CHAPTER FOUR: AFTER THE WHISTLE

The stadium lights had long since dimmed, leaving the pitch bathed in the hushed glow of the floodlights. Empty stands loomed like quiet witnesses to something unspoken. Practice was over. Hours ago.

But Noah Hayes was still out there.

The ball moved with him—silent, steady, tethered to the rhythm of his breath. Every dribble was a question. Every touch a protest. Like he was trying to outrun something. Or someone.

Liam Carter knew better than to approach.

And yet, there he was. Standing at the edge of the field, arms crossed, reports forgotten under one arm. Watching again.

He always watched.

Noah didn’t look over. Didn’t have to. He always knew when Liam was near. There was something electric about the air when they shared space—quiet but charged, like a storm just beyond the horizon.

“Late night?” Liam asked eventually, voice low, like it didn’t mean anything.

Noah stopped the ball with the sole of his foot. “Needed to feel something.”

Liam took a few careful steps onto the pitch, shoes soft on wet turf. “And?”

Noah turned, meeting his gaze across the dim. “Still trying.”

There it was again—that look. Not challenging. Not cocky. Just honest. And that made it worse. Liam could handle fire. He didn’t know what to do with truth.

“You don’t have to keep pushing like this,” Liam said, softer now.

Noah’s jaw tightened. “And what? Settle? Fade out? Just accept it like everyone else?”

Liam looked down, fingers curling around the edge of the clipboard. The floodlights hummed overhead, a low mechanical pulse.

“I used to think wanting something bad enough meant it was yours eventually,” Noah added. “Turns out, some things fight back.”

Liam didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Because he felt it too—that slow, suffocating war between want and restraint.

Noah stepped closer. The ball rolled away, forgotten.

“You’re always watching,” he said. “On the field. Off it. Like you’re waiting for me to mess up.”

“I’m your coach.”

“You’re not just my coach.”

That landed hard. Liam closed his eyes for half a second.

“You think I don’t feel it too?” he said finally, voice so low it almost broke.

Noah’s breath hitched.

“Then why do you keep walking away?” he asked.

Liam didn’t answer.

And maybe that was the answer.

“I’m not asking for anything,” Noah continued. “I just... I want to know I’m not alone in this.”

“You’re not,” Liam said before he could stop himself.

The confession sat between them, warm and dangerous.

Suddenly—footsteps. Distant, but real. A couple of players laughing on their way out of the locker room, their voices echoing down the tunnel.

The spell broke.

Liam stepped back instinctively, jaw clenched, spine straightening like a man trying to reassert control over something already lost.

Noah didn’t move. Just watched him retreat.

“Every time you pull away,” he said, “it gets harder not to reach for you.”

Liam swallowed hard. “This isn’t about what we want. It’s about what we can live with afterward.”

Noah’s voice dropped to a whisper. “What if I can’t live with pretending?”

That stopped Liam cold.

A beat.

Then two.

He turned away. “We can’t do this.”

“You already are.”

Noah’s words weren’t defiant. They weren’t a threat.

They were just true.

And Liam hated how much he wanted to believe them.

As he walked off the pitch, clipboard forgotten, he didn’t look back.

But Noah stood there

long after the lights cut off.

Still trying to feel something.

Still trying not to fall.