Page 147 of Offside

“She’s been in love with you since September,” Griffin said with a hint of a smile. “In case you needed to know that.”

I stood in the doorway and let myself absorb the fact she’d been carrying this since September, the same as I had.

I thought about driving home from Jensen’s pond nine years ago with Griffin asleep against the passenger window and Maren’s hand in mine in the dark, her pinky finding mine slowly, like a question she wasn’t sure she was asking. I’d been choosing her in some form since before Griffin knew to watch for it. Maybe some part of him had always known.

Then I went.

I took the stairs two at a time.

In the parking garage I sat in the car for exactly thirty seconds. Engine running, hands on the wheel, the tick of the cooling city around me. She’s been in love with you since September. I let his words sit, the full weight of them. The months of both of us carrying something enormous between us, all that careful distance wasted, and underneath that the fact that it had led here anyway. That we’d found our way to this night regardless.

I pulled out of the garage and headed east toward Scottsdale.

The desert was cooling around me, the air coming through the windows dry and clean, carrying sage and the faint mineral smell of warm earth giving up the day’s heat. February in Phoenix. Still weeks before the heat turned tipped everything over, the air still soft enough to drive with the windows down at eleven o’clock, the sky holding that deep bruised blue at the edges long after dark. I’d been told by everyone I knew I would hate the heat. I hadn’t hated it once.

Instead I’d gotten Griffin and the team and the city with its stubborn insistence on existing even after being abandoned, and Maren Callahan in my flannel shirt on a Tuesday morning making the coffee she drank instead of the coffee she forgot about.

I drove to her house thinking about what I was going to say when she opened the door. The conversation with Griffin was done. Necessary, finished, the foundation cleared. What was in front of me now was the thing I’d been carrying since somewhere over the Rockies in October and hadn’t said yet because the timing was wrong and then worse and then a disaster, and now it was eleven o’clock on a Thursday night in February and I was done waiting for right.

The lights of Scottsdale came up ahead of me. Her street. Her house, the lights still on downstairs, which meant she was awake. I pulled up to the curb and sat for a moment looking at her front door with the porch light on.

I knew what I wanted to say. I’d known for a while.

I got out of the car. It was time for Maren to know exactly where I stood.

CHAPTER 28

MAREN

I was on the couch with a book I was only sort of reading when I heard a knock on my front door just past midnight.

I knew who it was. I opened the door.

He was standing on my porch in casual clothes like he’d been out. I was pretty sure he’d come straight from Griffin’s. Dark jeans, a gray henley, the sleeves pushed to his elbows the way he wore everything. He was still and composed, just Ryan on my doorstep just past midnight, having driven straight here from Tempe without announcing himself.

“Hey,” he said.

I hadn’t expected him. I didn’t know how it had gone, didn’t know what his face was going to tell me before he said anything, and for a second I just stood in the doorway reading him.

He looked okay. Better than okay. I wanted to throw myself into his arms and bury my face in his chest. Instead, I stepped back from the door.

He came inside and I closed it behind him and we stood in the entryway for a silent moment. The same one he kissed me in the last time he showed up unannounced. A chill came over me, and I waited as neither of us said anything yet. I was still catching up to the fact of him being here, at midnight, which meant something, but I was trying to figure out what exactly before he told me.

“Solsken,” he said. And then he closed the distance. His hands came up to my face, both of them, his palms warm against my jaw and his thumbs at my cheekbones, and he held me like that for a moment.

Staring into my eyes, he said, “I’m sorry.” His voice was low and certain, as if he’d come to realize the distance had done nothing for either of us. Something I was realizing my actions had a part in too. “For this past week. For going quiet on you. For not telling you everything I feel while I figured out how to handle Griffin and the team and…” His thumbs moved against my cheeks, wiping away a tear. “You deserved better than that from me. You’ve deserved so much better and I am so sorry I didn’t take care of you the way I should have.”

I opened my mouth to tell him it was fine. That I understood, and we’d all be okay, and his team and the guys and the friendship he’d built with my brother were important. But he wasn’t finished. He’d come here to say something and the hard set of his jaw with the softness in his eyes told me he needed to get it out. He shook his head slightly.

“I’m not done.” His eyes held mine. “Griffin and I are okay. I went over there tonight and I told him everything, and we’re going to be fine. I need you to hear that part first, because I know what you did this week and I know why you did it. And while I appreciate it, God, I can’t tell you how much it means to me, but I’m not letting you fall on some sword that isn’t real so we can all coexist here.”

My breath caught. He saw it.

He motioned to my couch. “Can we sit?”

I nodded, and he took my hand and led me to the couch, sitting close to me and not letting go of my hand in his. As he rubbed small circles with his thumb, he continued. “You pulled back because you decided you were the problem,” he said, then let out a humorless chuckle. “You looked at me and Griffin and this team and you decided the kindest thing you could do was take yourself out of the equation before you cost me anything else.” He sighed and met my gaze again, and the intensity in his expression was mesmerizing. He wanted my full attention, and he had it. “You’ve got it exactly backward, and I’m not leaving this house until you understand that.”

I couldn’t say anything. My eyes were burning.