The cold hit Brice first as the plane door opened, then the noise, a wall of sound that pushed through the jet bridge and wrapped around him.
There were hundreds of them. Maybe more. Gold and black everywhere. Signs bobbed above the crowd.
“ROSE BOWL CHAMPS.”
“BOILER UP.”
One with his face blown up to poster size, his mouth open mid-yell. It wasn’t a flattering picture.
He forced a smile as he appeared into their view. His hand lifted in a wave. The noise got louder. Justin appeared beside him, his arms raised. The rest of the team filed out behind them, each player getting their own eruption of cheers. Coaches followed, waving, smiling, playing their part.
The airport corridor stretched endlessly. More faces. More phones. More hands reaching out to touch his jacket, his arm, anything they could reach. He shook hands when they were offered. Signed things when they were shoved at him: programs, jerseys, a fucking pizza box. His face hurt from smiling.
They emerged into the January cold. The buses waited, police motorcycles already positioned around them, lights flashing. The crowd had followed them outside, chanting something he couldn’t make out over the general chaos.
He climbed onto the first bus, dropping into a seat near the front. The leather was cold through his jeans. Justin slid in beside him, already pulling out his phone.
“Look at campus right now,” Justin turned the screen toward him.
Brice glanced at it. The bus lurched forward. The motorcycles revved, their sirens cutting through everything else.
His phone buzzed. Then again. Then continuously, a stream of notifications that made the thing vibrate against his leg. He pulled it out. Messages filled the screen. His dad. His mom. Serena. People from high school he hadn’t talked to in years.
He locked the phone and shoved it back in his pocket.
Campus came into view. More people. Jesus Christ, how many fucking people went to this school? They lined the streets, packed onto sidewalks, hanging out of dorm windows. The bus slowed to a crawl, the crowd pressing in from all sides.
The bus finally stopped outside the football facility. Brice stood, his legs stiff from sitting, and filed off with the rest of the team. The crowd noise was deafening here, compressed into the smaller space, bouncing off buildings. Students rushed forward. He signed more things. Took more pictures. Smiled until his face felt like it might crack.
The locker room was quieter but not by much. Players were loud, still riding the high, still reliving plays and moments. Brice moved through them toward his locker, dropping onto the bench. His shoulder ached. His whole body ached, really, that deep bone-tired feeling that came after a game like that.
“Alright, bring it in!”
Coach Odom’s voice cut through the noise. The room quieted gradually, players turning toward the front where the coaching staff had gathered. Brice stood, moving with everyone else toward the center of the room.
Odom stood with his arms crossed, his face serious. The celebration was over.
“Hell of a game,” he started. “Hell of a win. You should be proud of what you accomplished out there.”
Murmurs of agreement rippled through the room.
“But,” his voice sharpened. “The job’s not done. We didn’t come this far to stop now. In four days, we’re on a plane to Dallas. In six days, we’re facing Clemson. And they’re going to be ready. They’re going to be pissed off and ready to prove to everyone that the Cinderella story stops with them."
The room had gone completely silent now.
“So enjoy tonight. Enjoy tomorrow. But come Wednesday, we’re back to work. Same intensity. Same focus. Because I promise you, they’re already preparing for us. "
His eyes swept across the room, landing on different players.
“We get one shot at this,” he continued. “One opportunity to keep this going. Don’t waste it.”
He stepped back, nodding toward Brice. The room turned, every set of eyes landing on him. Brice moved forward, his hands already coming together.
“Boilers on three,” he said, his voice carrying across the locker room. “Boilers on me. One, two, three—“
“BOILERS!”
The sound exploded, hands clapping in unison, the team breaking apart into smaller groups. Brice grabbed his bag from his locker and headed for the exit. The hallway was cooler, quieter. His footsteps echoed off the tile. He pushed through the door that led to the parking lot.
They were waiting exactly where they always waited. Tom’s truck was parked in its usual spot, and his parents stood beside it. Sophie leaned against the passenger door, her phone in her hand, but she looked up when he emerged.
Brice’s pace quickened. He dropped his bag and opened his arms, and they met him halfway, Tom from one side, Liz from the other, converging on him in a unified embrace.
His legs went weak and he let himself fall forward, let them catch him, let them hold him up. His forehead pressed against his mother’s shoulder. His father’s hand gripped the back of his neck.
