For those who complained about the previous chapter, I also felt it was a little rushed, but I also felt like I was dragging the story out too much, so that was the best way I could think of to wrap it up.
The hotel lobby held more people than it had all week—and likely more than it had seen in a very long time.
Players wore their orange championship caps backwards, tilted, or simply clutched in their hands, as the celebration required no protocol. Families had arrived from Clemson and across various states, joined by program staff and assistants. A portable speaker boomed from an unidentified corner of the lobby; no one had bothered to locate or turn it off, because the music was part of the atmosphere, and the atmosphere was exact.
There were people who hadn't slept since the previous night.
There were people who wouldn't sleep until the following night.
No one seemed in any rush to do either.
The College Football Playoff National Championship trophy rested firmly in Wyatt's hands.
It felt heavier than it looked in photographs—a specific weight that wasn't merely forged from metal, but carved from everything it had cost to reach this single moment.
He had hoisted it on the field after the final whistle with orange confetti still drifting down, carried it onto the team bus, brought it off the bus, and into the hotel lobby. Somewhere along the way, he had decided he wasn't ready to set it down just yet.
Life offers very few opportunities to hold something that took four years of relentless effort to achieve.
He intended to savor it as long as he could.
Laquon stood to his right, holding his phone high and snapping photos of everything with no particular strategy other than documenting every frame before the moment dissolved.
Gallman was near the back, completely surrounded by his family.
Ed stood near the entrance holding a glass in his right hand, wearing that expression Wyatt had known since childhood—not exuberance exactly, but the deep satisfaction of a man who had anticipated something for years and finally watched it happen without needing to utter a word.
Elena was crying again—or perhaps still.
Wyatt hadn't been able to determine which over the last two hours, because every time he glanced over, her condition fluctuated, though the direction remained constant. He eventually concluded it was more likely "still" than "again," given there had been no clear pause between the two.
Blaire stood beside him, her eyes fixed on Dabo like everyone else in the room.
Wyatt noted she hadn't spoken a single word in the last twenty minutes.
Normally, Blaire had something to say about almost everything.
About the game, she had offered several sharp observations on the flight to Glendale.
About Wyatt's family, she had posed a question at least every five minutes during dinner in Katy.
Tonight, she hadn't said a word since they boarded the bus.
Wyatt had initially attributed it to fatigue, the deafening noise, and the sheer weight of the night, choosing not to press.
Now, he was reconsidering.
Dabo stepped onto one of the lobby armchairs with the same lack of ceremony that characterized everything he did, raising a hand until the chatter in the room gradually subsided.
"Sorry," Dabo said. "Sorry, let me say a few words."
The lobby fell quiet.
Wyatt shifted toward where his parents and Blaire were standing, the trophy still cradled in his arms. From atop the chair, Dabo surveyed the crowd with that deliberate expression he wore whenever he wanted people to know what was coming mattered.
"Tonight," Dabo said, "we won the national championship."
Someone began to applaud, and Dabo raised his hand once more.
"We'll celebrate in just a second. Let me finish."
The crowd quieted down again amid light laughter from a few players.
"I've spent years in this program," Dabo continued. "And I can tell you with total honesty that I have never been prouder of a group of men than the ones in this room tonight. Not just for what you accomplished on that field today, but for how you got here. For how you trained when nobody was watching, how you held yourselves when the game wasn't going our way, and how you kept pushing forward regardless."
He paused.
"I want to thank every family in this room. Tonight doesn't just belong to the players. It belongs to all of you who supported them and believed in them when the road was long."
Another pause.
"And I want you to know that this trophy Wyatt is holding in his hands right now represents something no one can ever take away from us. We are national champions. Forever. No matter what happens tomorrow, or next year, or twenty years from now. Tonight happened, and it happened because this team gave everything it had."
Dabo lowered his eyes for a moment before looking back up at the room.
"Now, go celebrate," he said.
The lobby erupted with the volume it had held before Dabo asked for silence, multiplied by the minutes it had been contained.
Wyatt listened with the trophy in his arms, Elena to his left with her hand resting on Ed's arm, and Blaire to his right.
He turned slightly toward Blaire.
Blaire's eyes were still fixed on Dabo.
But the color in her face was completely gone.
Wyatt noticed it in that instant and opened his mouth to say something.
He never got the chance.
Blaire had already taken a step backward.
Then another.
Then she simply turned and walked quickly toward the hotel's side hallway, one hand pressed firmly over her mouth, looking at no one.
Wyatt watched her walk away.
He looked at his parents.
Ed had seen it.
Elena had too.
Neither said a word because Dabo was still wrapping up, and because the look on Wyatt's face already indicated he was handling it.
Wyatt handed the trophy to his father without saying a word.
Ed took it in both hands.
He looked down at it for a second.
Then he looked in the direction Blaire had disappeared.
Then he looked at Elena, who was already looking back at him.
Neither said anything.
Wyatt had already disappeared down the corridor.
The hotel hallway was empty.
Wyatt reached the far end where a door marked with the women's restroom symbol stood, knocking twice with his knuckles.
Nothing.
He waited five seconds.
Knocked again.
"Blaire."
Silence from the other side, except for a sound Wyatt recognized instantly—a sound that required no further context to understand what was happening.
"I'm coming in," Wyatt said.
