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He takes off like a missile. I don’t back off. I meet him head-on. Full speed.

We collide, and time folds in on itself—bones, blood, breath all surging toward one brutal moment. But I’m not only bracing for impact. I twist––intentionally––at the perfect moment. Shift my weight, rotate my hips, absorb his momentum and redirect it.

He hits me, but it’s not clean. It’s off-balance. And his own force betrays him.

Snap.

A sick, wet crunch echoes over the field.

Tyson crumples like a dropped puppet. He screams—loud, ragged, real. The type of scream that shuts down stadiums.

All at once, the air gets sucked from the world. Fans frozen. Players stilled. Whistle lost somewhere in the haze.

He’s not moving. One look at his leg and I know why—it’s bent sideways at the hip, off-track and jarring, as if his body forgot which way it was supposed to bend.

The ref calls for medics. Someone shouts for a stretcher as I stand over him. Breathing hard. Adrenaline thundering. And it hits all at once—everything he’s done to me. Everything he’s done to Magnolia.

The whistle shrills through the noise, piercing and urgent. Medics burst onto the field, sprinting with the stretcher. Tyson’s moaning—loud, guttural, raw. One hand claws at the ground as he tries to get up, attempting to undo what has happened, but he’s not going anywhere.

I stand over him, unmoving.

I should feel something. Guilt. Relief. Maybe even pride. But there’s only silence inside me.

His eyes find mine, wild and glossed with pain, as he realizes he’s not the predator anymore. He opens his mouth and chokes on his own breath. “You?—”

I don’t let him finish.

I lean down, voice low and even. “Happy early retirement.”

Then I straighten and walk away.

No glance back to see how bad it is or if they’ve stabilized his leg. With every step of distance, the past sloughs off me.

The crowd is roaring again, but it’s far away––muffled and blurred as though I’m moving underwater. Coaches are shouting. The ref’s still blowing the whistle. Someone’s calling my name.

I keep walking—neither triumphant nor ashamed. There’s no pride, but regret doesn’t touch me either. Only a strange stillness, something inside me settled. The last page of this chapter has written itself and what’s left isn’t emotion—it’s resolve.

By the time I hit the sideline, the stadium’s electric, every spectator caught somewhere between shock and awe.

Coach doesn’t say a word. Macklin glances at me, jaw tight. He knows better than to ask if I’m okay. The trainers hover, someone pressing a water bottle into my hand. I take it, but I don’t drink.

The announcer’s voice breaks through the buzz, voice cracking like static. “Sebring’s back, and he’s not here to play safe.”

I sit on the bench, elbows to knees, still catching my breath even though the game is on pause, even though the stadium’s going wild. My pulse hasn’t slowed, and my hands won’t unclench.

Revenge. Justice. Survival.

And I’m not sorry.

When the game ends, the whistle blows, sharp and final. The stadium erupts, not just with noise but with belief.

We did it. The scoreboard confirms it. We came back and won.

The locker room explodes the second I step through the door.

It’s thunder and heat and an energy that crackles off the skin. Teammates are shouting over each other, slapping my back, bumping shoulders, yelling my name.

“Sebring! The Wall! You mad bastard—holy shit, that was a takedown.”

Someone shoves a towel at me, someone else pops a beer and hands it over. There’s music playing—loud, chaotic, bass thumping. It matches the pulse still hammering under my skin.

I’m buzzing because I took it back. I showed every single one of them who the fuck I am. Who I’ve always been.

No one handed this to me. I earned it.

Coach walks past, doesn’t stop, doesn’t make a big deal—but his hand clamps once on my shoulder, firm and brief. “Nice work, Sebring.” Which, in coach terms, is a standing ovation.

Macklin is grinning, arms crossed, nodding. “That’s how you take your damn job back.”

I shake my head, half-smiling. “Didn’t feel like a job out there.”

He shrugs. “That’s because it never was. It’s who you are. It’s in your blood.”

More backslaps, more noise, a whirl of heat and motion. I let it wash over me.

Declan steps in front of me. He’s still sweating, lip cracked, a fresh bruise blooming on his cheekbone. But he holds out a hand. I stare at it for a beat, and take it.

He grips hard. “I see it now. Why they want you back so bad and why it’s time for me to get out of your way.”

I arch a brow, surprised.

He shakes his head, voice low. “I thought I could be what they needed, but this team doesn’t run on a system. It runs on you , and I can’t be that. So it’s time I find a team that fits the way I play.”

Respect. Not surrender. And that’s good enough.

The room keeps spinning, noise bouncing off the walls, but I barely register it. Because my gaze keeps flicking toward the door.

Beyond the noise to the hallway––that’s where she is.

Magnolia’s there, waiting. Her back is against the corridor wall, arms crossed. Her eyes are locked on the doorway when I walk through it.

I step out, the sounds of the locker room bleeding away behind me. It’s just us now.

She doesn’t say a word, just gives me a once-over, head to toe. The bruises haven’t bloomed yet, but they will. And tomorrow? She’s definitely going to freak out.

Her hand hits my chest—flat and sudden. “You scared the shit out of me,” she says. It’s barely above a whisper, but it carries more weight than any of the hits I took tonight.

