The Nerd Who Stole The Quarterback (Astra and Zayne) novel Chapter 207

The Nerd Who Stole The Quarterback

The Life I Built

STRA / ISLA

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I woke sometime after eleven with one leg outside the blanket and sunlight pushing through the gap in my curtains.

For once, there was nowhere I needed to be.

The apartment was completely still around me.

Two years ago, mornings like this had been unbearable. I would wake expecting to hear Mom moving down the hallway or calling for me from another room, and the silence that followed used to feel almost violent.

Now there were mornings when I slept all the way through.

That was the part nobody warned you about.

Relief could exist beside grief.

Some nights I still woke up convinced I’d heard her voice. Other mornings I opened my eyes after eight uninterrupted hours and felt grateful that she wasn’t frightened anymore, that there were no pills to organize or doors to check or moments when I had to pretend it didn’t hurt when she looked at me without recognition.

Then guilt would arrive for feeling grateful at all.

And after that came missing her.

Always that.

Today, though, the ache sat somewhere manageable, and I wasn’t going to invite it any closer.

I reached for my phone.

Seven messages from Ethan waited on the screen.

That seemed excessive even for him.

ETHAN: I heard you’re abandoning New Zealand.

ETHAN: Without saying goodbye.

ETHAN: Disgusting behavior, Smith.

ETHAN: Also I want my toaster back.

! I frowned.

ME: You gave me that toaster six years ago.

The typing bubble appeared almost immediately.

ETHAN: So you admit you still have it.

ME: I threw it away.

There was a longer pause this time.

ETHAN: You fucking monster.

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A laugh slipped out before I could stop it.

HAN: Dinner tonight.

ME: Is that a question?

ETHAN: No. See you at six.

ME: Nope.

ETHAN: 6:30. Glad we compromised.

I locked the phone.

Some people simply refused to become less annoying with age.

After a shower, I pulled on leggings and an old sweatshirt before opening the curtains properly.

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Clouds hung low over the city, pale light catching on damp rooftops and the glass towers beyond them. Far below, traffic moved along the wet streets while the occasional ferry cut across the gray-blue water in the distance.

I stood there longer than necessary.

Soon, none of this would be mine anymore.

The thought no longer frightened me, but it still felt strange.

My refrigerator contained three eggs, half a loaf of bread, several questionable strawberries and enough coffee to rescue the situation, so breakfast became lunch somewhere around noon.

I ate at the counter with my laptop open beside me.

Not spreadsheets this time.

An unfinished illustration filled the screen: a woman beneath an enormous moon, sword hanging from one hand while something monstrous emerged from the trees behind her.

Her face had been irritating me for weeks, because it was too calm.

If a creature the size of a small building was stalking toward me, I hoped I’d manage something more convincing than mild inconvenience.

I adjusted the shadows around her eyes, undid them, changed the shape of her mouth and immediately hated that too.

Some things refused to cooperate no matter how old I got.

Drawing had survived everything, though.

Sometimes months passed without me touching a stylus. Other times I lost entire weekends to it. I preferred it that way. There were enough parts of my life with deadlines and expectations attached to them.

This one belonged to me.

My phone vibrated beside the coffee mug.

A payment notification flashed across the screen.

I swiped it away without reading the amount.

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The Nerd Who Stole The Quarterback

Another followed a minute later.

hen another.

I turned the phone facedown.

Whatever had happened overnight could wait.

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By midafternoon, I had filled another moving box, emptied most of the kitchen cupboards and discovered four chargers in places I had already searched twice.

The living room somehow looked worse.

I planted my hands on my hips and surveyed the damage.

“This is going beautifully.”

My phone began ringing from somewhere beneath a pile of clothes.

Ethan.

I dug it out. “If this is about the toaster…”

“I’m downstairs.”

My eyes went to the clock.

3:17.

“You said six.”

“I changed my mind.”

“Change it back.”

“I brought food.”

That gave me pause.

Ethan laughed through the speaker. “Pathetic.”

“What did you bring?”

“Open the door and find out.”

The call ended and five minutes later, the buzzer sounded.

I let him in mostly because I was hungry and partly because Ethan had never respected a closed door metaphorically, so there was little point trying one literally.

When I opened the apartment door, he stood there balancing two takeaway bags and a cardboard drink tray.

At thirty, Ethan Cole had finally grown into the face that had looked slightly too young for him throughout university. The permanently wrinkled student clothes were gone too, replaced by a dark jumper, good jeans and the sort of watch he’d once mocked other people for buying.

His gaze swept over me, and his eyebrows climbed.

“Wow.”

The Nerd Who Stole The Quarterback

“Choose your next words carefully.”

You look…” He dragged the word out just long enough for me to start closing the door in his face.

Ethan laughed and caught it with his foot. “Alive. I was going to say you look alive.”

“Liar.”

“Probably. Are you hungry?”

I opened the door wider. “Come in.”

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He walked past me looking far too pleased with himself, only to slow when he got a proper look at the living room.

“Jesus. What happened in here?”

“I’m packing.”

He took in the half-filled boxes scattered around the room. “Were you angry while doing it?”

“Give me the food, Ethan.”

He promptly lifted the bag out of my reach.

My eyes narrowed.

Whatever he saw on my face made him lower it again. “You’ve become intimidating.”

“I’ve always been intimidating.”

“You used to apologize when other people stepped on your feet.”

“That girl is gone.”

His mouth twitched. “Clearly.”

I snatched the bag from him and headed for the kitchen before he found another way to annoy me. Naturally, he followed. inspecting the labels on the boxes we passed as though he’d been invited to review my packing methods.

“Books. Kitchen. Keep…” He paused beside one marked MAYBE and looked over at me. “Very sophisticated organizational system you’ve got going here.”

I balled up a napkin and threw it at him. It bounced off his chest, earning me a grin as he pulled out a chair and made himself comfortable.

That was the thing about Ethan. Being around him had always been easy, even after everything else between us had proved decidedly less so.

Maybe that was why we’d somehow remained in each other’s lives despite being much better at friendship than we’d ever been at staying together.

We had met at university, become friends, eventually dated, and discovered a few years later that affection wasn’t always enough to make two people want the same future. There had been no spectacular betrayal to turn us into enemies.

We’d simply stopped being right for each other.

Ethan opened his container. “So when were you actually planning to tell me you’d accepted the job?”

“I did tell you.”

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“You sent me a message saying, Might be moving to America. Will update.”

or the next twenty minutes, he filled the apartment with enough conversation that I barely noticed how empty it had felt the morning. His sister was dating another man the family hated, one of his clients had attempted to settle an invoice with concert tickets, and someone in his building had declared war over recycling bins.

Then, somewhere between complaints about Auckland parking and stealing one of my strawberries, he asked, “Are you scared?”

I set my fork down. “About what?”

“Going back.”

There was no need to ask where.

Ethan knew enough about my past to understand why returning mattered. Mom had called me Astra too many times in front of him for the name to remain unexplained forever, and eventually he’d learned that Isla wasn’t the name I’d been born with.

He knew I’d grown up in America.

He knew Mom and I had left when I was eighteen.

The rest had remained mine.

“A little,” I admitted.

“Only a little?”

I picked at the edge of my napkin. “It’s been ten years. I think I’m allowed to be nervous about going back to a country I haven’t set foot in since I was eighteen.”

“You could’ve taken a job anywhere.”

“And I took one in New York.”

“Which is exactly my point.”

I looked at him and he just waited.

“I’m not a teenager anymore.”

Something softened in his face. “No. You’re definitely not.”

“Whatever is waiting for me there can deal with the adult version.”

That earned a quiet laugh.

“There she is.”

“Don’t sound so proud.”

I shook my head and reached for another strawberry.

He let the subject go.

That was another reason we’d survived each other.

After we ate. Ethan made himself useful carrying boxes while I sorted what would travel with me and what could go into

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storage.

was kneeling beside an open suitcase when Ethan came out of the bedroom with one of my shirts dangling from his hand.

“I found this shoved behind the dresser,” he said. “Please tell me it belongs to you.”

I glanced up. “Who else would it belong to?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you’ve been hiding an entire second roommate from me.”

“Very funny. Put it in the suitcase.”

He tossed the shirt toward me, but the small black case hanging from his other hand immediately caught my attention.

“Where did you find that?”

Ethan glanced down at it. “Under your bed.”

I crossed the room and held out my hand. “Give it to me.”

His eyebrows rose. “Okay. That’s a very serious face for a little black box.”

“It’s expensive, and you’re holding it like you’re about to drop it.”

He handed it over, though curiosity had already gotten the better of him. “What’s inside?”

“Equipment.”

“What kind?”

“Stuff I use for my drawings.”

Ethan studied the case in my hands. “Since when do drawings require secret equipment hidden under your bed?”

“Since when do you interrogate me about everything I own?”

He laughed and lifted his hands in surrender. “Alright, alright. Your suspicious little box is none of my business.”

“Finally, something we agree on.”

Ethan headed back into the bedroom, and I waited until his footsteps disappeared before lowering the case onto the carpet and opening it.

My camera rested inside beside a microphone and two compact lights, everything still arranged exactly where I’d left it.

Good.

I’d spent enough money on the equipment that trusting movers with it wasn’t happening.

I closed the case and set it beside my suitcase.

My phone vibrated against the carpet a moment later.

I reached for it. expecting another message from Sinclair, but it was only a notification from an app I rarely bothered checking during the day.

I cleared it without opening it.

“Isla?” Ethan called from the bedroom.

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“What?”

head appeared around the doorway. “Why do you own six black dresses?”

“Because I like black.”

“You’re moving to New York, not joining the Addams family.”

“Pack my dresses, Ethan.”

He disappeared again, laughing to himself.

I slipped my phone into my pocket, tucked the black case beneath a layer of clothes, and pulled the zipper closed.

One suitcase down.

Far too many boxes left to go.

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The Nerd Who Stole The Quarterback

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The City I Came Back To

SA/ASTRA

America appeared beneath the clouds before I was ready for it.

I leaned closer to the window as the city took shape below us, buildings rising through the haze while roads and bridges threaded between them in impossible-looking lines.

The captain announced our descent into New York, and the quiet cabin slowly came back to life around me People stirred in their seats as the plane began to lower, but I barely noticed any of them.

My heart had been restless since the coastline came into view, and seeing the city beneath us only made it worse.

Not fear.

At least, I didn’t think it was.

Returning had always existed as an abstract idea, something attached to a job offer and a plane ticket rather than an actual place waiting beneath the clouds.

Now it was real.

My phone still held the last message Ethan had sent before takeoff.

ETHAN: Text me when you land. And don’t die before December.

A laugh escaped me.

Saying goodbye to him had been harder than expected. Callum and a few people from work had come to the airport too, turning what I’d intended to be a quick departure into something that left my eyes swollen before I even reached security.

The aircraft descended lower, and one thought slipped through everything else before I could stop it.

Zane.

My attention returned to the window.

Going back didn’t mean reopening every part of the life I’d left there.

New York was enormous. Whatever life Zane Ashton had built belonged to him, and mine had nothing to do with it.

The wheels struck the runway with a heavy jolt, sending my stomach dropping with them.

We were here.

By the time I made it through baggage claim and stepped outside with two suitcases, my carry-on, and a handbag determined to slide off my shoulder, the pickup area was already a mess of blaring horns, impatient drivers calling out names, and cars squeezing into whatever space opened along the curb.

People streamed around me from every direction, weaving between luggage and one another without slowing, while I stood there for a moment trying to get my bearings.

I tightened my grip on the suitcase handle and started through the crowd, but after only a few steps, I slowed again as the reality of where I was finally began to settle over me.

America.

The Nerd Who Stole The Quarterback

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I stood there taking in the blaring horns, the heat rising from the pavement, and the endless movement around me. surprised by the weight gathering beneath my ribs.

Beng back simply felt heavier than I’d expected.

My phone buzzed before I could make any more sense of it.

ETHAN: Alive?

I smiled.

ME: Barely.

His reply arrived almost immediately.