-Alec-
She turned to me slowly, eyes rimmed pink, her mouth barely forming the start of a sentence. “Alec… I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to treat it like something casual. I didn’t even think about what football meant to you—”
“I know.”
I said it before she could keep apologizing.
Her brows knit together, lips still parted, unsure.
I gave a small breath of a laugh. Not a mocking one. Just… quiet. Real.
“I know now,” I said again, softer this time. “You don’t have to explain it.”
But the look on her face—it held so much. Guilt, surprise, something like hurt, but not quite. She needed to say something, so I let her.
“I joined because I wanted to try. I was scared, honestly. And I didn’t expect to like it the way I do now. But… once I started, it became something else. Like it wasn’t j