I swallow. “I’m sorry, babe.”

“You weren’t ready. This wasn’t supposed to happen until next season. You could’ve been seriously hurt.” Her voice fractures, words unraveling as her eyes squeeze shut.

“But I wasn’t.”

“He tried.”

He failed. “Yeah, well… he won’t be bothering us anymore.”

“You did that for us.”

My hands cradle her face. Her eyes snap to mine, wide and shining, and everything I’ve been carrying hits the surface in that single, brutal second. “I did that for you .”

And then she’s on me.

Fingers gripping the collar of my shirt, mouth crashing into mine. It’s wild and rough and desperate. Her lips part on a gasp that shudders through me, and I kiss her like I’ve waited a lifetime for this.

We don’t breathe. We just take.

The kiss is heat and fire, her body pressing into mine. When we pull apart, she’s breathless and wrecked. Her lips are red, her hands still curled in the fabric of my jersey.

“Let’s go home.”

Tonight wasn’t about losing control or proving something. It was about sending a message—showing Tyson just how far I’ll go to protect the woman I love.

Taking him out of the game? That was just the warning shot. A damn satisfying one.

Maybe he’s gone for good. Maybe not. But either way, I’ll deal with it when it comes. For now, he won’t be in our lives. Not hovering, not threatening, not between us.

We can breathe, move forward, and get married in peace.

And that is more than a win. It’s the end of something dark, and the start of something real.

By the time we get home, the quiet isn’t heavy anymore. It’s electric. The second the door shuts behind us, it hits.

We don’t say a word. We collide, barely making it through the bedroom door before it all unravels.

I walk her straight to the bed, my hands on her hips, her body pressed against mine.

She kisses me again—open, messy, panting into my mouth—and her hands fumble with my shirt, yanking it up over my head.

I let go of her just long enough to pull it over my head, and then she’s tugging at her own clothes, breathing fast, fingers shaking with urgency.

The room’s cloaked in shadow, just a faint halo of city lights leaks in through the window. It’s better this way. She won’t see the start of the bruises blooming across my body.

We fall onto the bed, tangled in half-peeled clothes. I slide my hand into her knickers, and the second my fingers find her, I groan. “Fuck, baby. You’re already so wet.”

“Because this was all I could think about on the drive home––having you inside me.”

No hesitation. No teasing. Just heat and hunger and her.

I hook my fingers in the waistband of her knickers and drag them down her legs, slow only because I can’t tear my eyes away from the way she looks spread across the bed—hair wild, lips parted, chest rising fast.

I settle between her thighs, run my hand down, fingers sliding through her slick heat. She’s dripping. Desperate. Ready.

I brace one hand beside her head, the other gripping her hip, and drive into her with one hard, desperate thrust. She gasps—head tipping back, mouth parting on a sound that’s somewhere between a moan and a sob. Her body clenches tight around me, greedy and perfect.

And for a moment, there’s nothing else.

Not the bruises or the past or the crowd or the chaos or the blood on the grass.

Just this.

Her heat.

Her breath.

Her body pulling me deeper.

Skin on skin, breath on breath, her nails digging into my back and my name slipping from her lips like a prayer and a curse all in one.

We move fast. No rhythm, no patience. Just need. My hand grips her hip, her thigh, anything to keep her close as she takes me deeper, tighter, rougher than I thought either of us could stand.

Fists clenched in the sheets, she twists the fabric tight as I drive into her—deep and steady. Shaky moans bleed into hitched breaths, her legs tightening around my waist, heels digging into my back.

Her eyes flutter open for a second—dazed, dark, locked on mine. “Don’t stop, Alex” she whispers.

“I’m not stopping, babe,” I say, chest heaving. “Not until you fall apart.”

And God, she does.

She bows off the mattress, thighs trembling, back arched as the climax rips through her—shattering and consuming.

Muscles clench tight around me, pulsing with every beat of release, dragging me closer to the edge.

Her mouth opens but no sound comes—just a breathless, broken sob as her whole body convulses beneath me.

I feel it––all of it––the way she clenches, the way she melts, the way her nails bite into my back.

I thrust again, rough and perfect, and I’m gone—buried deep, my jaw clenched tight as I come hard, mouth pressed to the crook of her neck where her pulse is thundering, frantic and alive.

“Oh fuck, babe,” I groan into her skin, barely able to breathe. “You feel so fucking good. So tight.”

Her fingers tangle in my hair, tugging me closer, breath catching. “I’ve never come like that,” she whispers, wrecked and honest.

I slide my hand to her thigh, squeezing as we both come down, panting into each other’s skin, tangled and soaked and so fucking full. Her body molds to mine, wrapped in heat, in silence, in something that is whole.

Afterward, we don’t speak. We lie there, sweat-slicked and spent, our breaths syncing, our pulses finding their normal rhythms again.

I shift closer and press a kiss to her shoulder. Then her collarbone. Then the soft skin just beneath her ear. She hums low in her throat, one arm winding tighter around me.

I breathe her in, mouth close to her skin. Her body against mine, the quiet beat of her heart, the way she reaches for me in sleep even when she’s already wrapped around me—this is my future.