“First team road trip?” Adler asks Savannah once we’re seated.
Her eyes narrow suspiciously. “Yes.”
“Lots of dead time on these things.”
Savannah holds up a packet of what look like articles written in dense text, composed of words I don’t understand. “I came prepared.”
“Hope that’s not all you brought,” Adler says, and I don’t have a chance to ask him what the fuck he’s getting at, when he adds, “Wouldn’t want you to get bored.”
Savannah doesn’t respond, just pores over her articles—good. Her cheeks are flushed—less good. Maybe I should tell the flight crew to turn on the air.
A few minutes later, Adler’s phone buzzes. He pulls it from his hoodie pocket, studies the screen, shoulders expanding as if he’s breathing deeply on purpose. I watch him for two more cycles of breath.
He glances up too fast for me to pretend I wasn’t looking. “Meditation app,” he says.
“Oh.” I wouldn’t have expected that. I think about the late-night run I took last week. If I kept putting one foot in front of the other, I wouldn’t need—want—a drink. “Does that…work?”
Adler shrugs. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he looked embarrassed. “Depends on what you’re using it for.”
“What’s it called—the app, I mean?” I don’t know why I’m asking. I could ask someone else on the team, or Google it, I guess.
For a moment, Adler’s eyebrows pinch like he thinks I’m making fun of him. But he tells me the name of the app.
I download it as the plane takes off, set up an account. A screen pops up.What’s on your mind?Options: Wanting tomanage stress. Wanting to sleep better. Wanting to feel more in control.
Next to me, Savannah is still reading, pen scribbling in the margins. Every so often, the ends of her hair brush my arm. Even that little bit of contact feels overwhelming. She pauses in her reading and looks up at me, green eyes wide, lips parted in question.
“Am I putting too much weight on you?” she asks.
Not enough.I can’t say that, so I tighten my arm around her instead. “How’s the reading?”
“Hard.”
“You got it, though.”
She laughs a little ruefully. “Imighthave it.” She nestles her head against my arm and goes back to studying.
Across from us, Adler has abandoned his meditation app in favor of looking at us. For a second, he just holds my gaze and then he nods, as if he approves of whatever he sees. Normally, I’d tell him to mind his own fucking business, but with Savannah leaning against me, close enough I can smell the faint rose scent of her perfume, things feel…different.
I go back to the meditation app and select my option from the list.
Trying something new.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Savannah
The hotelwe’re staying at in Chicago is a five-star, a rising glass-paned building that gleams in the fading city light. The team has a process for everything—deplaning, loading onto a bus that transports us from the tarmac into the city, checking everyone into the hotel.
“Got ours.” Brayden holds up two room keys, then ducks to kiss me on the cheek. He did that on the plane, once, and on the bus ride from the plane to the hotel, twice. That’s the point of this trip: faking it for his teammates. Only nothing seems fake about the way he’s grinning at me, a smile he schools into a scowl as Asher walks past.
We take our luggage and ride the elevator to an upper floor reserved for the team. Players pile off, call to one another like they didn’t just get off the same bus that unloaded the same plane. We find our room, and I wait as Brayden scans his key to let us in.
Asher is doing the same at the room next door, a thing I won’t think about. How we’ll only be a wall away from each other, like Brayden and I are at home. I drag my suitcase into the room andlisten so intently—if I can’t hear Asher, he probably can’t hear us—that I almost don’t notice our room’s bed situation.
Emphasis onbed.
“Did you—” I turn to Brayden. Was this whole thing—asking me to go on the trip, snuggling with me on the plane, kissing my cheek at seemingly random intervals—some kind of set up? But he’s eyeing the bed warily.