Tom’s chest rose and fell unevenly against him. Brice could feel it, that slight tremor that meant his father was fighting something back. He pulled away slightly, enough to see Tom’s face.
His father’s eyes were wet. Not crying, not quite, but close.
“You getting soft on me, old man?” Brice said, forcing a grin.
Tom laughed, the sound rough. He wiped at his eye with the back of his hand. “You’ll understand one day.”
Brice’s throat tightened. He nodded, not trusting his voice.
Tom pulled him in for another quick hug, this one briefer, harder. Then he released him, stepping back and clearing his throat. Liz’s hand found Brice’s arm, squeezing once before letting go.
“Come on,” Tom said, his voice returning to normal. “Let’s get out of here before they find you again.”
…
Skylar shook her head as she moved down the hallway toward the stairs. James had been asleep for forty-five minutes. Forty-five precious minutes where she’d finally changed into her pajamas, finally sat down, finally felt her body start to relax.
“Did you order food?” she called up toward her parents’ room.
“No!” her mother’s voice came back, muffled through the closed door.
The doorbell rang again.
Skylar’s feet hit the stairs harder than necessary, her hand gripping the railing. If this was some delivery driver at the wrong house, if they’d just woken James up—
“I’ll get it,” her father’s voice came from above. His bedroom door opened, and he appeared at the top of the stairs in his pajamas and robe, his hair sticking up on one side, "Probably some fucking solicitor. It’s these fucking solar panels that they keep pushing on us."
Skylar stepped aside, letting him pass. She stayed on the landing, arms crossed, listening to his footsteps cross the living room. The lock clicked. The door opened.
“Oh,” her father’s voice shifted from cautious to surprised. “Hey, come in, come in.”
Skylar’s arms dropped. She moved down the remaining stairs, rounding the corner into the living room.
Brice stood in the doorway, a bouquet of roses in one hand, a Christmas themed gift bag in the other. His eyes found hers, then dropped to her pajamas. His mouth opened slightly.
“Shit,” he said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize—“
“It’s alright,” Skylar’s father said, already closing the door behind Brice. “With a baby, once they go to sleep, you go to sleep. Otherwise you never sleep.”
“I should’ve called first,” Brice shifted the roses to his other hand, "I was just dropping these off."
“Nonsense, you’re already here,” her father gestured toward the living room. “Come sit down.”
Skylar’s mother appeared, tying her robe, her eyes landing on Brice. Her expression didn’t change much, just a slight tightening around her mouth.
“Well,” she said. “This is a surprise.”
“I’m sorry for showing up unannounced,” Brice said again, "Didn’t realize he went down this early."
“You’d know that if you spent more than five minutes with the baby,” her mother muttered, just loud enough for Brice to hear.
Skylar’s face reddened. She moved toward Brice, reaching for the roses. "I see you come bearing gifts."
“Yeah,” he handed them over, his fingers brushing hers briefly. "We got them after the game. I figured you’d like them more than I would.”
Skylar brought them to her nose, inhaling. “That was a smart assumption. Thank you."
“Congratulations on the win,” her father said, moving toward the couch. “That was one hell of a game."
Brice forced a chuckle. "Thank you."
Skylar moved toward the kitchen, searching for a vase. She could hear them talking, the confidence returning in Brice’s voice that she was familiar with.
“Georgia’s defense was no joke,” her father was saying. "But you guys handled it. Clemson ain’t no picnic either, though."
“They’re good,” Brice scratched his beard, "I don’t know if they’re Georgia good but they’re good."
Skylar found a vase under the sink, filled it with water, and carefully arranged the roses. The conversation continued in the living room, her father clearly enjoying the conversation.
"I also brought some stuff for James,” Brice said, that confident tone and cadence no longer there. "We were so busy last week…"
Skylar carried the vase back into the living room. Brice was pulling wrapped packages from the shopping bag, setting them on the coffee table. Her father was nodding. Her mother stood near the stairs, watching, her arms crossed.
“That’s very thoughtful,” her father said.
“I’ll go get him,” Skylar said, setting the vase on the side table.
“He’s sleeping,” her mother said sharply.
She could feel her mother’s stare following her up the stairs. James’s room was dark except for the nightlight, and he was on his back in the crib, his arms thrown up beside his head. She lifted him carefully, supporting his head, bringing him against her chest. When she came back downstairs, her mother was already heading back up to her room, shaking her head. Her father stood, moving toward the stairs.
