Kieran stood in the hall in his practice day clothes. Dark jacket. Jeans. Bag still over one shoulder, which meant he'd come straight from the facility. He hadn't gone home first.
His face was wrong. The pleasant mask gone, replaced by something tighter, eyes moving too fast, and the blankness of a man running scenarios and not liking any of them.
"Heath—"
"Come in."
He stepped inside. I closed the door behind him. Didn't take his jacket. Didn't offer water.
He set his bag by the wall. He looked around the apartment how he always did—counter, couch, the dishes I hadn't washed—but this time the scan stopped at my face and stayed.
I stood at the edge of the kitchen. He stood near the door.
"You knew they were trading me."
I didn't waste time.
Kieran's body went still.
"Yes."
He didn't ask how I'd found out. Didn't deflect or qualify. He stood in my apartment and told me the truth he'd been withholding since he signed.
"And you signed to stop it."
"Yes."
The radiator clanked and ticked.
"Did you sign for you, or for me?"
"You were in a package, Heath. Three teams. Your contract, your cap hit, and your production, all of it, on a spreadsheet somewhere, ready to ship. I saw the numbers and I couldn't—" His voice dropped to the register from the elevator. The one I heard before our first kiss. "I couldn't let that be your Tuesday morning."
"That wasn't your call."
"Heath—"
My voice was level. "Every shift I've played since the deadline. Did I earn that? Or did you—"
The question took up every square foot of space in the apartment.
"It was you." Kieran's voice cracked on the second word. A hairline fracture. "Every rep. Every read. Every time you stayed in traffic when anyone else would have cleared out. None of that was mine. I couldn't have given you that if I'd wanted to."
"That's not what I'm asking."
He flinched.
"You took the one thing I had." My hands were at my sides. I pressed them against my body to keep them there. "I earned that spot on the roster. That was mine."
"I know."
"Then why didn't you let me keep it?"
The silence after my question was worse than anything I'd heard in my apartment. Worse than the call from Maggie when the numbers changed.
Kieran didn't argue. He didn't offer an explanation that could close the distance between what he'd done and what I needed him not to have done.
He'd chosen for me. The way the front office chose for the roster. The way insurance companies chose what qualified as elective and what qualified as necessary.
