Chapter 25
OLLIE
I wake before the alarm, which isn’t unusual. My body has been trained into early mornings for years now, even on off days.
Rafe is still asleep beside me.
He’s on his side, one arm thrown across my waist, fingers curled there like he anchored himself there sometime in the night and never let go. His hair is a mess. His mouth is slightly parted. There’s a faint crease between his brows that tells me he didn’t sleep as deeply as he pretended.
I watch him breathe.
The package sits somewhere in my mind like a file I haven’t closed. The silver marker scrawled across glass. The annotated lyrics. The guitar pick with words scratched into the back.
Still yours.
I don’t feel fear when I think about it. I feel something steadier than that.
Protective. Irritated.
Done.
Rafe shifts slightly, strengthening his hold for a second before his breathing evens out again. I slide my hand up his back slowly, deliberately, reminding myself that he’s here. Solid and real.
For a long time, I convinced myself that leaving was protection. That if I stepped away before things exploded, I could spare him collateral damage. Spare him from the pressure, from the scrutiny, from the weight of my fear.
I told myself I was being strategic and responsible.
What I was, mostly, was terrified.
Terrified that I would be the thing that ruined him.
Now, lying here with his arm draped over me and the memory of that box still sharp in my mind, I recognize the difference between fear and responsibility.
Fear runs. Responsibility stays.
The alarm goes off softly on my nightstand, and I reach to silence it before it can disturb him. He makes a small sound anyway, something halfway between a groan and a protest, and presses his face into my shoulder.
“Don’t,” he mutters.
“I wasn’t doing anything.”
“You moved.”
“That’s how mornings work.”
He opens one eye, squinting at me. “Is it?”
“Yeah.”
He studies my face for a second longer than necessary, and I know he’s checking for something. Tension. Residual anger. The kind of quiet spiral that used to sit behind my ribs and wait for a trigger.
“What?” I ask.
“You feeling okay?” His voice is rough with sleep but steady.
“I am.”
He searches my expression like he doesn’t entirely trust that answer.
“I’m not minimizing it,” I add quietly. “I’m just… not rattled.”
His brow smooths slightly at that.
“Good,” he says. Then, softer, “Me either.”
We lie here a moment longer, the space between us filled with the ordinary sounds of the building waking up. Pipes shifting. A door closing somewhere down the hall. A distant elevator hum.
The normalcy of it is almost defiant.
Eventually, he pushes himself upright, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Vinny texted at six,” he says, reaching for his phone on the nightstand. “Police logged the violation formally. They’re reviewing footage.”
“Of her in the lobby?”
“Yeah.”
I sit up, too, back against the headboard. “Is she still in town?”
“Looks like it.”
That lands heavier than I expect, though not in a way that knocks the wind out of me.
“Restraining order violation carries weight,” I say.
“It does.”
Rafe glances at me again, gauging my tone. “We can escalate. Building access restrictions. Expanded perimeter. Whatever you want.”
Whatever I want.
For years, I defaulted to minimizing what I wanted in order to protect what I thought he needed.
“I want her to get help,” I say finally. “And I want her nowhere near you.”
He exhales slowly. “That’s reasonable.”
“I’m not interested in punishing someone who’s unwell,” I continue. “But I’m not tolerating proximity either.”
His gaze sharpens slightly, something like approval flickering there.
“That’s very captain of you,” he says.
“Shut up.”
He smiles faintly and leans over to press a kiss to my shoulder before climbing out of bed.
By the time we’re dressed and in the kitchen, the previous night’s tension has settled into something more structured. Vinny arrives midmorning. He’s carrying a folder this time instead of a box.
“Security footage confirms visual ID,” he says as he lays the folder on the counter. “She entered at 17:42. Spoke to the concierge briefly. Left the package. Departed on foot.”
“Was she agitated?” I ask.
“No. Calm. Polite.”
That tracks.
“She’s framing this as romantic grievance in interviews,” Rafe says, leaning back against the counter. “Like she’s been wronged.”
Vinny nods. “Legal is filing for expanded no-contact parameters. Physical, digital, third-party references. We’re also pushing for a mental health evaluation as part of enforcement.”
“Good,” I say.
Vinny’s eyes flick to me briefly. “You want additional security posted at practice?”
“Yes.”
He doesn’t question it, just makes a note.
Rafe studies me quietly through the exchange, like he’s cataloging the fact that I’m not deflecting or avoiding. I’m not even pretending it will go away if we ignore it. I did that once years ago, and I’ll never do it again.
