I keep going before she can decide she misheard me.
“They already looked you up. Volleyball coverage. ESPN. Stanford. Your academic record. The fact that you somehowhave almost no social media presence outside sports, which apparently my mother finds deeply erotic in a résumé sense.”
That startles a laugh out of her.
Good.
Because she still looks like she’s waiting for the catch.
There isn’t one.
My thumb strokes once over her knuckles.
“And yes,” I add, because I know she’ll think it if I don’t say it, “they clocked Emmanuel too.”
Her mouth tightens slightly.
I squeeze her hand. “But that wasn’t the headline.”
Her eyes lift to mine.
“The headline,” I say quietly, “was you.”
And there it is.
That look.
The one that undoes me every time.
Like she doesn’t quite know what to do with being chosen this cleanly.
Jade goes very still across the table.
Leo too.
Then Jade, because she was apparently born without the ability to leave beauty alone, presses one hand to her chest and says, “Oh, that was sickening. Do it again.”
Stella laughs, watery at the edges now, and looks down for one second before looking back up at me.
“What did they say?”
I smile a little.
“That you seem excellent.”
That gets her.
Her eyes shine instantly.
She looks away toward the window, toward the ocean, toward anything that will help her pull herself together.
Then she looks back at me and says, very softly, “Your family called me excellent?”
“My mother’s exact energy was colder than that,” I admit. “But yes.”
Leo snorts into his coffee.
Jade waves a hand.
