He's my endgame! (Tayvis)

Before the Storm

The quiet didn't last.

Taylor felt it before she saw it, a faint pressure behind her ribs, the kind that always arrived a few seconds before reality caught up. Morning light filtered through the hotel curtains, pale and unassuming, painting the room in soft gold. For a moment, she let herself stay there, suspended between sleep and waking, replaying the night before like a song she hadn't decided whether to keep.

The drive home.
The calm.
The way nothing asked too much of her.

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand.

Once.

She ignored it.

Then again.

Taylor exhaled slowly and rolled onto her side, staring at the screen without touching it. Notifications stacked neatly, names and headlines blurred together just enough to feel ominous without being specific. She didn't need to open them to know what they were about. She had lived this rhythm before, the moment when something private brushed too close to being noticed.

She reached for the phone anyway.

Not the news first. Never the news first.

Instead, she opened her messages.

There was one from Travis, time-stamped earlier than she expected.

Hope you slept okay. Yesterday was a lot. Just wanted to say thanks again for trusting me.

She read it twice.

Then a third time, slower.

There was no urgency in his words. No follow-up question. No expectation that she'd respond immediately. It grounded her more effectively than any reassurance could have.

She typed back.

I did. More than okay, actually. Thank you for yesterday.

Three dots appeared almost instantly.

Anytime. I meant what I said.

She smiled despite herself.

Only then did she open the rest of her phone.

The speculation was still soft, nothing concrete, nothing confirmed. A few articles dancing around vague phrasing. A podcast clip already being dissected more than it deserved. It wasn't loud yet, but it was circling.

She set the phone down again, heart steady but alert.

Later that afternoon, she found herself sitting across from him in a quiet corner of a café, both of them dressed down enough to blend in. Travis wore a baseball cap pulled low, but his posture was relaxed, no tension, no hypervigilance. He looked like someone who wasn't waiting for impact.

"You okay?" he asked, as if reading her thoughts.

"Yeah," she said honestly. "Just... noticing things."

He leaned back slightly. "You wanna talk about it, or you wanna pretend the world doesn't exist for twenty minutes?"

She considered that. Then smiled. "Maybe both."

"That's my specialty," he said easily.

She stirred her drink absentmindedly. "There's some light speculation starting."

"Mm," he nodded. "Figured."

"You're very calm about that."

"I trust you," he said simply. "And I trust us to talk when we need to."

That word again. Us.

It still startled her, not because it felt wrong, but because it felt unguarded.

"I just don't want it to feel like pressure," she said. "Or like I'm pulling you into something you didn't sign up for."

He leaned forward, forearms resting on the table. "Taylor, I'm a grown man who plays a game in front of seventy thousand people every week. I promise I know how noise works."

She laughed quietly. "That's fair."

"But," he added, softer now, "I also know this is different for you. So we go at your pace."

Her chest tightened, not with fear, but with relief.

They sat there for a while, talking about nothing important. Movies he hadn't seen. A song she couldn't get out of her head. The way time seemed to behave differently when neither of them was trying to manage it.

When they eventually stood to leave, Travis hesitated for a beat before reaching for her hand. He didn't look at her when he did it he just waited.

She laced her fingers through his without hesitation.

Outside, the city moved around them like it always did, unaware, impatient, loud. Taylor felt the edges of it, the inevitability of what was coming. But she also felt something new beneath that awareness.

Stability.

Not certainty. Not a promise.

Just the quiet confidence that whatever came next, she wouldn't be facing it alone.

And that, she realized as they walked side by side down the street, made all the difference.