Page 132 of Offside

“I needed a few days,” he said. “To cool off. I’m not—I don’t think what he did was unforgivable. I just needed to be pissed about it for a minute without someone asking me to be reasonable.”

“That’s fair.”

“I’m going to talk to him.” Steady. Decided. “This week. I just needed to get there on my own timeline.”

“Okay,” I said. Relief worked its way through me.

Griffin held my gaze for another moment. Then the hard set of his jaw eased into something more like himself. The dry, sidelong expression I’d known since we were kids. “You better not actually assign me a different therapist.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“I’m serious. You’re my sister. You’re the director. I’m a first-line goalie who was just cleared to play in a playoff push.” He gestured at himself. “There are perks. The best trainer is one of them.”

I stared at him for a long moment.

“Get back on the table,” I said. “We’re not done.”

I was fighting the smile, and he could see it, and we both knew the worst of it was over.

Ryan texted that afternoon.

Ryan: Can we talk tonight

Maren: Yeah.

Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

Ryan: Please come over whenever you’re ready

I was there at seven and opted not to use my key.

He opened the door in sweats, his hair slightly damp, and I could read him the moment I saw him. The careful, composed stillness he wore in public, the one I’d spent months watching him shed when we were alone together. It was back. He’d put it on without noticing, I was fairly sure, which was almost worse than if he’d done it deliberately.

I came inside. The apartment was tidy in the pointed way it got when he was in his head. Everything put away, nothing out of place, the kitchen clean and spare. No wine glasses. No evidence of a shared evening in progress. A lamp on low, Ryan standing in his own living room, composed and rehearsed.

“Please, sit down,” he said.

“I’ll stand.” I crossed my arms. “Say what you need to say.” My anger was building.

He hesitated. “I know I’ve been distant.”

“You have.”

“I’m not doing it on purpose.” He ran a hand through his hair. The one tell he had when something was costing him. “I need to fix things with Griffin before I can be present the way I want to be. While this is unresolved I can’t—it’s not fair to you to bring all of that in. I need to get it right first and then I can⁠—”

“You’re doing it again,” I said.

He frowned. “What?”

“Deciding what I need without asking me.” I kept my voice level. “You’re managing the situation and you’ve decided the right way to manage it is to put distance between us, and you haven’t once asked me how that feels or what I want.”

“That’s not what I’m⁠—”

“You told me not to shut you out.” I let that sit between us for a moment. “Four nights ago. In this apartment. And then you spent four days doing exactly that, and I don’t think you even noticed you were doing it.”

The silence that followed had an edge. The discomfort of a true thing landing.

Ryan’s jaw worked. He wasn’t defensive. He was absorbing it, running it back, checking it against the evidence. It all happened in his face.