He’s not grinning. Not teasing. His expression is thoughtful, assessing in that calm, logistics-first way he defaults to when things are unstable.
“You walked out holding his hand,” Miles continues, nodding toward Rafe. “You didn’t react to the bait questions. You didn’t speed up. You didn’t look down. That matters.”
I hadn’t even thought about those details. They’d been instinct, muscle memory, something I chose without consciously choosing it.
“It didn’t feel that deliberate,” I admit.
“That’s the point,” Miles says. “It means you weren’t performing. You were just… there.”
Rafe’s thumb brushes over my knuckles once, subtle but grounding.
I let that sit for a moment.
Miles leans back against the seat, exhaling through his nose. “Also,” he adds, tone shifting just enough to ease the air, “if the visiting section wants to boo every time you score, that sounds like a cardio problem for them.”
A faint laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
Rafe snorts softly. “He did feed off it a little.”
“I did not.”
“You absolutely did,” Miles says. “Fourth quarter, you hit that baseline pull-up and looked directly at them.”
“I did not look directly at them.”
“You lookedadjacent,” Rafe amends, lips curving faintly.
Heat creeps up my neck. “I was looking at the clock.”
Miles raises a brow. “Sure.”
The teasing is gentle, deliberate. Not dismissive of what just happened, but not letting it swallow the space either.
I roll my shoulders once, feeling the last of the adrenaline taper. “It was loud,” I say, quieter now. “But not how I thought it would be.”
Rafe studies me. “Worse?”
“No.” I shake my head. “Cleaner.”
That’s the only word that fits. The boos were boos. The cheers were cheers. Nothing coded. Nothing sharp enough to slice open something old.
Miles nods slowly. “That’s because you took the narrative back.”
I glance at him. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You played,” he says simply. “And you didn’t shrink.”
The word lands heavier than I expect.
Rafe’s squeezes my hand. Not possessive, not urgent. Just present.
Outside, the arena lights fade behind us, swallowed by the winter dark. My phone buzzes in my pocket, a reminder that the outside world is still spinning at full speed, but for this moment, in the insulated quiet of the car, it feels contained.
I let my head tip back against the seat.
“I’m okay,” I say again, and this time it feels less like reassurance and more like truth.
Rafe watches me for another second before nodding. Miles doesn’t say anything else, but I can feel it in the way he settles back, satisfied.