Chapter 1: Leap of Faith
The noise of the stadium was a living thing, a roar that vibrated in Bett’s molars as she pushed through the concrete corridor beneath the bleachers. The scent here was different—damp concrete, stale popcorn, the ghost of a thousand spilled sodas. It was a shortcut to the home team’s locker room, where she’d left her spirit ribbons. Her neon pom-poms were a vivid clash against the gray.
She heard the murmur of voices first, a low, intimate rhythm that didn’t belong in the empty passageway. Then a giggle she knew too well. Samantha’s giggle.
Bett turned the corner, and the world fractured.
There, pinned against the home team’s red lockers, was Jake. His letterman jacket was open, his hands buried in the blonde hair of her best friend, Samantha. Their bodies were fused, moving with a familiar, hungry rhythm. A half-empty bottle of cheap vodka sat at their feet.
For a second, everything was silent. The stadium’s roar vanished. All she could hear was the wet sound of their kissing and the ragged pull of her own breath.
Jake pulled back, his eyes wide and glassy. “Bett. It’s not… this isn’t…”
Samantha scrambled away, wiping her mouth, her face a mask of guilty panic. “Bethany, oh my god, please.”
Bett didn’t scream. She didn’t cry. A cold, sharp clarity settled over her, smothering the initial wave of nauseating heat. She looked at Jake—his perfect jaw, his tousled hair, the arrogant set of his shoulders that now just looked pathetic. She saw the shallow boy she’d dressed in a prince’s costume for two years.
“You left the party early with a headache,” Bett said, her voice eerily flat.
“Babe, listen,” Jake said, taking a step forward, his hand outstretched.
“Don’t.” The single word was a shard of ice. She looked from him to Samantha, who was now crying silent, pretty tears. “You can have him. He’s clearly used goods.”
She turned and walked away, her steps echoing in the tunnel. The roar of the crowd flooded back in, a wave of sound that felt like it was pushing her up into the night air. Her teammates were a blur of concerned faces and whispered questions as she reclaimed her spot on the sidelines. She picked up her pom-poms, her knuckles white around the handles.
“Bett? Honey, what’s wrong?” Chloe, her co-captain, asked.
“Jake. And Samantha. In the tunnel,” Bett said, not taking her eyes off the field where Jake was now throwing warm-up passes, the golden boy in his element.
A unified, furious hiss went through the squad. Eyes hardened. On the next play, when Jake fumbled a simple snap, a cutting chorus of “Nice hands, Miller!” rang out from the cheerleading line, perfectly synchronized. The crowd in the nearby bleachers laughed, confused.
The game was a disaster. Every time Jake dropped back to pass, Bett’s squad cheered with an aggressive, mocking fervor usually reserved for the opposing team. They didn’t yell his name. They watched him, a wall of silent, glittering judgment in pleated skirts. Jake’s throws became increasingly wild, his face a storm cloud under his helmet.
Halftime arrived with their team down by three touchdowns. The players trudged off, heads low. Jake avoided the sidelines altogether, heading straight for the locker room tunnel.
As the home team band marched onto the field in a discordant blare, the visiting team from Ridgeview High took the opportunity to warm up on the vacant half of the turf. They moved with a loose, confident energy, a stark contrast to the defeated slump of the home squad.
Bett’s gaze, raw and restless, tracked over them. And then it snagged.
A tall quarterback in green and black was laughing with his center, spinning a ball on his finger with effortless grace. He had a profile she hadn’t seen in years, but somehow knew instantly. The way he held his shoulders. The fall of brown hair against his neck. A thousand memories of shared swing sets and stolen cookies at a childhood summer camp collided in her mind.
Mason Cooper.
Without thinking, without planning, she dropped her pom-poms and started walking. Then running. She dashed across the track, onto the sacred turf, her white sneakers a flash against the green.
“Mason!”
He turned, hazel eyes scanning the field. They found her, widened in shock, and then crinkled with a smile so bright it felt like a physical blow. He dropped the ball.
“Bett Hayes? No way.”
She didn’t stop. She launched herself at him. He caught her effortlessly, his strong arms wrapping around her waist, and he spun her once, twice, her auburn hair flying out around them. For a second, the crushing weight of the evening vanished. She was nine years old again, and he was the boy who’d pushed her on the tire swing until she’d screamed with laughter.
The home bleachers erupted. A wave of boos and confused shouts rolled over them. “Traitor!” someone screamed. “What the hell, Hayes?”
