The goalie dove. The ball tipped off her outstretched fingers.
And into the net.
I fell to my knees, pretty sure that I was screaming. Audra flew at me from beside the goal and slammed into me with a whomp, tackling the pair of us to the ground.
"You bloody brilliant queen!" she shouted, as the rest of the team crushed atop us in a victory scrum. Deanna threw her arms around me, tears streaming down her cheeks, while Reyna let out a victory scream as she dove onto Deanna's shoulders.
Somewhere, beyond all the cheering, the ref blew her whistle, ending the game.
It was all a blur as we climbed to our feet, a tangle of arms and legs and laughs and tears. Somehow, we formed a semblance of a line to shake hands with Harcourt, and then suddenly Reyna had her hands on the championship banner.
"All right, grab your sweatbands! It's picture time!" she whooped, hanging off Deanna's shoulders again, waving the banner like a cape.
My feet ground to a halt. I'd been so caught up in laughing and hugging and celebrating that I hadn't noticed the varsity boys, all of them in their team sweatshirts, handing out flamingo pink sweatbands.
No. Not now. Not right in the middle of this victory. Not during the biggest win of my entire life. I wasn't going to let anything rain on this parade.
I grabbed Audra's arm. "Let me take JJ's."
"Yeah, whatever!" she said brightly, then called out to Gyeong-Ja, who was fighting her way through the throng of bodies coursing onto the field from the bleachers.
I kept my eyes straight ahead, fixed on Audra's brother, and studiously avoided looking at any of the other varsity boys. He'd stretched up on tiptoe, only noticing me when I planted myself in front of him.
"I think that's mine," I said, reaching for the sweatband.
He held it away with a gentle smile. "This one's not for you, love. But that one is." He pointed over my shoulder.
Something swooped low in my stomach. JJ must've read the hesitation all over my face, because he rested a hand on my shoulder and turned me.
Theo stared at me through the crowd and, the moment our eyes met, his expression brightened into a grin. Not the arrogant, razor's edge one. The open one. The honest one. The one from Thanksgiving. It kicked the air straight from my lungs.
Somehow, I forced my legs to move. He spun the sweatband around his finger as I approached, and it was absolutely unfair how good he looked in his jeans and leather varsity jacket.
I reached for the hot pink blur to get this over with. "If you're doing this to gloat—"
He held it away. "Gloat? About what? That was all you. And damn was it gorgeous."
I hated the way my breath shuddered when I exhaled, so I crossed my arms. Determined not to look at him and that grin that was making my knees feel all wobbly again, I said, "Then what do you want?"
"To talk to you. It's been kind of hard to do lately." He held out the sweatband.
I frowned. That wasn't fair. It's not like I was the one who'd started the whole ignoring each other business. That was all him, and I didn't like his implication that I was behind it.
"If it's so important, you could've just replied to my texts." I tried to swipe the sweatband, but he'd hooked a finger into it and didn't let go.
At least he had the grace to look ashamed. "Yeah...see, that's the thing." He tugged on the sweatband, pulling us a step closer together. "I owe you an apology. For that, and everything else."
Completely against my will—and as if I hadn't just sprinted for 90 minutes of intense cardio—my heart took off at a gallop. I tried desperately to rein it in, mortified that it had only taken a few words to get me right back to hoping again. But all that he'd said was that he wanted to apologize, nothing more. He was still with Madeleine, and I really didn't want to be so pathetic that I melted into a puddle because my fake ex had said something nice.
Theo glanced at something over my shoulder and released his end of the sweatband. "This is your moment, though." His eyes found mine again, with that happy, relaxed crinkle from Thanksgiving, and I couldn't have looked away if I'd wanted to. "So come find me after."
I opened my mouth to tell him to just spit out what else he had to say. But I didn't get a chance to before I staggered, knocked off balance by Audra, who'd leaped onto my back.
"Oy, it's time for pictures!" she shouted, and Theo was already backing away, hands buried in his pockets. Audra slid off and yanked me after her, towards where Coach Patel was instructing all of us to gather at the net.