He pushed the door open.
The restroom was small: two stalls, a single sink, the overhead fluorescent light humming at that specific frequency peculiar to hotel fixtures.
Blaire was in the first stall, the door resting open, leaning forward with her hair falling over her face.
Wyatt dropped to his knees beside her without speaking, knowing intuitively that nothing he could say in that moment was more useful than simply being there.
He gathered her hair back with one hand, while using the other to gently rub her back in the circular pattern Blaire had once told him her mother used to do when she was little—the one thing that worked better than anything else.
Blaire said nothing.
Wyatt stayed silent too.
The fluorescent light kept humming above them.
A minute passed.
Then another.
Eventually, Blaire leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes for a few seconds before opening them to stare up at the restroom ceiling.
Wyatt sat on the floor beside her, his back resting against the stall wall.
The national championship trophy was in his father's hands back in the lobby, surrounded by wild celebration, while Wyatt sat on the floor of a hotel restroom with Blaire.
And there was no other place in the world he would have rather been at that moment.
Blaire didn't answer immediately.
She bit her lower lip, keeping her eyes fixed on the ceiling.
"I don't know," she whispered finally.
Wyatt waited.
"I'm late," Blaire said.
She didn't specify by how much.
She didn't add anything else.
She didn't need to.
Wyatt stared straight ahead for a second.
Then he looked at Blaire.
Then he looked straight ahead again.
His mind went completely blank.
It wasn't the familiar clarity he felt right before a critical snap—where the crowd noise dissolves and only the field, the coverage shell, and the receiver remain.
This was entirely different.
This was the kind of void that consumes all available space, leaving no room for anything else, offering no obvious next step to focus on because the next step didn't exist yet.
Wyatt had made thousands of high-stakes decisions on a football field under immense pressure.
With the clock at zero, the pass rush closing in, and a national championship hanging on the next snap.
None of them felt remotely like sitting on the floor of this hotel restroom.
"So you're..." Wyatt began.
The sentence trailed off in the air.
Wyatt glanced down toward Blaire's stomach.
Then he looked back up at her face.
He stopped himself.
"I don't know," Blaire said before he could finish the question. "I'm not sure. I haven't confirmed it yet. But I've been putting things together over the last few weeks, and the math isn't adding up."
Wyatt nodded slowly.
He stared ahead for a moment.
Then he turned back to her.
Blaire pulled her knees tight against her chest, her eyes locked onto the floor tiles.
"This wasn't in the plan," she said, her voice dropping lower than before. "I had everything mapped out. Finish my degree, get my master's, land a position at a independent publishing house in Boston or New York. I had a clear, structured plan."
Wyatt remained silent.
"And now I don't know," Blaire continued. "I don't know what happens if this is what I think it is. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it. I don't know how this fits into anything I envisioned."
Another pause.
"And I don't even know if I want it to fit or not, and I don't know what I'm supposed to feel... and that scares me too."
She stopped.
Taking a slow, trembling breath.
Her voice cracked slightly at the end.
Wyatt listened until she finished.
Blaire went back to staring at the ceiling, but her breathing pattern had shifted—a subtle change Wyatt recognized from previous moments, knowing precisely what would follow if no one intervened.
So he acted.
He wrapped his arm around her shoulders.
He pulled her close against him.
He pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head where her hair parted, holding her there without moving, knowing that sometimes the first thing you have to do before speaking is simply stay present, letting the other person know they aren't carrying it alone.
Blaire's breathing gradually steadied.
Not all at once.
Slowly.
"Hey," Wyatt said softly, his voice low.
Blaire didn't answer, but she grew completely still.
"Whatever happens," Wyatt said, "I'm right here."
Silence.
"I'm not going anywhere," Wyatt continued. "I don't care what comes next, what it looks like, when it happens, or whether it was in the original plan or not. Whatever comes, I'm here, and that doesn't change."
Blaire didn't speak for several seconds.
Wyatt didn't either.
He didn't need to.
Then, she gave a single, quiet nod.
Wyatt stood up.
He extended his hand to Blaire, palm facing upward.
Blaire looked at it for a moment.
Looked at his hand.
Looked at Wyatt.
Then she placed her hand in his.
Wyatt helped her up from the restroom floor slowly.
With the same unshakeable composure he had brought to everything that night.
The composure of someone who had already made his decision before anyone asked the question—someone who required no extra time to deliberate because the choice was already set in stone.
They stood together in the small hotel restroom, the fluorescent light humming overhead, the muffled roar of the national championship celebration drifting down the corridor like sound from another world—a world that was simultaneously theirs.
Blaire looked at him.
Wyatt looked back at her.
Neither said a word.
There was nothing left to say that hadn't already been stated, or that couldn't wait until a hotel hallway wasn't the setting for it.
There was time.
There was still plenty of time for everything that lay ahead.
And whatever came next was something neither of them could fully predict, but something they would face with their hands locked together, just as they were in that hallway.
Blaire intertwined her fingers with Wyatt's.
Wyatt squeezed her hand firmly.
And they walked out of the restroom together, hands tightly clasped, the long, empty hotel corridor stretching before them, with the championship celebration waiting at the end—completely unaware of what had just transpired inside that small room beneath the humming fluorescent light.
Author thought
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They should have a boy, a girl, or twins