The entryway opened into a living room with high ceilings and original molding, architectural details that would make a real estate agent weep. But it wasn't the bones that stopped her—it was what he'd done with them.
Books everywhere, spines cracked, some bristling with Post-it flags in three different colors. A leather couch that had seen better days, a blanket thrown over one arm. Game film paused on the TV—she recognized the formation, the Miami defense from last week. Weights in the corner, a foam roller, the detritusof a body that was also a job. The space was clean but not staged. Lived in. Male. Real.
And photos. On the bookshelf, on the mantle above a fireplace that looked functional. His parents—Emmy recognized them from the frames that used to sit in the Knight house when she was little, before the accident. West's wedding, Grant in a tux with his arm around her brother. Team photos, candid shots from practice.
One photo of a teenage Emmy making a face at the camera, her braces catching the light. She didn't remember it being taken.
"When did you—" She pointed at it, thrown.
"West's graduation party. You were trying to photobomb the team picture." Grant was in the kitchen, checking whatever was on the stove. "You made that face right before your mom dragged you away."
Emmy stared at the photo. Fifteen, maybe sixteen. Braces. Terrible hair. Caught mid-laugh, completely unguarded.
He'd kept it. Framed it. Put it on his mantle next to pictures of his dead parents and his best friend's wedding.
"I didn't know you had this," she said, and heard herself sound strange.
"Found it when I was unpacking." Grant's back was to her, stirring something. "Seemed like it belonged."
Emmy didn't know what to do with that. So she did what she always did—kept moving, kept cataloging, kept her brain busy enough that her heart couldn't catch up.
"You can sit," Grant said, glancing over his shoulder. "You're hovering."
"I'm not hovering. I'mobserving." But she moved to the dining table—set for two with real plates, tucked into a bay window that looked out onto a small private garden. "You cooked."
"I said I would."
"Since when do you cook?"
"Since my mom taught me." He said it simply, without drama, turning back to the stove. "Before."
Before. Before the accident. Before his rookie year. Before the Woodhouse family became the only one he had left.
He moved around the kitchen—confident, unhurried, his hands sure in a way that had nothing to do with football.
"Wine?" He pulled a bottle from the counter. "I don't mind."
"I'm fine with water." She wasn't going to sit here drinking alone while he watched. "Thanks, though."
He nodded, filled two glasses from the tap, and brought them to the table along with a bowl of pasta and a plate of grilled chicken he must have had warming in the oven. The pasta smelled like it had no business being in a brownstone kitchen. Simple—garlic, olive oil, parmesan, fresh basil—but the kind of simple that takes twenty years to learn.
"My mom's recipe," he said, sitting across from her.
"It's incredible." Emmy twirled another forkful. "Seriously. You've been holding out on us. All those Sunday dinners and you let Serle do all the work."
"Serle would commit a felony if I touched her kitchen."
"Fair point."
They ate. The conversation came easier than she'd expected—careful at first, tiptoeing around the golf tournament, around the flowers and her three-word thank you and the silence that had followed. But then settling into something almost normal. The playoff picture taking shape, his stats putting him in serious MVP conversations for the first time in three years. Her parents' latest feud over her mother's manuscript dust. The ultrasound photo West had shown her, the tiny heartbeat that made her father cry and then immediately Google "infant CPR certification."
Normal. Except for the awareness humming underneath everything. Except for the way Emmy kept noticing how the lamplight caught his jaw, the breadth of his shoulders in that soft t-shirt, the way he looked at her when he thought she wasn't paying attention.
Except for the questionnaire in her bag, waiting.
They finished dinner. Grant cleared the plates while Emmy opened the cannoli box, and they moved to his leather couch with pastry and coffee. Emmy tucked herself into the corner, cannoli balanced on a napkin, trying to figure out how to bring up the reason she was actually here.
Grant solved that problem for her.
