“Nova—”
“Whatever you decide,” I say. “That’s yours.” The words come out before I can soften them. Maybe because this is the one thing I can give him cleanly.
Not advice. Not pressure. Not a headline.
Just ownership.
I took that from him once, even if he doesn’t know the whole of it yet. Griffin handed me an angle, and I called it reporting because that sounded better than admitting I wanted the byline badly enough to stop asking better questions.
I’m not doing that again. Not with this. Not with him.
He looks at me.
“I wasn’t going to thank you.” His voice is quiet. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I do.”
I look at him standing there with tape on his hands saying it like it’s already settled and I think about Katarina’s name tag and V. North and everything sitting in my chest that he doesn’t know yet and I think —
The guilt doesn’t move like panic.
Panic burns hot and fast. This sits. Heavy. Patient. Like it knows I’m going to carry it until I do the right thing.
And the worst part is that Jax keeps making it harder by being decent. By giving me space. By trusting me with quiet, like I’ve earned it.
By looking at me like there isn’t still something sitting between us. I have to tell him.
Not today.
I can’t keep fucking doing this.
“Okay,” I say.
I go through the door. My phone buzzes at my car. I expect Griffin. It’s Aurora. A photo. Jax at practice. He’s looking toward the press area. The timestamp is right after I left the building.
Her caption:just so you know.
I sit in the driver’s seat. He watched me leave. I put the phone down. Keys in my hand. Engine off. Florida sun doing that thing through the windshield where everything goes too bright and too hot. Katarina brought me coffee this morning.
Katarina Novak.
I didn’t ask her name because asking meant thinking about Griffin, which meant thinking about Tampa, which meant thinking about the name I buried, which meant thinking about Jax’s face if he ever—
I look away.
Apparently I’ve been looking away for months.
And she was right there the whole time.
How did I not—
Okay.
Six flights of stairs.
I’m not going anywhere.