Plagued by curiosity and terrible, beautiful hope, my heart thundered in my ears as the school photographer lined us all up for the championship photo. I tried to shake it off, scolding myself for being ridiculous. While Coach Patel handed out our medals, I managed to calm myself enough to take it and echo Audra and Deanna's victory whoop.
"Well done, Ellie." Coach Patel looped mine around my neck with the tight smile she only ever used when she was really, really happy.
The photographer called out directions, and we all shuffled and arranged ourselves accordingly. When we were asked to smile, Audra clamped an arm around my shoulders, her medal between her teeth. Alongside a number of other spectators, Gyeong-Ja snapped a photo on her phone, hopping with excitement.
"All right, let's get one last one with those sweatbands and a cheer," the photographer said. We all pulled our hot pink prizes on, giggling, and my team's screams of victory drowned out the Harcourt bus as it grumbled out of the parking lot.
"Selfie time," Audra said, hauling me towards Gyeong-Ja, who was ready with her selfie-stick. We snapped a few, and then JJ jumped in behind us. Audra cuffed him and ordered him away, only for Deanna and her boyfriend to jump in and photobomb us in his place.
As the sun sank and the wind picked up, the crowd on the field dispersed. After a few more selfies, I followed the rest of the team back towards the bench.
Behind it, Theo sat on the empty bleachers, elbows on his knees. The way his smile grew at my approach only worsened the pounding in my chest. It was more than a little mortifying that I was feeling almost as nervous to talk to him as I'd been when I'd walked up to the penalty spot. With a shiver, I pulled on my sweatshirt and changed out of my cleats.
"Shall we leave you to it?" Gyeong-Ja asked archly, eyeing Theo.
"Or should we tell him to bugger off?" Audra said, as she packed away her gloves and kneepads.
"It's fine." I took a deep breath and stood. Hefting my sports bag over my shoulder, I did everything I could to look nonchalant and hide the fact that my ears were ringing with the racket my heart was making in my chest.
I tried to think of something witty and fantastic to say as I climbed the bleachers to where Theo sat. But my brain seemed to have stopped working, so I settled on plunking down beside him instead.
He looked sidelong at me, studying me with a smile, then leaned over to bump me with his shoulder. "Look at us. Varsity champions."
Even though I relished that tiny bit of contact, I wasn't about to pretend everything was back to the way it used to be between us.
"Spit it out Ellerby," I said, fishing my water bottle out of my bag. "I came for an apology, not to hear you gloat."
He chuckled. "You always were straight to the point. So I guess I'll just get to it." His eyes never left my face when he said, "I broke up with Madeleine."
I nearly choked on my water. "What?"
His lips twitched. "It was never really official. But whatever it was, it's over now."
I stared at him, then out at the field, not daring to let my damned heart think that this was going where it wanted it to go. When I realized I'd stopped breathing, I sucked in a lungful of crisp air.
"That's too bad," I managed. "What happened?"
"Well, it's a bit of a long story. But it had a lot to do with me being a jerk and finally coming to my senses, way too late." He slid closer so our shoulders met. "And then there's the fact I can't stop thinking about someone else."
I couldn't keep my eyes from seeking his. From checking if this was all just some kind of joke again or if, by some miracle, he really meant it. But they weren't dancing with laughter, and his lips hadn't sliced into a smirk. Instead, he was wearing the same earnest, hopeful expression he'd worn back in my bedroom. As if he was holding his breath, too, in anticipation of my reaction.
I swallowed. "You left me on read."
"I know." He hung his head. "I was an asshole. A gigantic one. I'm sorry, Ellie."
It felt so right to hear my name on his lips again. Not my nickname, but my real name. I didn't lean away when he reached out to tuck a piece of my hair into the hideous pink sweatband he'd given me. But I did close my eyes when his fingers lingered.
"I should've listened to you," he went on. "I should've figured out what William had done and I should never have taken his word over yours." He reached for my hand. I let him take it, savouring the warmth of his fingers as they threaded with mine. "He knew exactly how to hit me where it hurt the most, and I'm enough of a dumbass that I fell for it. Again. I wasn't thinking straight, and I believed him when he said that you'd thrown yourself at him over and over, even after we were supposed to be dating. It was just like—"
"Just like Madeleine," I finished for him. "Is that why you ignored me?"
