Chapter 50 : The Field Light
HAYDEN’S POV
I should’ve gone home.
That’s what a normal person would’ve done. After a conversation like that, after watching Lilian walk away like I’d just handed her something fragile and told her not to drop it, I should’ve grabbed my bag and left.
Instead, I stayed.
The field lights hummed overhead. The campus had gone quiet in that eerie way it does when everyone’s inside studying or pretending to. The bleachers felt colder now, metal seeping through my practice shorts.
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, staring at the grass.
There’s no one else.
The words tasted like a lie even though technically they weren’t. I wasn’t seeing anyone. I wasn’t texting someone behind her back. I wasn’t sneaking around.
But that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone sitting in the center of my chest like a weight I couldn’t shift.
Stephen.
I scrubbed a hand down my face.
This was messed up and confusing in a way I didn’t have a label for. He was my adopted brother. The person who’d taught me how to tie my cleats and throw a punch and fake confidence when I didn’t feel it.
And lately, when he looked at me, something inside me cracked open.
“Are you going to sit there all night?”
My head snapped up.
Stephen stood at the edge of the field, hands shoved into the pockets of his hoodie. The locker room lights behind him cast him half in shadow.
My stomach dropped.
“I thought you left,” I said.
“Forgot my headphones.” He walked closer, slow, deliberate steps. “Coach locked up, so I had to wait.”
I nodded like that made sense. Like I hadn’t just felt my pulse jump into my throat.
He stopped a few feet in front of me. Close enough that I could see the tension in his jaw.
“You talked to her,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“How’d it go?”
I shrugged. “Fine.”
His eyes flicked over my face, searching. “That’s not an answer.”
“You don’t get to use that line,” I muttered.
One corner of his mouth twitched, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “So what did you tell her?”
“That I need time.”
He held my gaze for a second too long. “Time for what?”
There it was again. The question everyone kept asking like I had some neat explanation tucked in my back pocket.
“I don’t know,” I snapped. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
“Because you’ve been different,” he shot back. "Because you look at me like I’m….”
He cut himself off.
“Like you’re what?” I pushed, standing up so we were eye to eye.
The air between us felt charged. Like right before a storm breaks.
“Like I’m the reason,” he finished quietly.
The words hit harder than I expected.
“You think this is your fault?” I asked.
“I don’t know what to think.” His voice wasn’t angry now. Just raw. “One minute we’re fine. Next, you can’t even be in the same room with me without looking like you’re about to bolt.”
I swallowed.
“You told me last night that I stopped being me,” I said. “Maybe I’m just trying to figure out who that is.”
“Don’t do that.” His eyes darkened. “Don’t turn this into some philosophical crap. This is about us.”
The word is twisted in my chest.
“We’re brothers,” I said automatically.
“Yeah,” he replied. But it sounded like a question.
Silence stretched.
The wind picked up, rustling the goal nets behind us. Somewhere in the distance, a car door slammed.
“You ever feel like something shifts,” he said slowly, “and you can’t shift it back?”
My breath caught.
“All the time,” I admitted.
His gaze dropped to my mouth for half a second but it was enough.
The realization hit me like a punch.
It wasn’t just me.
The thought was terrifying and worse…it was relieving.
“You’re not losing your mind,” he said quietly.
I froze. “What?”
He let out a shaky breath. “You think I haven’t noticed? The way you pull away. The way you look at me and then look anywhere else.”
My pulse roared in my ears. “Stephen…..”
“I’ve been trying to ignore it,” he continued. “Telling myself it’s just stress. Or that you’re confused. Or that I imagined it.”
“You didn’t imagine it,” I said before I could stop myself.
The words hung there, irreversible. His eyes snapped back to mine.
For a second, neither of us moved.
This was the edge. The line you don’t cross if you want things to stay the same.
He stepped closer. “Say that again,” he said, barely above a whisper.
I should’ve walked away and laughed it off.
Instead, I said, “You didn’t imagine it.”
The space between us vanished.
He grabbed the front of my hoodie—not aggressively, just enough to anchor me there. His hand was shaking.
“We can’t,” he said.
I nodded. “I know.”
But neither of us moved back.
My heart was beating so hard it felt like it was shaking my ribs. I could feel the heat of him, the familiar scent of his detergent, the same one that had always smelled like home.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
“We’re not those people,” he said.
“What people?”
“The ones who ruin everything.”
My chest tightened. “Maybe it’s already ruined.”
His grip tightened slightly and then….A voice cut through the dark.
“What the hell is going on?”
We both jerked apart.
Lilian stood at the edge of the field, frozen. Her cheer bag hung limp at her side.
She must’ve come back. For her phone or maybe she just forgot something small and stupid that didn’t matter.
Except now it mattered.
Her eyes darted between us. The distance we’d just put between ourselves wasn’t enough. Not after what she’d seen.
“What did I just walk in on?” she asked, her voice thin.
“Nothing,” Stephen said too quickly.
Her gaze snapped to him. “You don’t get to answer.”
I felt like the ground had tilted under my feet.
“It’s not what you think,” I said.
“Then tell me what to think, Hayden.” Her eyes were shining now, but she wasn’t crying. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like I was right.”
My mind scrambled for something….anything….that wouldn’t detonate the entire world.
“There’s no one else,” I had told her and technically, that was true. But I hadn’t said there wasn’t something else.
Lilian’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Is this why you needed time?”
I looked at Stephen and he looked at me. And in that split second, I realized the real twist wasn’t that she’d caught us.
It was that I didn’t regret what almost happened.
“I….” My voice cracked.
Stephen stepped forward slightly, protective instinct kicking in like it always did. “Lilian…..”
“Don’t,” he said sharply. “Just don’t.”
The field lights buzzed overhead, harsh and unforgiving. She looked at me one last time and she ran off.