I turned. “Manageable.”
“Mm.” She had her tablet tucked against her ribs and an earpiece in one ear. Her lipstick remained perfectly intact, which I’d started to suspect was less makeup and more classified technology. “Alpine’s happy. The youth foundation is ecstatic. Brooks almost baptized a councilman in cocktail sauce, but I handled it with grace and several napkins.”
“Excellent work.”
“I’ll be putting that quote in my annual review.”
“You should.”
Her gaze moved over my face, not intrusive, just precise. Tessa Moreno didn’t ask pointless questions. She saved time by only asking the ones she already understood.
“You need anything?” she asked.
“No.”
“Convincing.”
“Tessa.”
“Right.” She tapped the edge of her tablet. “If anyone asks, the hotel group wants five minutes with you.”
“Send them over.”
“They found Benny instead.” Her mouth barely moved. “Consider it a gift.”
I looked at her.
She gave me a small, dry smile. “Try not to waste it.”
Then she left before I could answer.
I should have used the reprieve to clear my head. Instead, I found Jace again.
He was at the bar, one hand around a glass of water while a man in a gray suit talked at him with both hands. Jace’s attention stayed locked on the sponsor’s face, polite and professional, but his fingers moved under the lip of the bar. Index, middle, thumb.Pause. Again. A small, repeating pattern that had nothing to do with boredom and everything to do with holding himself together.
A server passed between us with champagne.
Jace reached for his water at the same time I reached for coffee from the service station. Fifteen feet separated us. No contact. No reason for it to matter.
It mattered anyway.
His eyes lifted.
For one second, the room became background noise.
Not in a clean, romantic way. There was nothing clean about wanting a player under my authority while my wife was in another city and his girlfriend was probably posting curated images of the event from three different angles.
It was uglier than that.
More honest.
He knew.
I knew he knew.
The thing between us had moved beyond private confrontations, beyond discipline dressed up as coaching, beyond the careful lie that this was only about helping him function. We had not named all of it. We had not said the worst, most dangerous words.
We had said enough.
