"When it felt impossible."
There was another long silence. I could hear Theo in the background, the distant sound of dishes being done. The normal sounds of a life that had been impossible once and now wasn't.
"I almost let Theo leave," Luca confessed. "I almost let him walk out of my life because I was too afraid of what choosing him would cost. Then I decided that the risk of the impossible was better than the certainty of nothing."
Was it? But what about the certainty ofenough,the security of a friendship that was real and sustaining and never, ever had the chance of becoming the thing I actually wanted it to be?
"He's leaving," I said. "Denver."
"Has he signed anything?"
"Not yet. But he told his agent he's leaning toward accepting."
"Then he hasn't left yet."
"Luca."
"Jamie."
I pressed my forehead against my knees.
"I've never asked anyone for anything," I said. "Not like this. Not for myself."
"I know." Luca's voice was gentle, which was not a word anyone used about Luca Moretti in any other context. "That's why it matters."
He hung up. Or I hung up. One of us ended the call and I sat on my kitchen floor for another twenty minutes, looking at the mug.I thought about Luca almost letting Theo leave, and I thought about the impossible and the certain. I thought about the man in that hotel room who had looked at me in that second before his phone rang. His face had said everything he never would.
The question was whether I could do what I had never done. Whether the man who took care of everyone could, for once, take care of himself.
15
Abbott
I told Jamie on Tuesday at a coffee shop equidistant between our apartments.
It was already a departure from our normal—we didn't meet at neutral locations. We met at his place or the facility. We normally saw each other enough anyway.
Neutral ground meant this was different. He knew it when I texted the address.
He was already there when I arrived. He sat at a corner table, a coffee in front of him and one waiting for me. He'd ordered mine black. He knew me. The mug was institutional white—nothing like my blue one at his house.
"Hey," he said with an easy smile. It was the full Jamie Hayes performance.
"Hey." I sat down. I wrapped my hands around the mug to make the next part easier. "I need to tell you something."
His smile didn't change, but his eyes did. Jamie Hayes could read a room, and right now he was reading me with his entire attention.
"Denver made a formal offer," I said. "Two years, starter, three point five million per. NMC for the first year."
He nodded slowly. The smile was gone now, replaced by a more serious look. "That's an incredible offer."
"It is."
"You've been sitting on this since the road trip."
"I've been sitting on this since before the road trip. The formal offer came during."
"During the trip." He processed this. I watched the realization that the phone call in the hotel room, the 11:47 PM interruption, had been this. "That was the call."
