“That’s...” I don’t have words for what that is.Shitty.
“It is what it is. We’re fine.” He doesn’t sound fine. “Maisie’s better off without someone who doesn’t want to be there. I just wish—”
He stops himself.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He shakes his head. “Forget it.”
I should let it go. This is way past professional territory. But something about the way he’s looking at me—tired and unguarded in a way I’ve never seen him—makes me push.
“You can tell me. If you want.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is rough. “I just wish she didn’t have to learn these hard life lessons so young. That people can hurt you, that people leave. She’ssix. She should believe in... I don’t know. Happy endings. Instead, she looks at me like she’s waiting for me to disappear too.”
The ache in his voice hits me somewhere deep. His accent is thicker when he’s tired, I’ve noticed. The hard consonants soften, certain words tilting toward French—which shouldn’t be as attractive as it is.
“You’re not going to disappear,” I say softly.
“I know that. But she doesn’t. Not really.” He looks at me, and there’s something raw in his eyes. “How do you teach a kid to trust when the world keeps proving to her that people don’t stay even when they say they’re going to?”
I wish I could fix it, but I can’t. So I just sit with him in the silence, thirty thousand feet above the ground, and let him not be okay for a minute.
It feels like the least I can do.
• • •
The hotel in Chicago is nice—team money nice, which means I have a room bigger than my apartment with a view of the lake that probably goes for five hundred a night.
I should sleep. It’s almost ten, and Zayden has an early morning session before the game. But my brain won’t shut off, so I end up in the hotel bar, nursing a glass of wine and staring at nothing.
“Can’t sleep either?”
I look up. It’s Zayden.
He slides onto the stool next to me, signaling the bartender. “Sparkling water. Lime.”
“Sparkling water?” I raise an eyebrow. “Wild night.”
“Game day tomorrow.” He shrugs. “Gotta stay sharp.”
“And yet you’re in a bar at ten instead of resting.”
“Could say the same about you.” He nods at my wine glass. “What’s your excuse?”
“Brain won’t shut off.”
“Yeah.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “I know that feeling.”
The bartender sets down his water, and he takes a long sip, staring at nothing. Up close, under the low bar lighting, I take him in. The defined jaw, the dark stubble, lips that I’m absolutely not staring at. The way his throat moves when he swallows.
I take a sip of wine and look away before I do something stupid, like keep looking. “Rough night?” I ask.
“Rough week. Rough month.” He rolls the glass between his palms. “Rough year, if I’m being honest.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Not really.” He glances at me sideways. “But I probably will anyway because apparently I have no filter around you.”