“Press has picked up on the package,” Vinny adds. “Small leak. Nothing explosive.”
I nod once. “If they ask?”
Rafe glances at me. “Boundaries,” he says simply. “No theatrics or speculation. She violated a court order. That’s the story.”
Vinny inclines his head. “Understood.”
After he leaves, the apartment feels strangely lighter.
Rafe steps into my space, close enough that I feel the heat of him before he touches me. “You’re different,” he says.
“From when?”
“From eight years ago.”
I huff quietly. “I hope so.”
“No,” he says, more serious now. “I mean it. You’re not bracing.”
I think about that, and he’s right.
When the knife happened at the gala, my body reacted before my brain did. I moved. I positioned. I protected. But afterward, the old instincts crept in—the urge to contain, to deflect, to make it smaller than it felt.
Last night, when the box sat on our counter with silver ink bleeding across glass, I didn’t feel the urge to disappear. Instead, I felt the urge to draw a line.
“I don’t need to run,” I say finally.
His expression softens.
“I used to think protecting you meant leaving before it got worse,” I continue. “Like if I stepped away first, I could control the damage.”
He doesn’t interrupt. He just listens.
“I was wrong,” I admit. “Protection isn’t distance. It’s structure. It’s staying. It’s saying no clearly and letting the system do its job.”
The words settle between us.
He reaches up and cups the side of my neck. “You don’t owe me martyrdom,” he says quietly.
“I know.”
“And you don’t owe me sacrifice.”
“I know.”
“What you owe me,” he continues, “is showing up.”
I meet his gaze steadily. “I am.”
There’s no drama in it. No swelling music moment. Just truth.
He nods once, like that’s enough.
Later that afternoon, we leave the building to head to practice. The press cluster is slightly thicker than usual. Cameras lift and microphones tilt forward.
“Do you feel threatened?” someone calls.
I don’t stop walking. Rafe’s hand slides into mine automatically.
“Boundaries aren’t hostility,” I say calmly as we pass. “They’re protection.”
Another voice tries to cut in. “Is she dangerous?”
“She violated a court order,” I reply evenly. “That’s being handled.”
I don’t elaborate. I don’t moralize. I don’t reduce her to a villain or elevate her to a tragic figure. I state the facts and keep moving.
Inside the SUV, Rafe exhales quietly beside me.
“That was annoyingly composed,” he says.
“I’m good at media.”
“You’re good at everything lately.”
I bump his shoulder lightly. “I am, huh?”
He turns his head and studies me for a second longer than necessary.
“I used to worry that being public would break us,” I say, watching the city blur past the window. “That it would expose every weak seam.”
“And now?”
“Now I think hiding did more damage than exposure ever could.”
He doesn’t respond immediately, just squeezes my hand once.
I think about the woman in the lobby. About the annotations in the margins of my husband’s songs. About the way delusion can twist art into something intimate that never existed.
I don’t hate her.
I don’t want her punished for being unwell.
But I won’t let her orbit us.
Twelve years ago, I made the wildest, best decision of my life.
Today, I’m making a quieter one.
I’m staying.
And I’m building the kind of life that doesn’t fracture under pressure.
April doesn’t ease in. It arrives loud and bright and full of implication.
The last day of the regular season has a different kind of electricity to it, even before you factor in the fact that yesterday morning, I stood at a podium and told the world I’m done.
Not done playing basketball—there’s still the postseason ahead of us. But done with this being my life. Done with waking up every October knowing it will chew through another year of my body and spit out something slightly more worn.
The announcement dropped at 10:00 a.m. yesterday. It was clean and controlled and focused on my gratitude, timing, and the truth about my shoulder.
It still feels strange that the retirement isn’t tangled up with anything ugly.
No scandal. No shame. No running. Just choice.
The locker room smells the same as it always does—liniment, clean cotton, faint sweat embedded in wood. But today there’s something under it. A hum. A current.
“Old man!” Lemar calls from across the room the second I walk in. “You stretching yet, or are we wheeling you out?”
I roll my eyes and toss my bag onto my chair. “I’ll outlast you.”
“Not according to your press conference,” he shoots back.
A couple of guys laugh good-naturedly. It’s light and easy.
That’s the part I didn’t expect.
I thought the announcement might shift something. Make the room heavier. Make it feel like a farewell tour.
Instead, it feels… celebratory.
Coach claps his hands once to get attention. “All right. Focus up.”
We gather loosely near the whiteboard. The game tonight technically doesn’t change our playoff seeding, but nobody’s treating it like an exhibition.