“Which means he knows.”
“Which means he suspects and chose to allow me to confirm or deny.”
“And you—”
“Said nothing useful and got back to work.”
Silence on the line. I can hear her breathing, the faint muted sounds of her apartment, the city, and music playing low. I picture her string lights on, casting everything in gold.
“You didn’t tell him,” she says.
“No.”
“But you’re not going to stay away.”
“No.”
Another silence, longer this time. “He’s going to figure it out, Reece. He will. And when he does—”
“When he does, we’ll handle it together. Same answer as last time.” I ease through a yellow light. “But I don’t want to have this conversation over the phone. I want to have it with you in the same room so I can see your face, and you can’t retreat into your worst-case scenarios without me being there to argue with each one.”
She makes the small sound she makes when she’s fighting a smile. “You’re very annoying.”
“You’ve mentioned it.”
“My dad spoke to you today, and your response is to drive directly toward the source of the problem.”
“I’m a pitcher, Ava. My entire job is to put the ball exactly where everyone expects me not to.”
The smile wins. I hear it before she says anything, the quality of the exhale, the slight shift in the sound of her voice. “Fine. Come over. There’s no food.”
“I’ll pick something up.”
“Nothing with garlic. I have a seven a.m. client.”
“Thai?”
“Thai.”
“Twenty minutes,” I say.
“Be careful coming in.”
“When am I not careful?”
“Every single time,” she says and hangs up.
I stop at the Thai place two blocks from her apartment, order the Pad See Ew and something for myself, and sit in the car for sixty seconds while I wait.
Bishop’s voice runs through my head again. ‘Stay away from Ink District.’Steady and certain, the voice of someone whose advice is almost always correct, whose instincts about athletes, pressure, and the specific ways personal lives collapse into professional ones are built on decades of evidence.
He’s not wrong.
He’s also not going to win this one.
I pick up the food, park two streets over, and take the long way around to her building. The city hums around me, indifferent and enormous, and somewhere across town, my coach is probably still in his office, rotating his pen, and adding up variables.
I take the stairs two at a time.