“Thanks for stopping by,” he said to Brice, clapping him on the shoulder. “Good luck next week. We’ll be watching.”
“Appreciate it,” Brice said.
Skylar moved to the couch, still holding James. She sat down, adjusting the baby in her arms. Brice settled into the chair across from her. The silence stretched. James’s breathing was soft and even against her chest. Brice’s eyes moved from the baby to the presents on the coffee table to the roses to anywhere except her face.
“What are your plans?” Skylar asked.
Brice looked up. “What?”
“Your plans. What are they?”
His eyebrows drew together. “For what? The game? We got today and tomorrow off and we start practicing again after that. We’ll fly out in a cou—”
“No,” Skylar shifted James slightly. “I’m not talking about the fucking game, Brice. I’m talking about how you plan to be here for James, to be a father to him."
Brice’s mouth opened. Closed. His hands moved to his knees. “I—I mean, I’m trying to—“
“Showing up here or there after a football game isn’t fatherhood,” she cut him off.
“I know that.”
“Do you?” She could hear her voice rising slightly and forced it back down. "I really don’t want to go back to the lawyers but—"
Brice took a deep breath. “I’m trying to figure it out.”
“Figure it out faster,” Skylar looked down at James, at his small face, his closed eyes. “No matter how we got here, we’re here. This is real. James is a person. He needs a father. His father is you. His father will always be you.”
Brice didn’t say anything.
“No matter how long it takes you to accept that, the end result is the same,” she continued. “And you’re only digging yourself a deeper hole. You think you can make up for this later? Buy him a fucking car when he’s sixteen and call it even? That’s not how it works. Once these years are gone, you don’t get them back.”
The silence pressed in. Skylar watched Brice’s face, watched him processing, watched him struggling with something he couldn’t quite articulate. This wasn’t Cover 3.
Then his arms came out, reaching toward her.
She stood, moving carefully, and transferred James into Brice’s arms. The baby settled against his chest, his small hand curling into Brice’s shirt. Brice looked down at him, his expression unreadable.
“I didn’t ask for any of this,” he said quietly.
“You don’t just get the shit you ask for in life, Brice,” Skylar said, sitting back down. “What are you, fucking five?”
…
Connie’s phone buzzed on the table. She glanced at it. Dr. Mendel’s office. She swiped the notification away without reading it and went back to the documents spread across the sticky diner table.
The birth certificates Kavern had given her were arranged in three rows. She’d memorized every name by now. Emma Richardson. Olivia Leonard. Ava Martinez. The list continued, twelve possibilities, twelve lives that might contain her daughter.
Her phone sat face-up beside her coffee cup. The message thread with Kavern stared back at her, her last text still marked unread. Two days. Almost forty-eight hours of silence. Maybe he’d realized how fucked up this was. Maybe he’d decided helping her was more trouble than it was worth. Maybe he’d gotten in trouble for pulling those records in the first place.
She picked up the birth certificate on top. Sophia Johnson. Born 10:27 AM. The time was wrong. She’d given birth in the afternoon. But adoptive parents changed things. Kavern had said so. They filed new certificates, altered dates, made it harder to trace.
Her daughter would be almost five now. Not a baby anymore. A kid. A person with thoughts and preferences and a whole life Connie knew nothing about.
What would she even say if she found her?
The thought lodged in her chest. Her daughter wouldn’t understand. Wouldn’t know who this random woman was or why she was crying. Would just see a stranger showing up at her daycare or her house or wherever, disrupting her life.
And the parents. The real parents, the ones who’d raised her, who’d been there for every long night and bad dream. Would they even let Connie near her? Why would they? What right did Connie have to—
Brice.
Walking across the street, heading directly toward the diner.
Her hands moved before her brain caught up, gathering the papers, shoving them into a messy pile. She grabbed for her phone. The door chime sounded as he pushed it open.
Fuck.
She abandoned the documents and bolted for the bathroom, her chair scraping loud against the floor. The bathroom door was at the back, past the counter, and she moved fast, not looking at him, not checking if he’d seen her.
The door swung shut behind her and she pressed her back against it, her chest heaving. The sink dripped. The lights above her buzzed. Her heart hammered so hard she could feel it in her throat.
