"You should get that," Red said.
"It can wait."
"Joel." His voice was soft. "It's buzzed four times."
I pulled my hand away and sat up, scanning the floor for my jeans. They were crumpled near the door with Red's shirt and one of my shoes. I found the phone in the back pocket.
Three missed calls from my father. One text:Call me when you're done with the shoot. We need to discuss the campaign.
The post-sex warmth drained out of me.
"Everything okay?" Red asked.
"Fine." I set the phone on the nightstand face-down. "Just my father."
"You're not going to call him back?"
"Not right now."
Red was quiet. I could feel him watching me, reading the shift in my posture, the way my shoulders had climbed toward my ears. He was good at that. Too good.
"The house is nice," he said finally. "Bigger than I expected."
"Four bedrooms. Pool. The kitchen has one of those islands." I didn't know why I was listing features like a real estate agent. I didn't know why my father's text was still sitting in my chest like something I'd swallowed wrong.
He'd probably seen the announcement. Lynx had posted a teaser this morning, just a silhouette and a release date, but my father tracked everything. Every tag, every mention, every piece of coverage that shaped how the skating world perceived Joel Coffey. He had Google alerts set up. He'd told me once it was part of managing a career. I'd understood, even then, that he meant managing me.
"Hey." Red sat up. "Where'd you go?"
"Nowhere."
"You're doing that thing where your face goes blank." His hand landed on my shoulder. "Talk to me."
"There's nothing to talk about." I stood up before he could push. "I'm going to shower."
The bathroom was enormous. I stood under the water and let it run hot enough to hurt, and I didn't think about my father's text or the campaign or the fact that I was wasting training days on a man I couldn't introduce to anyone who mattered.
When I came out, Red was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. He was standing at the window looking out at the pool, his shoulders loose, his weight settled easy on his feet.
He turned when he heard me. "Feel better?"
"I wasn't feeling bad."
"Okay." He didn't argue. "So what's the plan?"
"Plan?"
"For the week." He gestured at the house around us. "We've got four days. What do you want to do?"
I didn't have an answer. At home, every hour was accounted for. Morning ice at six, off-ice training at ten, choreography sessions, media prep, the meal containers that showed up three times a week, so I never had to think about food. My life was a machine my father had designed, and I had perfected.
Here, there was nothing. No schedule, no structure, no one telling me where to be.
"Groceries," I said, because it was the only thing I could think of. "We should probably get groceries."
"I can cook," Red said. "I used to make all my dad's meals before—" He shrugged. "I'm pretty good at it."
"I'll do it."
