressed both hands into her lap.
The ducks kept moving, the river kept going and Sara sat on the bench and watched them.
~~~
Allie walked close enough that her shoulder brushed his arm every few steps. Caine let it happen without adjusting his stride. Snow lined the sidewalks in packed ridges where the plows had pushed it, the campus stretching out white and gray under a low sky that looked like it had more to give.
She pointed across the street. "The thing I love about Ann Arbor the most is that we have so many museums and things to do here. But even if that's not your kind of thing, you can just go down the road and get to Detroit." She pulled her hand back and tucked it into her jacket pocket. "That's not my cup of tea, though."
Caine raised an eyebrow. "Too many Black folks?"
Allie's head snapped toward him. Her hands came out of her pockets and waved in front of her, fingers splayed. "No, I just--"
Caine held his hand up. "I was just messing with you."
Allie put a hand to her chest, her fingers pressing into the front of her jacket. "That deadpan thing you do. You'd be a good comedian. I definitely thought you were serious."
Caine snorted a laugh. He pushed his foot through the snow at the edge of the sidewalk, the toe of his shoe carving a line through the crust until it hit the concrete underneath. "How y'all deal with snow for months?"
Allie's face changed. Her eyes opened wider and her chin came up and her whole body shifted toward him. "Oh my god. I love the winter here. Everything's so pretty covered in snow and they do a great job at keeping everything clear. Sometimes, you can see rabbits and bunnies hopping through the snow and it's so cute." She clasped her hands together in front of her chest. "Oh, to come back in my next life as a little bunny hopping through the snow."
Caine looked at her. "So, a snow bunny."
Allie's mouth opened. She processed it in stages, the words catching up to the implication. Then she laughed, her head tipping back, one hand coming up to cover her mouth. "I didn't mean it like that, but well, you know."
Caine laughed. He pointed down the sidewalk. "What else y'all got to see?"
They kept walking, Allie still recovering, her cheeks flushed from more than the cold. The campus opened up ahead of them, brick buildings and bare trees and snow on every surface, students crossing in heavy coats with their heads down against the wind.
…
The conference room had a view of the practice fields through a wall of windows. Snow covered the turf, a flat white sheet broken only by the yard markers poking through where the groundskeepers had cleared paths. Coach Moore sat across from Caine, forearms on the table, hands folded. Lindsey sat to Moore's right, leaned back, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee.
"I'm going to be honest with you, son. I'm really liking what I've been hearing so far and that's why we want to bring you in." Moore's hands opened, palms flat on the table. "We think you'd be a great addition to the team and really have what it takes to put on the maize and blue."
Caine's chin dipped once. "But."
Lindsey leaned forward. "Bryce is probably off to the NFL, but we're not going to lie to you and say that there isn't every chance that Jaron could stick around and we end up with a quarterback battle in the spring."
"I ain't worried about that." Caine leaned back in his chair, one arm resting on the table. "I had to fight for my job in high school and when I got to Georgia Southern. It ain't nothing to me to do it again."
Moore nodded, his chin moving slow, deliberate. "That's exactly what we wanted to hear from you. I know the collective and the boosters and your agent are talking dollars and cents, but what matters in here--" He paused. His index finger came down on the table, the tap sharp enough to carry across the room. "--is the caliber of man that you are and the willingness you have to fight for this team whenever you put that jersey on. We don't do any half-measures here."
Lindsey uncrossed his legs and sat forward, his elbows finding the table. "Coach is right. The expectations at Michigan are beat the school down south, win the Big Ten and compete for national championships every season."
Moore picked it back up. "We fell short of that this year, but everyone knows your story. Getting Georgia Southern to two playoff games is no small feat. Keeping up with Oklahoma is an even bigger story." His eyes stayed on Caine. "You're ready to play Michigan football. You got what it takes."
Caine shrugged. One shoulder, easy. "I wouldn't be sitting here in front of you if I ain't think that, Coach. Expectations ain't never been something I ran from."
Moore looked at Lindsey, who gave a small nod, then turned back to Caine.
