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A dozen questions crowd behind my teeth. Where did you go? Why didn’t you wake me? Do you know I’ve been carrying around this piece of you because I had no fucking idea how to give it back to you? I want to ask every one of them, but I can’t with Coach sitting three feet away.

“Calliope?” Coach’s voice cuts through the silence between us.

I barely have time to register the name before Coach looks between us, completely unaware that he has just given me the one thing I didn’t have when I woke up alone in Houston.

“You two know each other?”

The confusion on his face deepens when neither of us says anything for a few moments. Finally, Calliope answers before I can even open my mouth.

“No.”

I wait for her to look at me, but she keeps her eyes firmly locked on Coach. I know why she said it. Her father is sitting three feet away. Neither of us knew the other would be here, and explaining Houston would require admitting far more than either of us is prepared to give him. But none of that stops it from hurting. Less than a week ago, she trusted me with pieces of herself I’m not sure she meant to give anyone. I just didn’t expect it to feel like this.

Her eyes finally find mine, and her lips part like she might take it back or explain, but before she can say anything, Coach looks between us again. “Calliope, this is Jubal Duvall, our new quarterback. Jubal, this is my daughter, Calliope.”

My daughter. His words hit harder than the trade ever did. I look at her again, waiting for something about the sentence to rearrange itself into an explanation that makes sense. Calliope’s eyes widen as if she knows exactly what just happened inside my head, but she doesn’t correct him. The woman who sat across from me in Houston and never once looked at me like a quarterback is standing in the middle of the only place where that title has followed me into every room. And neither of us knew.

I search her expression for the shift I’ve watched happen a thousand times when someone connects my face to the name on the back of a jersey, but whatever Calliope sees when she looks at me doesn’t turn into recognition of that kind. Her attention drops briefly toward my chest before coming back to my face, and the ring resting beneath my shirt makes it impossible to pretend the man she knew in Houston disappeared when I walked into this building.

“Jubal,” she says, my name sounding different coming from her lips.

I never gave it to her because, for one night, that had been the point. No names. No careers. Nothing waiting outside the house that could tell us who we were supposed to be. She looked at me without eleven years of football standing between us and found pieces of me I’d stopped remembering were there.

Now she knows exactly what I do, and I know exactly whose daughter she is.

Coach glances between us again, his brow furrowing when neither of us makes any move toward the polite handshake two strangers are supposed to exchange.

“You two okay?”

“Yeah.” Her voice catches just enough that I see her swallow before she tries again. “Sorry. I just wasn’t expecting anyone to be in here.”

Her response almost makes me laugh, except there’s nothing funny about the way she’s holding her phone tight enough to turn her knuckles pale.

Coach accepts the explanation because he has no reason not to. “Jubal’s been settling in this morning. Calliope’s helping me with a few things while she’s back in Charlotte.”

Whatever brought her to Houston is over. She didn’t disappear into a city where I had no chance of finding her. She’s here in Charlotte, but any relief that should give me is tangled up with everything standing between us now.

Coach Quinn trusts me enough to bring me into this building and hand me his offense. He sat across from me three days ago and told me I was the quarterback he wanted. Less than ten feet away, his daughter is staring at me with the same eyes I watched lose focus beneath me in Houston. Jesus Fucking Christ. I drag a hand over my jaw and force my attention back to Coach before my face gives away something neither of us can explain.

“Nice to meet you, Calliope.”

The lie comes out rougher than I intend. Her lips part, and for one terrifying second, I think she might call me on it. Instead, something almost disbelieving passes through her expression before she gives me a small nod.

“You too.”

Coach’s phone rings on the desk, saving both of us from whatever is supposed to happen next. He glances at the screen and reaches for it with an apologetic grimace.

“I need to take this.”

I’m on my feet before he finishes the sentence.

“Yeah. I should get back and continue going over plays with JJ.”

Calliope shifts aside when I move toward the door, leaving enough room for me to pass without touching her. I tell myself that’s what I want until I’m close enough to catch the faint scent of her perfume. For one step, I’m back in Houston with her, but I keep moving.

The hallway outside Coach’s office is exactly the same as it was when I walked through it a few minutes ago, but the certainty I carried in with me is gone. Charlotte and Houston were never supposed to touch. One is the place where everything I’ve built fell apart. The other is beginning to feel like somewhere I might be able to build again.

Calliope was never supposed to belong to either of them. She was one night when I didn’t have to be somebody’s disappointment. She knew nothing about football and wanted nothing from Jubal Duvall because, until five minutes ago, she didn’t even know he existed.