But from the sidelines came a different sound. A rising, defiant cheer. Her squad was jumping, clapping, whooping. Chloe had her fingers in her mouth, letting out a piercing whistle of approval.
Mason set her down gently, his hands lingering on her hips. His smile was still there, but his eyes were searching, concerned. “Whoa. Hey. I heard you were the queen over here. What’s all this?”
She glanced back at the furious red sea of her school’s fans, then at the stricken face of Jake, who had emerged from the tunnel and was staring, open-mouthed. She looked up at Mason, at the honest concern in a rival’s eyes, and made a decision.
“I’m done here,” she said, her voice clear and carrying. “This kingdom’s rotten.”
Mason’s eyebrow quirked up. A slow, understanding grin spread across his face. “Yeah? My team’s bus leaves in an hour. It’s a long ride, but I saved a seat. It’s got your name on it. Metaphorically. It’s actually just an empty seat.”
She laughed, a real one, that shook something loose in her chest. The boos were fading into a background hum. The only thing that felt solid was the grip of his hands on her hips and the thrilling, terrifying freedom of the choice stretching out before her.
“An hour?” she said, matching his grin with a fiery one of her own. “I only need five minutes.”
The five minutes stretched into the rest of the half, but the energy had irrevocably shifted. Bett stood with her squad, but her cheers for her school now tasted like ash. Her eyes kept drifting to the visitor’s sideline, to number 11 moving with a relaxed, lethal grace.
The second half was a funeral march. Jake played worse, if possible, throwing an interception directly into Mason’s arms. Mason returned it for a touchdown, a green-and-black streak across the ruined turf. As he jogged back, he didn’t celebrate with his team. He looked right at Bett on the sideline and gave the faintest, most imperceptible nod. An acknowledgment. A secret handshake across a battlefield.
When the final whistle blew, the score was a humiliating slaughter. The home crowd emptied quickly, a river of disgust and disappointment. Bett ignored the dirty looks shot her way. She walked to the cheerleading duffel bag, methodically stuffing in her pom-poms and jacket.
“You’re really leaving?” Chloe asked, her voice soft.
“Yeah,” Bett said, zipping the bag. “The air here is toxic.”
“With him?” Chloe gestured with her chin toward the Ridgeview team, who were whooping and gathering their gear.
Bett followed her gaze. Mason was talking to his coach but his attention was fractured, his eyes scanning the thinning crowd. Looking for her. A warm, solid feeling anchored itself in her chest. “Yeah. With him.”
She slung the bag over her shoulder and turned, almost colliding with Jake. He was still in his uniform, dirt streaked across his cheeks, his expression a tangled mess of anger and pleading.
“Bett, come on. You’re not seriously going to ride home with Cooper? He’s the enemy!”
She stared at him, seeing the petulant boy he’d always been beneath the quarterback veneer. “You made yourself the enemy, Jake. Mason just caught the passes you threw away.”
“It was a mistake! Samantha means nothing.”
“I know,” Bett said, and she meant it. Samantha was just a symptom. “The mistake was me thinking you meant something.”
She stepped around him. He grabbed her wrist. His grip was tight, familiar, and it sparked nothing in her but a cold fury.
“Let go.”
“You’re making a scene,” he hissed.
“You made the scene when you had your tongue down my best friend’s throat.” She wrenched her arm free. “We’re done. Don’t call me.”
She walked away, the sound of his frustrated groan swallowed by the stadium’s emptying echo. Her footsteps were steady on the concrete ramp leading to the visitor’s parking lot. The night air was cooler here, washing away the scents of popcorn and defeat.
The Ridgeview team’s bus was idling, a hulking shadow under the sodium lights. Players milled around it, but one figure stood apart, leaning against the side of a beat-up, but obviously cared-for, navy pickup truck.
Mason pushed off the truck as she approached. The cocky quarterback was gone. In his place was the boy from the tire swing, his expression unguarded and a little anxious.
“You came,” he said.
“I said I would.”
He reached out and took her duffel bag, his fingers brushing hers. A simple touch, but it sent a current up her arm. “Your parents are gonna kill me for kidnapping you,” he said, a grin tugging at his mouth.
“Doubt it,” Bett laughed, the sound feeling strange and wonderful. “My mom asked about you at dinner last week. Said, ‘Whatever happened to that lovely Cooper boy who used to bring you dandelions? He had manners.’ My dad just grumbled that you at least knew how to hold a door.”
Mason’s grin widened, a flash of white in the dim light. He opened the passenger door for her. “Some things stick, Wildflower.”