"Let's keep talking about how you fit here next season."
~~~
Caine packed snow between his palms, turning it, pressing it tighter. Camila stood beside him in the coat they'd had to buy at a store off Main Street because nothing she owned was built for temperatures like these, the hood cinched around her face so only her eyes and nose and mouth showed. She watched his hands work the snow into a ball and set it on top of the one already stacked on the ground.
Mireya stood at the window, arms crossed over her chest, one hand resting on her mouth.
Caine dropped onto his back in the snow, arms out, and swept them up and down. Camila's laugh came through the glass, muffled but loud enough to fill the room. She threw herself down beside him and tried to copy the motion, her arms too short to make the full arc, her legs kicking instead of sweeping. Caine reached over and guided her arm through it, showing her where to push the snow, and Camila giggled until she ran out of breath.
Mireya turned from the window and crossed to the couch. Sara sat at the other end, legs tucked under her, a Hallmark movie playing on the TV. A woman in a red coat stood in the snow next to a man holding a tray of cupcakes. Sara glanced over at Mireya as she sat down.
"You know what I hate about these movies?"
"What?" Mireya's eyes stayed on the window.
"The other guy? He never does anything wrong other than living in some big city. It's dumb. No one is going to leave her man because a lumberjack running a cupcake shop that sells two cupcakes a day smiled at her."
Mireya laughed. The sound came out thin, pushed through a mouth that was already somewhere else. She turned from the window to Sara. "It's just them trying to make it seem like a woman wanting a successful career is a bad thing."
"Yeah, pretty much."
Mireya's eyes drifted back to the window. Caine was jogging across the yard, looking back over his shoulder, slowing down every few steps. Camila ran after him, a snowball already crumbling in her fist. She threw it and it broke apart before it reached him. He stopped and let the next one hit his leg, grabbing it and staggering sideways. Camila screamed with laughter and scooped up more snow.
Mireya blinked. The yard blurred. The shapes of Caine and Camila softened at the edges, the white of the snow bleeding into the dark of their coats until everything ran together.
"I bet I could make a lot of money making some shit like this and just having the big city man come back and get his woman back," Sara said.
"Yeah." Mireya's voice cracked on the word. It split down the middle and the two halves fell away from each other. She pulled a breath in through her nose and when she let it go, it came out as a sob. The sound broke from her chest and filled the space between them before she could catch it.
Sara's head snapped toward her. "Are you okay, mija?"
Mireya nodded. Tears ran down her face, tracking the curves of her cheeks, dropping off her jaw. "I'm fine."
Sara reached over. Her arm came around Mireya's shoulders, pulling her in. "Mireya, digame. Por favor."
Mireya shook her head. "I'm fine." The words choked coming out, catching in her throat, the second one barely making it past her teeth. Her shoulders started to shake. The sobs came harder, each one folding her body forward until her face pressed into her own lap, her hands coming up to cover it, her fingers pressing into her forehead. The sound muffled against her thighs but it kept coming, the crying racking through her in waves that pulled her spine into a curve and held it there.
"Ven aca, mija."
Sara's hands found her shoulders and pulled, gentle but steady. Mireya resisted. Her body locked, arms tight against herself, face still buried. Sara pulled again, the same pressure, patient, not letting go. Mireya's resistance broke in pieces. Her shoulders gave first, then her arms, then the rest of her, her body turning toward Sara and folding into her.
Sara put Mireya's head on her shoulder. Mireya kept going. She pulled her legs up and climbed onto Sara's lap, her knees drawing in, her body curling small, making herself as compact as she could against Sara's chest. Her face pressed into the fabric of Sara's shirt. The sobs shook through both of them now, Sara absorbing the tremors through her ribs, her arms wrapping around Mireya and holding.
"Todo va a salir bien, mi amor. Estoy contigo."
Mireya choked out the words against Sara's shoulder, her voice wrecked, the syllables broken and wet. "Estoy jodidamente bien."
Sara's hand moved to the back of Mireya's head. Her fingers pressed into her hair and held there. "I know, mija." Her voice came low and steady. "Lo se."
