Page 126 of Offside

“How long, Ryan.” He never used my first name. Ever.

I held my ground. I’d told myself, when I’d imagined this moment, that I would take it straight. On the chin. No deflecting, no softening. I owed Griffin that. “Since October.”

The silence lasted three seconds. I counted them.

Griffin’s face moved through the math of it. October to now, all the dinners and practices and bus rides and phone calls, every conversation where I’d met his eyes and said nothing, and I watched him arrive at the full weight of what that meant. Not a recent thing. Not a slip. Months.

“There’s a reason the rule exists.” Griffin’s voice was controlled, which was worse than if it hadn’t been. “You don’t do this. You don’t go after your teammate’s sister behind his back. You’re my captain for fuck’s sake. You’re supposed to be the guy I trust more than anyone in that locker room, and you’ve been—” He stopped. His jaw worked.

“I know.”

“Don’t tell me you know. If you knew, you would have said something, or I don’t know, not touched my fucking sister. You’re supposed to be my fucking friend.”

I took it on the chin. There was no answer that wasn’t an excuse, and Griffin didn’t deserve excuses.

“We didn’t plan for any of this.” I kept my voice even. “Neither of us went looking for it. It—” I stopped. I wasn’t entirely sure that part was true. I’d been excited to see her since I’d seen her name on the team roster. But that was splitting hairs, and we weren’t doing that now. “It just happened, and by the time I—we— understood what it was, I didn’t know how to⁠—”

“What happened?” Griffin’s eyes cut to Maren, then back. Hard, now. “You fucking my sister? Is that what just happened?”

“It’s not like that.” He was pissing me off now and if I wanted to preserve our friendship I needed to get this conversation under control.

“No?” Griffin’s gaze dropped to the shirt Maren was wearing. My training shirt, too big on her, the Sidewinders logo across the chest, my name and number on the back. He let the silence sit there for a moment, the shirt doing all the work. “What’s it like, then. Tell me what it’s like, Ryan, because from where I’m standing it seems pretty clear.” The disgust in his tone was undeniable.

I held my ground, trying to make it make sense to him. “If I had come to you in September. Before any of this. If I’d said, Griffin, I want to take Maren out. What would you have said?”

Griffin’s jaw tightened.

“Would you have said yes?”

“That’s not⁠—”

I stopped him this time. “Would you have said yes?”

The silence that followed was its own answer.

“This isn’t the eighteen hundreds.” Maren’s voice came from behind me, sharp and immediate, and wholly annoyed. “He doesn’t need your permission, Griffin. I’m twenty-seven years old, and this isn’t yours to approve. You’re not my dad. And I’m allowed to be with whoever I want.”

Griffin turned to her. “I’m not talking about approval⁠—”

“Then what are you talking about? Because it sounds a lot like⁠—”

“I’m talking about respect.” His voice cracked on it. The first fracture in the control. “I’m talking about my best friend and my sister standing in front of me every day for three months and treating me like I was too stupid to be told the truth. Or that I didn’t deserve… I’m talking about—” He stopped. When he started again his voice had gone somewhere colder. “You know what, Maren? At least Josh was upfront about what he was. At least I knew what I was dealing with when it came to that asshole and your relationship and it didn’t have anything to do with me. He wasn’t a fucking liar, like⁠—”

Fuck no. The room went very still.

I moved before I’d even thought about it.

I stepped forward. Not toward Griffin, just into the space between them, my back half-turned to Maren, my voice low and completely level. Protect her. It’s all I could think about. “Don’t.”

One word. Griffin went still.

“Whatever you’re feeling right now,” I said, “she doesn’t get to be the target for it. You want to be angry at me, be angry at me. But don’t do that. Don’t treat your sister with that kind of disrespect and use her past against her because you’re hurt or pissed at me. Don’t.” The anger roiled inside me, and I didn’t want to fight my best friend, but if he kept attacking his sister, even verbally, I’d do what I had to.

The silence stretched. Griffin’s eyes moved between us. Me standing between him and his sister, steady and unhesitating, not asking for anything, not moving, and the anger in Griffin’s face changed. Not softening. Recalibrating. Something clicking into place that hadn’t been there before.

He turned to Maren. Whatever passed between them was theirs and I didn’t understand it. Too old and too private for me to read fully.

Then Griffin picked up the six-pack from the floor.