With a swing bordering on sending my stick flying out of my hands, I chuck the ball straight into the net, the shot clipping the top of the goal before slapping the back of it so hard it sends the frame shaking. For a minute, the faint vibrating of the metal is all I can hear.

‘Top ched,’ says May from behind me.

On a normal day, I’d probably turn so fast I’d risk dislocating my neck. Today, I find any excuse for why I don’t look back at her. I hum in agreement instead.

‘So. Charleston next Saturday.’

May laughs nervously. ‘Right. Our first East Coast team of the season.’

The nerves aren’t a sound I’m used to hearing from her, but it makes sense. Two of her three past years on OKC, the Riders have fallen to an East Coast team in the quarter-finals of the playoffs. The girls have never made it farther than this.

‘Do you think we have a chance, this time?’

‘Don’t really feel like it matters what I think.’ I pick up another ball with my stick, tossing it and catching it back in the head. ‘You’re the captain.’

May says, ‘Sure. But we’re a team. And on teams …’ She walks right up in front of me, impossible to ignore, and sits down, cross-legged, in the grass. ‘We talk. Which I owe to you.’

‘What is there to talk about?’ I throw my stick aside, but I reluctantly sit down, too, running a hand through my hair. ‘You made it pretty clear how this is gonna go.’

‘Doesn’t feel nice, does it?’ The corners of her mouth tip up in a smile, but it’s one of sadness. One that weighs in her eyes and pulverizes my resolve to look at. ‘To be left alone with nothing but a shitty goodbye?’

She’s not wrong.

Well. That’s not really something I can say anything to. I blink, gulp. ‘May—’

‘As terrible as it is … I’m sorry.’ She clears her throat. ‘I shouldn’t have said the things I did without an explanation.’

‘You don’t have to explain anything,’ I stop her. ‘I’ve put you through enough. You have a right to take things easy.’

‘Maybe. But I also have a right to tell you that this fake thing we have going on …’ She gestures between the two of us. ‘This thing is not fake, Colt. It never was.’

Twin flames of relief and nerves fill my chest. I shake my head.

‘You know, I probably would have picked everything up and moved to Boston with you for college if you’d actually asked me what I wanted,’ May blurts.

It feels like someone’s stick just checked me square in the head.