Setting: Tromether Stadium, locker room, late evening.
Everyone’s gone home. The lights are humming low, like they’re trying not to interrupt something holy.
Brody sits on the floor beside his open locker, gear neatly put away. His knees are pulled to his chest. His eyes are distant, but not lost.
He breathes in the scent of the room: turf, fabric, eucalyptus, sweat.
And something… else.
Something he shouldn’t remember.
A moment he never lived.
It flashes—not like a memory, but like a ghost of possibility:
Sean, younger.
Not gruff, not guarded. Just… soft.
They’re both sitting on the same bench. Sean places a hand—not on Brody’s shoulder, not in a dramatic gesture—just lightly, on his jersey.
And says:
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Brody.
You just wanted to be close to someone. That’s not a crime.”
Brody blinks.
It didn’t happen.
He knows it didn’t.
But the feeling is so real it shakes something loose in his chest.
He whispers, barely audible: