It took Matt some time to pull himself together, but it wasn’t his first time in that hole and he was better prepared for what he had to go through. It wasn’t any easier, but at least that nightmare was familiar. It helped that his mother came to town for his recovery and that he had Dan in his life. Renee & Betsy were also really important sounding boards–one because she’d been there & back again and made it out all right, and one because she was good at walking him through the rebroken edges of his psyche.

Knowing his mother okayed the experiment was more than a little hurtful, but Matt loves & trusts his mother within an inch of his life, and he remembers telling Andrew Yes, please, when Andrew offered him the drugs.

((There we go again with Matt’s shady YES, hm? He’s far more keen on Dan’s consent than he ever was with his own.))

Matt stayed because Palmetto State was a dream, and he wasn’t going to give it up on anyone else’s account. It’d cost him too much to get there, and it’d cost him so much to stay, but he wasn’t going to let anyone chase him out of there. ((Chase him out of his own room, sure, so he had to spend most of an academic year sleeping on a couch, but not off the team.))

And the further out from that night he got, the stronger he became, and the closer he grew to the teammates who’d once mocked him for his weaknesses, the more he knew he’d made the right choice. Look at him now, on his way to marrying the love of his life and playing for the pros!