The old pet name, spoken in his now-deeper voice, didn’t feel childish. It felt like a key turning in a long-locked door. She paused, one foot on the running board. “You remember that?”
He looked at her, the stadium lights reflected in his hazel eyes. “I remember everything. The dandelions were because you said they were braver than roses. They grew anywhere.” He shook his head slightly, a softness there she’d never seen on Jake. “My mom always said, ‘That Bett Hayes, she’s not just a princess. She’s a force of nature.’ She was right.”
Princess. Wildflower. The two names he’d cycled through their entire childhood, both terms of endearment that spoke to something deeper than just her looks. He’d seen her spirit, even back then.
She slid into the passenger seat. The cab was clean, smelling faintly of leather and pine air freshener. It was real. His real life. He tossed her bag in the back, walked around, and climbed in.
As he started the engine, she looked out the window at her school, a dark silhouette against the bruised purple sky. She felt no nostalgia, only a profound relief.
“So,” he said, pulling out of the lot. The stadium shrank in the side mirror. “Where to, Princess? Your kingdom or mine?”
Bett leaned her head back against the seat and smiled at the ceiling. “Somewhere new.”
Mason chuckled, a low, warm sound that seemed to fill the cab of the truck. He shifted gears with a smooth click. "Somewhere new it is."
The pickup’s engine settled into a steady hum as they left the stadium lights behind, plunging into the quieter, tree-lined streets of their town’s outskirts. The silence wasn’t awkward, but it was charged, thick with everything that had just happened and everything that hadn’t been said in over nine years.
Bett watched the familiar shops and sidewalks blur past, seeing them from a new angle—the passenger side of a Ridgeview truck. She felt untethered. The script for tonight had been simple: cheer, support Jake, celebrate a win. Now the script was ashes, and she was rolling into the third act with no lines.
“You hungry?” Mason asked, his eyes on the road. “I skipped the pre-game meal. Nerves.”
“You? Nervous?” Bett turned her head against the headrest to look at him. The dashboard lights softened the sharp lines of his profile.
“For the game? No. Not really.” He paused, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “Seeing you again? Yeah. A little.”
The admission surprised her. The Mason Cooper from the field was all swagger and charm. This one, navigating the quiet streets, seemed more real. More interesting.
“Why?”
He shrugged, a quick, tense movement. “You were always… Bett. Even when we were kids. You had this way of looking at me like you could see right through any bullshit. I figured that probably got more intense with age.”
A smile touched her lips. “It did.”
“Figured.” He glanced at her, then back at the road. “So. Jake Miller.”
The name landed between them like a dirty coin. Bett sighed, the weariness of the evening settling into her bones. “What about him?”
“Do you want to talk about it? Or do you want me to pretend I didn’t just witness the most spectacular public implosion of a social hierarchy since, like, ever?”
She snorted. “It was pretty spectacular, wasn’t it?”
“Poetic,” Mason confirmed, his tone dry. “The fumble right after your squad yelled ‘Nice hands’? Chef’s kiss. Art.”
She laughed, and it felt good, like cracking ice in her chest. “He was cheating on me. With Samantha. In the tunnel under the bleachers. I walked right in on it.”
Mason let out a slow whistle. “Oof. Direct hit. And you didn’t, like, set her hair on fire with your pom-poms?”
“The thought crossed my mind.” She picked at a loose thread on her cheer skirt. “But it felt… cheap. He’s cheap. The whole thing was just pathetic. Getting angry would have meant I still cared.”
“Do you? Still care?”
She considered it. The betrayal stung, a raw, humiliated ache. But the love? That felt like something that had vanished the second she saw his hands in Samantha’s hair. It had just been… habit. A title she wore. “No. I care that I wasted two years. I care that my best friend is a backstabbing witch. But him? No.”
“Good,” Mason said, simple and firm. “He’s a clown.”
They drove in silence for a few more blocks. Bett found her gaze tracing the lines of his forearms, the way his hands rested lightly on the wheel. He’d gotten so big. The scrawny kid who’d shared his fruit snacks was gone, replaced by this solid, quiet presence.
“Why did you come over?” she asked suddenly. “On the field. You didn’t have to. We haven’t talked since… fourth grade? Fifth?”
He was quiet for so long she thought he might not answer. “I saw you,” he said finally, his voice quieter. “Before the game started. You were leading some complicated cheer, all smiles, but your eyes were… dead. Like you were a robot. It bugged me. Then, at halftime, you were just standing there, holding those neon things, and you looked completely hollowed out. I hated it.”
