“I know.”
“He raised me inside all of that. He made sure I understood it.” I turn my hand over under his. “He’s not wrong about it, Reece. He’s seen it happen too many times to be wrong.”
“And you think that’s us.”
“I think that’s what he would see if he came through that door.” I look at the studio, my station, my machine, my design on his ribs. “His star pitcher, shirtless. In his daughter’s studio after hours.”
Reece is quiet for a moment. “That’s not what it is.”
“You know what it is. I know what it is.” I meet his eyes. “He would see the headline version.”
The headline version.I’ve been avoiding thinking about it in those terms because it means admitting how exposed this is, how visible, and how many ways it could go wrong from angles we’re not even watching. Lena is already circling. The media has already noticed Reece’s name in connection with the studio once. My father drives by on a Tuesday night and sits outside for two minutes.
We are not as hidden as I’ve been pretending.
“If he found out…” I say, “… and went to management—”
“He wouldn’t.”
“He might if he thought it was affecting your game.” I look at him steadily. “Would it be? Honestly.”
Something moves across his face. “My numbers are the best they’ve been in three years.”
“Right now. In the good part.” I pull back my hand and wrap both arms around myself. “What happens in the bad part? When we fight, or something goes wrong, or the press gets hold of it and makes it something neither of us recognizes? What happens to your focus then?”
“I’d handle it.”
“Everyone saysthey’ll handle it. My father has watched fifty athletes saythey’ll handle it.”
“I’m not fifty athletes.”
“No.” I look at him, and the thing I feel when I look at him is exactly the problem. It’s too big, too certain, and arrived too fast without my permission. “You’re the one I actually care about, which makes it worse.”
He’s quiet for a moment. I let the words sit there because I said them out loud, there’s no taking them back, and maybe there shouldn’t be.
“Then let me be worth caring about,” he says.
“You already are. That’s not the question.” I stand up, needing to move, needing to do something with my hands. I go to the window and stand to the side, checking the street the way I used to check for thunderstorms as a kid, half hoping, half dreading. The street is empty. “The question is whether I can keep doing this and pretending I don’t see what’s coming.”
“What do you think is coming?”
“I think my father is not stupid. I think Lena is not done. I think this city is smaller than it looks, and two people trying to be invisible are twice as visible as one.” I turn around. “I think the second he finds out, and hewillfind out, the fallout lands on you, not on me. Your contract. Your relationship with your coach. Your reputation, which matters more than you let on, no matter how many times you say you don’t care about the press.”
Reece stands up. The movement is slow and deliberate, the way he moves when he’s decided something.
“You’re not wrong about any of it,” he says.
“I know.”
“And I’m stillnotwalking away.”
“I’m not asking you to walk away.” My voice comes out quieter than I intend. “I’m asking you to understand what we’recarrying. Both of us. So when it gets heavier, and itwillget heavier, neither of us acts surprised.”
He crosses the studio and stops in front of me. He’s close enough I can see the tattoo at the edge of his shirt, the bird’s wing in the strip of skin between the fabric and his ribs. My work. My lines. Permanent, which was the whole point.
“I understand what we’re carrying,” he says. “I understood it the second I walked back into this studio after your father told me to stay away.” He tilts my chin up, and I let him because I am apparently constitutionally incapable of holding my ground when he does the quiet, certain version of himself. “What I want to know is whether you do.”
“I’m the one who brought it up.”
