Home Field

Need You More Than Ever

Y/N POV

People always say your senior year goes by fast. They never tell you it can end in a single second.

One second I was standing in the girls' bathroom of Athens High School staring at a white stick with shaky hands, and the next I was trying to breathe around the fact that two pink lines had just changed the rest of my life.

Positive.

I blinked hard at it. Then again. Like maybe if I looked long enough the answer would change for me.

Outside the bathroom door, I could hear graduation chaos spilling through the halls. Teachers yelling directions. Girls fixing makeup. Parents arriving. Someone laughing too loudly.

The world kept moving. Mine stopped. I looked down at my phone again.

9:14 AM.

Graduation started in forty-six minutes and I was pregnant.

A horrible sound caught in my throat before I swallowed it down hard. My hands trembled so badly the test almost slipped from my fingers.

No. No no no.

This wasn't supposed to happen to me. Not now. Not today. Not when everything already felt like it was falling apart.

I squeezed my eyes shut. And like my stupid heart always did when things hurt, it thought of Joe.

Joe would know what to say. Joe would tell me to breathe first. Joe would take the test out of my hands and say, "Okay, we're gonna figure it out."

Joe would sit on the bathroom counter like he had a hundred times before after football games or bad dates or panic attacks about college applications and make me laugh until I could think straight again.

Except Joe didn't do that anymore.

Because Joe Burrow and I hadn't really been Joe and Y/N in almost a year. And somehow that hurt even worse than the positive test in my hand.

I stared at my reflection in the mirror. White graduation dress. Green cap sitting crooked on the counter. Mascara already smudging underneath my eyes.

I looked terrified. I looked seventeen. A memory hit me so hard it almost knocked the air out of me.

—

"C'mon, slowpoke!"

I shrieked as Joe grabbed my backpack and sprinted down the sidewalk with it.

"JOE!"

He laughed loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear, turning around while still running backward.

"You gotta be faster than that, sweetheart!"

I hated when he called me sweetheart. Mostly because I loved it.

I was twelve the first time I realized Joe Burrow would ruin my life someday.

Not in a dramatic way.

Not intentionally.

Just because loving him felt as natural as breathing, and I knew, even then, that boys like Joe never belonged entirely to one person.

Golden boy. Football star. Everybody's favorite.

Meanwhile I was just me.

The girl next door.

Literally.

Our moms were best friends before we were born, which meant Joe had been in my life longer than I could remember.

There were baby pictures of us in matching pajamas.