That bathroom at Skylar’s house. The memory hit her without warning. Brice following her in, she was drunk out of her mind, he probably was too, the argument that had spiraled into something else entirely. She’d thought they were forever then. Thought she knew exactly how her life would unfold. Mrs. Colton. Brice’s wife. The mother of his children.
Instead she’d ended up here. Hiding in a diner bathroom. Alone. Childless because she’d given hers away.
If she could go back to that night. Just leave the party early. Go home. Wake up hungover but unchanged. Everything that came after, all of it, could have been avoided.
The weight pressed down on her chest. The bathroom walls felt too close. Her thoughts were worse in here, louder, more insistent. She needed to get out.
She cracked the door open, peering into the diner.
Brice stood at the counter, takeout bag in hand. The cashier was processing his card. He wasn’t looking her direction. Wasn’t looking anywhere except his phone.
He took his bag and turned toward the exit. The door chimed as he left.
Connie exhaled and stepped out of the bathroom. Her legs felt unsteady as she walked back to her table. Her stomach dropped. She spun, scanning the booth, the floor, under the table. Nothing. Just her coffee up. The documents were gone.
“Excuse me!” She flagged down the nearest server, a woman in her forties with tired eyes. “The papers that were on my table, where did they go?”
The woman’s face shifted to apologetic. “Oh honey, I’m so sorry. I thought you were done. I threw them out.”
“You what?”
“I thought they were trash. You left them sitting there and—“ The woman gestured toward the back. “I’m really sorry. We get a lot of homeless people leaving their shit everywhere and I just assumed—“
Connie was already moving. Past the counter, through the kitchen door, ignoring the shouts behind her. The trash can sat near the back door, a large industrial bin overflowing with garbage.
Her hands plunged into it. Coffee grounds. Soggy napkins. Someone’s half-eaten burger. She dug deeper, her fingers closing around paper. She pulled out a handful of documents, stained brown with coffee, grease spots bleeding through.
Her vision blurred. The papers trembled in her hands. She sank to her knees on the filthy kitchen floor, employees staring at her. She pressed the ruined documents against her chest and sobbed.
…
Serena’s nose wrinkled as Brice pulled the patty melt from the microwave. He carried the plate back to her bed, settling against the wall with his legs stretched out, already taking a bite before he’d fully sat down.
“God, that’s disgusting,” she said, turning back to the cardboard box on her desk.
Brice chewed slowly, his eyes half-closed. “You don’t understand. These are fucking gas, bro."
“It’s been sitting in your car for two hours.”
“Oh my god, the two I had on the drive?” He took another bite, talking through it. "This still beats anything you can get up here."
Serena pulled textbooks from the box, stacking them on the desk. Behind her, on the dresser, sat the roses he’d brought.
“How was South Bend?” she asked, not looking at him.
Brice shrugged. “Fine.”
She pulled out more books, arranging them by size. The silence stretched. She could hear him chewing.
“Did you get to see your son?”
Brice’s chewing slowed. He swallowed. “That’s the first time you’ve asked about him.”
Serena’s hands stilled on a chemistry textbook. “I’ve been respecting your privacy.”
“Why stop now?”
Serena turned slightly, enough to see his profile. He was staring at his plate, his jaw working on another bite, his expression unreadable. She turned back to her box, pulling out a spiral notebook, then another, stacking them beside the textbooks. The sound of cardboard scraping cardboard filled the space where words should have been.
Brice’s fork scraped against his plate again. Then the sound of him chewing. Then nothing except the distant noise of other students moving through the hallway outside.
Serena’s hands moved through the box mechanically. Pens. Highlighters. A calculator she’d used maybe twice last semester. She arranged them in the desk drawer, each item placed with more care than it deserved.
Behind her, Brice shifted on the bed. The mattress springs creaked. She waited for him to say something, to answer her question, to do anything except sit there eating his disgusting reheated patty melt.
He didn’t.
She pulled out the last items from the box: loose papers, old assignments she’d meant to throw away. She stacked them in a pile, then flattened the empty box, leaning it against the wall.
He took one more bite. Then the sound of the plate being set on her nightstand.
Serena stayed at the desk, her hands resting on the wooden surface, her back to him. The roses caught her eye in the mirror above the dresser. Red petals, already starting to droop slightly at the edges.
