I felt my legs finally let me move. The teammates parted for me without a word. I walked slowly until I was standing at the bottom of the stage steps, my hand pressed to my chest.
I had spent eighteen years bracing for the next person who would hurt my daughter.
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Steven looked down and met my eyes. He gave me the smallest nod.
I understood, then, what his whisper had really meant when he said, “Stay quiet for her sake.”
It wasn’t a threat.
I had spent eighteen years bracing for the next person who would hurt my daughter. And I had looked at this boy and I had seen the same shape of danger I always saw, because that was the only shape I had learned to recognize.
“Rosie,” Steven said into the microphone again, his voice gentler now, almost private. “I have one more thing for you. Something just for tonight.”
