32. Victoria
VICTORIA
He was still here.
That was the first thing I registered when my brain came back online.
Not the light coming through the curtains.
Not the ache in my neck from sleeping at the wrong angle.
Not the fact that my hair was a goddamn disaster and my reading glasses were somewhere on the nightstand with a bent arm from where I'd dropped them in the dark.
He was still here.
His arm was warm beneath my fingers. I didn't remember reaching for it in my sleep, but apparently my body had made that decision without consulting me, because my hand was curled around his forearm like I'd been holding on all night.
I didn't let go.
I lay there for a minute with my eyes closed, listening to him breathe.
Slow and steady, the way he did everything.
The man breathed like he had nowhere else to be, which was infuriating, because I had been awake for approximately four seconds and I was already running a mental checklist of everything that needed to happen today.
Championship prep. Doctor's clearance timeline. The photograph that half the country had apparently already seen. Seth's voicemail from last night that I hadn't listened to yet. The PHL conduct committee filing. The foundation board's quarterly call on Thursday.
And the man lying next to me who had said "Later, Miss C" in front of forty cameras three days ago like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I opened my eyes.
He was watching me.
Of course he was watching me. He'd probably been watching me for an hour, because that was the thing about Rhett Calloway that had been undoing me for three damn years.
He watched. He paid attention. He clocked every single thing I did and filed it away and never once made me feel like I was being studied.
He just noticed. The way some people noticed the weather, or the time, or whether the coffee was ready. He noticed me.
I looked at the ceiling before I looked at him, because I needed the extra second.
Composure first. Always composure first.
"Your shoulder," I said. My voice came out rough from sleep.
"It's fine."
"You're lying."
"Only a little."
I pushed myself up onto one elbow and looked at him properly.
His shoulder was bruised to hell. Deep purple spreading from the joint down toward his chest, the kind of bruise that looked worse the second day.
His neck had a stiffness to it that he was trying to hide by not turning his head too quickly.
He was a mess. A six-foot-seven, ice-blue-eyed, stubborn mess who had taken a hit that should have ended his season three days ago and was lying in my bed looking at me like I was the only thing in the room worth seeing.
Goddamn it.
"You need ice," I said.
"I need coffee."
"Ice first."
"Victoria."
"Rhett."
He looked at me. I looked at him. I gave him the flat, immovable expression that had ended negotiations with men twice his age, and I watched the exact moment he decided it wasn't worth the fight.
"Fine," he said. "Ice first."
I felt the corner of my mouth move. I got up before he could see it become a real smile.
I found my robe on the chair where I'd left it.
Pulled my hair over one shoulder and caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror on my way out.
No makeup. No heels. Glasses bent on the nightstand.
Hair that looked like someone had spent an hour with their hands in it, which someone had.
A crease from the pillow running the length of my left cheek.
I looked like a woman who had been thoroughly, completely, unapologetically loved.
I looked away before I could think too hard about that.
The kitchen was quiet. I pulled the ice pack from the freezer, wrapped it in the good dish towel (the linen one, not the cotton, because cotton got too cold too fast) and set the coffee maker going.
Two mugs. His black. Mine with one sugar, which I'd started taking again last week because Rhett had said you don't have to drink it black just because Ryan did and I'd wanted to throw my mug at his head and also burst into tears and also kiss him, all at the same time. So I'd started putting sugar in it.
No heels. No armor. No clipboard.
Just me, in my own kitchen, in the early morning. Making coffee for a man who was in my bed.
You're allowed to be happy, Vee.
I carried everything back to the bedroom and set it on the nightstand with the efficiency of a woman who had decided to take care of something and was damn well going to do it right.
"Sit up," I said.
He sat up.
I pressed the ice pack to his shoulder and held it there.
He wrapped his hand around his coffee mug and didn't say anything, and I didn't say anything, and for a few minutes there was nothing in the room except the warmth of him against my side and the cold of the ice through the dish towel and the sound of Las Vegas waking up outside the window.
This was what I'd been afraid of.
Not him. Not the age gap. Not the press or the PHL or the conduct committee or the foundation board. This. The quiet. The ordinary. The terrifying, mundane intimacy of sitting in bed with someone and holding ice to their shoulder while the coffee went warm between their hands.
Ryan and I used to have mornings like this. Not identical (Ryan's mornings involved burnt toast and a sports section he refused to read on his phone), but the shape of it. The weight of it. Two people in a room with nothing to prove and nowhere to be and no performance required.
I hadn't had a morning like this in fourteen years.
I hadn't realized how much I'd missed it until right now, sitting here with an ice pack and a bent pair of glasses and a man who was patiently not saying anything because he knew (he always knew) that I needed the silence more than I needed the words.
"The doctor said a week," I said finally.
"I know what the doctor said."
"No practices. No weight room."
"Victoria."
"No games."
"I heard him."
I looked at him sideways. "Did you?"
He looked back at me. His eyes moved across my face and I watched something settle behind them. Not resignation, not defeat, just the quiet certainty of a man who had already made his decision and was waiting for me to catch up.
"I heard him," he said. "I'm not going anywhere."
I held his gaze.
There it was. The thing I'd been running from.
Not a promise. Promises were easy, promises were what people made when they wanted you to stop asking questions.
This was something else. This was a man who had waited three years and taken a hit that could have ended his career and was sitting in my bed with ice on his shoulder telling me he wasn't going anywhere, and meaning it the way only someone who had already proven it seventy times over could mean it.
I believed him.
Goddamn it, I believed him.
"Good," I said quietly.
I looked back at the window.
We drank our coffee. I held the ice to his shoulder. Outside, Las Vegas did what Las Vegas did. Started loud and bright and completely indifferent to whatever was happening inside the quiet of my bedroom.
We had a championship to prepare for. A week of enforced rest. A photograph the whole damn country had seen. A conduct committee filing. A foundation board call. A press cycle that was going to need managing. All of it was going to need to be dealt with.
But not this morning.
This morning was ours.