Not the pocket with my own phone. The other one. That I had forgotten about, or at least tried to ignore the fact that Matteo handed me a working device an hour ago, and I have spent every minute since acting as though I do not own one.
I pull it out.
The screen lights, crisp, clear, and on a network that is doing its job.
One message, freshly arrived, from a contact saved asJude (Captain).
Chin up. You look odd when you seem sad.
I stare at the words for a full three seconds before my brain registers them as English.
Then I lift my head.
And there he is.
Across the path, propped against the brick of the building opposite mine, one shoulder set, one ankle crossed over the other in the easy posture of a man who has been there long enough to have settled in but does not particularly want me to know how long.
His own phone is in his hand. His hood is up. The amber-and-bourbon warmth of him does not reach me at this distance, but my memory supplies it anyway, low and steady, and the rest of him assembles around it. The dark blond hair shoved back. The twice-broken nose. The furniture shoulders.
The captain of sector two, watching me from across a quad with the same patient attention he uses to watch a faceoff.
Our eyes lock.
He does not move or wave. He simply tilts his head a quarter inch, the way a person does when waiting for an answer, and lets me decide what to do with the fact of him.
My pride, the small mean part of it that has been holding me together for the past forty minutes, makes a complete recovery in under a second.
I nod at him.
Once. Slow.
Then I look down at the phone in my hand and type with thumbs that are, I notice with private interest, no longer threatening to shake.
Aren’t you supposed to be doing drills with Matteo?
The three little dots appear almost immediately. I do not let myself enjoy how fast they came.
Did my drills. Santori was the one playing hookie with a certain new goalie.
My mouth crooks.
Bet he said it was worth it.
The dots dance. I glance up.
And I catch him smirking. Small. Barely a line.
The kind of expression a less attentive woman would miss entirely, but I am, on a professional level, paid to read movement that no one else can see. The corner of his mouth has lifted, and his thumb is moving across his screen, and the captain who has not allowed himself a single visible reactionsince the moment I walked into his rink is letting one slip on a bench across the quad.
I am intrigued he phrased it exactly that way. Came to see for myself.
Bold of you. Although, Captain, leading from the front. Expected, I suppose.
I am the captain. Of course I lead.
Cocky looks good on you, Kavanagh.
There is a beat. A longer one.
