We're a foot apart. Neither of us is pretending this is about mountains.
"Give me a moment," I say.
Her expression shifts. Curious.
I step past her. Into the bathroom. My luggage sits where I left it this morning, open against the wall.
The Costco box is where I packed it—tucked inside the interior pocket, the cardboard slightly crushed from travel. I pull it out. Walk back into the room.
Jane is standing in the center of the floor. Waiting. Not casually. Deliberately. Feet planted, chin up, the posture of a woman who has decided to stand exactly where she is and let me come to her.
My brain goes quiet all at once.
The running commentary, the strategic calculations, the internal catalog of every detail about this woman I've been compiling for three weeks—all of it drops into silence.
Because she's standing in the light in the middle of a room in Cedar Falls and she's real.
I hold up the box.
She looks at it. Looks at me. Looks back at the box.
"Our Costco stash?"
"My next stop was Boston."
Her face changes. Not immediately—the words take a second to travel from her ears to wherever she processes information that matters. Then something behind her eyes opens.
"Your next stop—"
"After Cedar Falls. After the interview. My bag was already packed with a Boston itinerary. I was coming to you." I hold the box steady. "Regardless of how this interview went. Regardless of whether the contract made sense. The next flight I had booked was DIA to Logan."
She stares at the box. At me. Her mouth opens. Closes.
"You packed condoms for Boston."
"I packed everything for Boston."
Her eyes are bright. Not tears—something more electrical than that. The look of a woman absorbing the fact that a man made a decision about her before she entered the equation.
"You were already coming," she says. Quiet. Almost to herself.
"I was already there."
She presses her hand flat against my chest. I feel the pressure of her palm through my shirt, the heat of it, the weight of Jane Cooper deciding something.
"Cedar Falls," she says.
Not a question. I go still.
"Coaching position,’ her voice has shifted—lower, clearer, the register she uses when she's finished gathering information and is now presenting findings.
"When the arena announcer called you by name, West. After I recovered from the shock, it took me about thirty seconds to realize you might want to stay here in Cedar Falls."
I stare at her.
I had spent the entire night rehearsing how to tell her. Drafting and redrafting the conversation in my head. Timing, framing, context.
She solved it in thirty seconds from an arena seat at seven-thirty in the morning.