His fingers tightened around mine. He sighed. "I mean...yeah. I was mad. At William. At you. At myself. I didn't know what to believe. And then you went and told Madeleine, and I got even more confused. You'd told me that you'd wanted me all along, and yet there you were, wrecking Madeleine and William's relationship like you really did want to date him."
I set my jaw. "I didn't do it for him. I did it because I thought that's what you wanted. And it was only fair that I follow through with the plan after...everything."
He scraped a hand through his hair. "I figured as much when I heard that you'd nearly clawed his eyes out in some hallway shouting match. That's when it started to make sense—you hadn't broken them up for yourself, you'd broken them up for me. But by then, I'd been ignoring you for days and I didn't know how to come back from that—it's not exactly something you put in a text, you know? And you were avoiding me, and working so damned hard all the time. I didn't want to mess with your focus and risk you thinking I was an even bigger asshole for making it all about me."
I snorted a laugh. "How considerate." A beat of silence passed before I asked. "If you knew all that...why'd you still date her?"
His chest rose and fell. He shook his head. "Because I thought I still wanted to. Because she was reeling, too, and it was easier to just date her instead of being alone with my thoughts to figure this whole thing out."
"You don't say," I muttered.
"I know I screwed up, Ellie. But I didn't do it to hurt you. That's just...what I do. I date someone else when stuff goes wrong so I don't have to deal with it. It's easier than trying to fix things."
I fiddled with my water bottle. "So why now? What changed?"
"Because I realized it was real for me, too." His eyes were pinched when I looked up at him. "I realized that I couldn't stop thinking about you because it mattered to me. Because you got me. You made me feel seen for the first time in my life, not as an Ellerby, or as William's brother, but as me. For who I really am. Or at least, who I want to be. And I think I really only knew it when I saw you at the game, standing up and screaming at the ref on my behalf. Like you still cared, even after all the shit I put you through.
"And when you were waiting for me after our game—when you finally looked at me—it was like winning all over again." He scraped his free hand across the back of his neck. "I was so happy, Ellie, because I knew it then. All I wanted to do was march across the field and kiss you."
Something squeezed painfully tight in my chest when I looked up at him.
"That's why I hope you can forgive me." His smile was an uncertain, tentative thing. As if I actually held his heart for real, and he hoped I wouldn't break it. "And maybe, if I'm lucky, you'll agree to go out with me. For real this time."
It felt like flying and falling all at once. Like the curl of my ball into the net, or the triumph of acing a history test. But this was just that much sweeter because Theo was a real, tangible, solid weight beside me, hanging on my every word as if they were more important than anything else in the world.
I bit my cheek against the giddy, ridiculous grin threatening to split my face and gave an exaggerated shrug. "I dunno..."
His brows crashed together, and his eyes skated all over my face.
"I might be open to it," I continued, pretending to study my nails and completely losing the battle to my grin. "If you grovel sufficiently, and—"
"Ellie," he said, his voice rough.
When I looked up at him, he seized my face and kissed me. I laughed against his lips, nearly flinging my water bottle away as I threw my arms around him.
It was so much better than our first kiss, and a damned good rival to the thrill of our second. But this one was something else entirely. This kiss wasn't tentative, it was certain. And, with the way it filled up the gaping hole in my chest with something hot and giddy and hopeful, it felt a hell of a lot like coming home. And, for the first time, I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was real.
"I can't believe you said 'I dunno,'" he said into my hair.
I laughed. "You should have seen the look on your face."
He folded me into his arms and hauled me onto his lap. "You really are trouble, Emdubs."
I framed his face with my hands. "But I'm your trouble, Tee."
His smile could've lit the world, and I loved that it was all for me.
**A/N: Ahhhh I loved writing this chapter SO MUCH!! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, and as always, please take a moment to vote and comment 😊
Next up is the epilogue, but I've had so much fun sharing this with you all that I'm considering doing some bonus Theo POV chapters. I have a few in mind, and I know I asked already, but now that we're at the end I'm curious which chapters are the ones you as readers really want to see from his POV! Let me know!**