The only illumination remaining came from a single spotlight pointing directly at him. He couldn’t see beyond the blinding light. He heard not a solitary footfall, not a single spoken word—only the incessant beating of his own heart. Then…
Click.
The spotlight was extinguished, leaving him standing in darkness.
At first, panic set in. He felt around blindly for a way off the stage. Stumbled down the stairs. His feet hit the dirt, but no matter which way he turned, he couldn’t see light. Soon, though, his panic gave way to resignation. Unable to find his way out, he fell to his knees and dropped his head to his hands, settling into the cold dirt beneath him, darkness invading him from every angle, soaking through his skin, seeping straight into his heart.
A decade of effort, only to end up cold and alone.
He kept driving, the highway stretching out in front of him in a seemingly endless strip of asphalt, those images pounding at his brain. For the first time, he realized the success he’d envisioned all these years might have a different outcome than he’d ever imagined.
Luke heard his text message tone. He grabbed his phone.
Hanson. Damn it. The last thing he wanted was to hear anything from that guy. He hit the button.
It’s almost Denver time, Dawson! You can kiss the championship good-bye!
Luke felt a slow burn of anger. As soon as he got to Denver, he was getting right in that little bastard’s face and telling him exactly what he thought of him.
Then all at once, Luke noticed he had another text message he hadn’t picked up earlier. He’d left his phone in the truck a couple of hours ago when he was getting gas. It must have come then. He touched the screen to see the message, and his heart leaped.
It was from Shannon.
He pulled off at the next exit, where he swung into a convenience store parking lot and threw his truck into park. He picked up his phone again, breathing hard, afraid to hit the button to see what it said. With his finger trembling, he finally touched it. A song title appeared.
I Will Always Love You.
Luke stared at the words, and for a moment he had a hard time breathing. He couldn’t fathom that she meant it.
Couldn’t fathom it.
Even if she loved him, even if they found a way to be together, sooner or later it would fall apart because nothing good in this life lasted very long. Little by little her mother and other narrow-minded people in Rainbow Valley would chip away at her, and soon she’d be balancing both things, trying to please them, trying to please him, when she was already a high-stress person who didn’t need one more thing on her plate. Sooner or later he’d become a liability, and the love she professed to have for him would be no more real than the love he thought she was feeling all those years ago.
But what if it was true? What if she really did love him?
He looked at the message again, absorbing every word. Every syllable. Every letter. Then he dropped his phone to his lap, his heart beating double-time.
Christ, he was such a fool.
If he won the championship, it would be a gift from God, a once-in-a-lifetime alignment of the stars that wouldn’t be repeated. So it was now or never, and he intended to do it no matter what. But now it seemed to exist in another plane, in a universe where that kind of success was a hollow victory. He’d spent ten years chasing that dream to the exclusion of everything else this life had to offer. A family. A place to call home.
Somebody to love.
In that moment, the love he felt for Shannon blasted away the walls around him until the truth became so real there was no denying it. He would do anything to have her. He would lay himself bare. Risk everything. It terrified him, but he was helpless to protect himself any longer. The walls had come down, leaving him defenseless. It made him sick with apprehension at the same time it showered him with hope, hope that he could finally have the kind of life he’d dreamed of as a child where love was at the center and nothing could hurt him because of it.
She’d told him she loved him. How many more times was she going to have to say it before he believed it?
He couldn’t leave things like this. He couldn’t go