“Water?” he asks, voice normal again, as if we just discussed the weather and I didn’t hand him a piece of myname.
“Please,” I say, grateful for the reprieve. He disappears toward the bar, swallowed by laughter and the generic glitter of December, and for thirty seconds I stand alone at the edge of the floor with my heart beating in the key ofmine.
Dad appears at my elbow like a storm chosen, not forecasted. “Having fun?”
I keep my eyes on a safe middle distance and paste the smile back on. “It’s a good party.”
His gaze does a full inventory—dress, hair, mouth, the pulse in my throat that refuses to behave. “Watch your step,” he says.
“I’m wearing heels,” I say lightly.
He doesn’t laugh. “You know what I mean.”
I do. He’s not wrong. He’s also not right in the way that matters.
“Coach,” someone calls, and he peels away, but not before he squeezes my shoulder, a press that saysI can stop thisandI don’t want to have to. I let the imprint of his hand sit beside the memory of Triston’s. Two claims. One born of fear. One born of faith. I stand between them and decide not to be torn.
Triston returns with a glass of water and the calm of a man who just solved a problem only he knew existed.
“Thank you,” I say, taking it.
“Drink,” he says, and the command lands like care, not control. I obey because thirst has a way of making liars of all of us.
“Walk?” he asks, when the band switches to something faster and the dance floor crowds with people whose bodies want to be loud. “Just the perimeter. I like you where the air is thinner.”
“I thought you liked me in hallways,” I say, because banter is oxygen, too.
He steers us toward the balcony doors. The ballroom opens onto a narrow terrace strung with white lights; heat lamps glow like aliensuns. A handful of guests cluster in coats, exhaling smoke and secrets. The night is cold enough to make cheeks bloom. Snow sits fat on the railing, undecided about flurrying again.
We stand just inside the doorway, warmth at our backs, winter in our faces. The glass in my hand sweats; my palm does, too. He doesn’t reach for me. He just leans a shoulder against the doorframe like his body has always known where to wait.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. It’s true, and it startles me.
“Good,” he says. “Because I need you to remember this when you accuse me of ruining you later.”
“Accuse?”
He nods. “You’ll do it. You’ll say I made you reckless. You’ll say I dragged you to the edge. You’ll forget you walked.”
“Maybe I’ll say thank you,” I counter.
“You won’t need to,” he says. “I’ll be busy thanking you.”
“For what?”
“For letting me be gentle in a life that doesn’t ask me to be.”
Something cracks in my chest, cleanly, like ice under the blade when the line is right. I’m so tired of being someone else’s symbol—coach’s daughter, dead captain’s sister, good girl with the clipboard. For nine minutes on a dance floor, I was just a woman whose body knew the steps.
Inside, laughter swells, a wave breaking on the chorus of a song I’ve heard too many Decembers in a row. He watches my face like it’s a map he intends to memorize before the weather washes the lines away.
“Say the word,” he says.
“What word?”
“The one that will make me walk you out of here.”
