Sixty thousand voices, crammed into a concrete bowl painted red and white, waiting to explode. The air smelled like popcorn, cheap beer, and the particular tension that only came from rivalry week.

Y/N stood in the middle of it, surrounded by people who didn't know her name — just the colors she wore, the same colors as the boy who'd stopped answering her texts two months ago.

The student section swayed to the fight song. A girl painted head-to-toe in Demington red bumped into her shoulder, laughing, not apologizing.

Somewhere below, the teams were warming up.

And Damien Hayes was jogging across the fifty-yard line, helmet off, that stupid perfect smile aimed at the stands like he'd been born to be watched.

Her phone burned in her pocket.

You here?

No punctuation. No context. Like he hadn't shredded her life and left the pieces on the floor without a word.

She watched him high-five a teammate, clap a coach on the shoulder, soak in the roar of a crowd that had already decided he was untouchable.

A beat passed.

Then something shifted.