Page 108 of Offside

“You played well in Vancouver,” she said. “The second period especially. You were reading their defensemen before they knew what they were doing.”

I dropped my eyes to her. “You saw?”

“All seven games.” She said it plainly, without apology, then added, “Griffin used to make me watch film with him in high school. It stuck. And you also took a hit in the third period in Calgary I didn’t like.”

“That was nothing.”

“It was your left shoulder.”

“My right shoulder is the one with the issue.”

“I know which shoulder has the issue,” she said, dryly. “I also know what a hard hit to the left side looks like when the right side is already compensating.”

I was quiet. She was right. I’d felt it in Calgary and had ignored it and she’d apparently watched it happen from her couch in Scottsdale and had been sitting on it for four days.

“Come in at eight,” she said.

“Fine.”

She shifted closer against me. A beat of quiet passed.

“I watched one of the games last week with my mom,” she said. She said it quietly, like she was still deciding what to do with it. “At my parents’ house. She called me that afternoon, said she hated watching alone when my dad was out and asked if I wanted to come over.”

I went still.

“I sat on their couch for three hours.” Her voice was even, not accusing. “My mom kept grabbing my arm when you made a play. She talked about you the whole night. How good you’ve been for Griffin, how much the team has changed him for the better, how glad she is he has someone like you.” Her voice dropped. “She has no idea. She was sitting right next to me and she has absolutely no idea. She’s my mother and I sat there for hours and let her think I was just—” She stopped. “She has no idea, Ryan.”

I stared at the ceiling. I’d been carrying a version of this for months myself. Sitting at her parents’ table every Sunday, eating Linda’s food and talking about brisket and power play strategy with Tom while Maren passed me things across the table like we were just old friends. They were generous with me, and I’d been sitting in the middle of it knowing exactly what I was withholding. Tom passing the bread. Linda asking about my shoulder. Both of them treating me like I was their son’s college buddy and teammate and nothing more. I’d told myself it was temporary. That once I’d talked to Griffin, it would stop feeling like something borrowed. Nine days on the road and it had only gotten heavier.

“I know,” I said.

“I’m not angry.” She tilted her face up toward me. Her eyes were steady in the low light. Tired, maybe, and very direct. “I really just wanted you to know what it was like. My mom asking me if I thought you looked tired in the third period, and me having to answer like I didn’t already know which shoulder was bothering you and exactly how many minutes you’d logged. Asking me like I was just Griffin’s sister and the team trainer sitting on her couch watching a game.” She paused. “And I am Griffin’s sister. That’s the thing. I’m always going to be Griffin’s sister. But I want to be more. I want to be…yours too. Out loud. I want to walk into a room with you and not perform like we’re strangers. I want both things and I can’t have them like this.”

I was quiet for a moment. Outside the desert held its two-in-the-morning silence. I watched the ceiling fan turn. This was what I wanted all along. For her to be mine. Out loud.

“How much longer can you do it,” I said. Not a question. I’d already heard the answer in the shape of what she’d said. I was asking because she deserved to have it asked.

“Not much.”

I nodded. I’d known that. I’d known it in Calgary and in Vancouver and in every hotel room where I’d lain awake thinking about this exact conversation and what it meant I had to do. I would do it gladly, and the more I thought about it, and the more time that passed with our secret strong, and our feelings for each other even stronger, the worse this would be when I talked to her brother.

I took a deep breath. “I want to be clear about something.” I kept my voice even. “I never wanted this to be a secret. Not from the start. Hiding you—hiding what this is—is not something I chose because I wanted to. I chose it because Griffin deserved to hear it from me first. But don’t mistake that for me being fine with it. I have not been fine with it.” A pause. “This was always going to be real. You were always going to be mine out in the open, in front of everyone. I just needed to do it right.”

“You mean that?” she asked, sitting up.

“Of course I mean it. We can be done hiding.” I held her stare and reached up to cup her jaw in my hand. “You don’t have to sit on that couch and be half of who you are. You don’t have to lie, Maren. I’d take an ad out in the Arizona Republic proclaiming my feelings for you if you’d let me. I carry the burden too. I only kept this a secret because that’s what you wanted. I would do anything to protect you.”

She studied me. Careful measurement. I let her look. I had nothing to hide from her. I hadn’t had anything to hide from her in a long time.

Whatever she found was enough.

“Okay,” she said with a soft smile. “We’ll figure out how to do it, together.”

She laid her head back down on my chest.

I kept my hand moving through her hair. She believed me. I could feel it in the way she’d relaxed against me, the tension leaving her shoulders all at once, her body going loose and easy against my chest.

I thought about how the Griffin conversation might go. I’d been running versions of it like I was running plays. Different openings, different tones, the one where Griffin listened and the one where he didn’t. None of them were easy. All of them were necessary. The only version that wasn’t an option was the one where I kept waiting for a better moment, because the better moment wasn’t coming and Maren Callahan had told me quietly and without ultimatum that she was running out of patience for the one I was in.