His honesty was a direct current. It left no room for her usual deflections.
“So you decided to rescue me?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I decided to say hi. You decided to run at me like a missile. The rescue was your idea.”
She smiled in the dark. “Fair.”
He flipped on his turn signal, steering them onto the old state road that led out of town, past the reservoirs and into the wooded hills. The world outside turned darker, the trees crowding closer.
“Where are we going?” she asked, not with alarm, but with curiosity.
“Somewhere new,” he repeated her words back to her, a ghost of a smile on his face. “There’s a place up here. A lookout. You can see the whole valley.”
She leaned back, accepting it. The further they got from the stadium, the lighter she felt. The itchy polyester of her uniform skirt seemed less a badge of honor and more a costume she was eager to shed. She reached into the backseat, rummaging in her duffel until her fingers closed around soft, worn cotton. She pulled out an old, oversized Ridgeview Football hoodie.
Mason glanced over. “Is that…?”
“My cousin’s. From like, three years ago,” she said, pulling off her own West Valley cheer jacket and letting it fall to the floorboard with a satisfying thump. She pulled the green hoodie over her head. It smelled of fabric softener and, faintly, of boy. It was massive on her, the sleeves swallowing her hands. “Better.”
“You’re gonna get us both assassinated,” he said, but he was grinning.
“Let them try.”
They climbed higher, the engine working a little harder. He finally pulled off onto a narrow gravel track barely visible from the road. The truck bounced gently for a few hundred yards before the trees opened up to a wide, flat ledge of granite overlooking the valley. Below, the town was a spill of shimmering jewels, the twin stadiums just distant, glowing thimbles.
He cut the engine. The silence was immense, filled only by the whisper of pines and the thrum of crickets.
“This is my spot,” he said softly. “When I need to think. Or not think.”
“It’s perfect.” She opened her door and stepped out. The night air was crisp and cool, scented with pine and damp earth. She walked to the edge of the rock, the oversized hoodie keeping her warm, and looked down at the world she’d just left. It seemed small. Manageable. Like something she could put in her pocket and forget.
Mason came to stand beside her, not too close, but a solid presence at her shoulder. “So what now, Bett Hayes?”
She took a deep breath, the cold air sharp in her lungs. “I don’t know. For the first time in… maybe ever, I genuinely don’t know. It’s terrifying.” She looked at him. “And kind of amazing.”
He nodded, understanding in his eyes. “The unknown gets a bad rap.”
From this height, the rivalries seemed childish. West Valley vs. Ridgeview. Jake vs. Mason. It was all just noise from a place that looked so quiet and still from up here.
“You kept a dandelion,” she said, the memory surfacing.
“What?”
“That last day of camp. You gave me a dandelion. I put it in my camp workbook. You asked if you could have it back, and I said no, because you’d just lose it. You said you wouldn’t.”
He was staring at her, his expression unreadable in the moonlight. “You remember that?”
“I do.”
He turned and walked back to the truck, opening the passenger door and rifling in the glove compartment. He came back with something small and flat cupped in his palm. He held it out.
It was a camp photo, laminated but worn at the edges. Two gap-toothed kids, arms slung around each other’s shoulders, squinting into the sun. And tucked into the laminate corner, pressed flat and forever yellow, was a tiny dandelion head.
Bett’s breath caught. “You kept it.”
“I told you I wouldn’t lose it.” His voice was rough. “You moved to the other side of town. Different schools. It happens. But I… I always wondered what it would be like. If our paths ever crossed again.”
The vulnerability in his words undid something in her. It was nothing like Jake’s performative, flashy affection. This was quiet. This was a boy keeping a weed for nine years because it reminded him of a girl who thought they were brave.
She took the photo from his hand, her fingers brushing his. She looked from their childhood smiles to the man standing beside her. The connection was a live wire, humming between them in the dark.
“Mason…” she started, but no other words came.
He didn’t move to kiss her. He didn’t try to fill the space with smooth talk. He just waited, watching her, letting her feel the weight of the moment.
Down in the valley, the headlights of the last leaving cars traced thin lines along the roads. Her old life was dispersing, going home. She was up here, in the dark, in an enemy’s hoodie, with a boy who kept promises made in fourth grade.
She handed the photo back to him. “Take me somewhere new,” she said again, but the meaning had shifted. It wasn’t just about geography anymore.
He smiled, that slow, genuine smile that reached his eyes. “Okay.”
They drove away.