26. Nova
Chapter twenty-six
Nova
“You can’t keep calling her feral if she lets you put a bowl six inches from her face.”
“She’s negotiating.”
“That’s a relationship, Nova. You’re in a relationship with a cat that doesn’t even live in your house.”
I give her a side eye. Don’t mean to.
We’re in the cafeteria at the rink between rounds. I have my usual — salad bar plate, the specific assembly it took me three weeks to perfect because the kitchen rotates toppings on a schedule I have, embarrassingly, committed to memory.
We’ve done this lunch enough times that it has a rhythm.
Katarina is already onto something else.
“Caleb’s not telling them how bad the hip is. He thinks if he doesn’t say it out loud it isn’t real.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“Don’t start.”
Brody walks past with a tray that has — visibly, definitely — a slice of pizza on it.
“Don’t say it,” he says to Katarina without slowing down.
“Brody,” she says.
“Don’t. It’s Tuesday.”
He keeps walking.
The cafeteria is the working version of itself. Trays. Chairs scraping. The hum of a building doing its job.
My phone buzzes on the table.
Face up.
Griffin.
My hand goes to flip it before my brain catches up.
Muscle memory. The way I always handle Griffin — turn the screen down, kill the buzz, deal with it later or never. Manage. Move on. Smile through the next thing.
I get my hand to the phone.
I stop.
I just — stop.
Hand on the phone. Phone still buzzing. Screen still showing his name.
I don’t flip it. I don’t pick it up. I sit there with my hand on the phone and the phone buzzing and Katarina’s eyes on me.
She doesn’t say anything.
She’s not asking. She’s just sitting there with her fork halfway down to her tray and her eyes on my face.
The phone keeps buzzing.
I don’t move my hand.
The phone stops buzzing.
The stop is louder than the ringing was.
“Kat.”
“Yeah.”
A long second.
I open my mouth.
Nothing comes out.
I close it.
Look at my tray. Look back up.
“Sorry, that’s just — hold on.”
She doesn’t say anything.
I watch myself almost-do the thing. Watch the deflection start to come out of my mouth. Watch my hand move to flip the phone now that the buzzing has stopped — close it, finish the move, get back to Dina, this never happened.
I stop my hand again.
“Give me a second.”
“Take it.”
She still hasn’t moved her fork.
I sit there.
The cafeteria is still doing its thing around us. Two trainers walk past behind Katarina. Someone’s laugh from three tables over. The hum of the soda machine.
I don’t know how to start.
I’ve rehearsed this conversation in my car for months and yet I don’t have a single sentence that I can get out of my mouth right now.
I open my mouth.
“That was Griffin.”
I close it.
That’s all I can do for a second.
She’s still watching me.
“Griffin,” she says. Slow. Like she’s waiting for the sentence she knows is coming.
“Griffin Novak.”
She goes very still.
“My Griffin.”
“Yeah.”
She sets her fork down.
She doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. I watch her face do nothing — she’s not making a face, she’s just sitting with the information, working through it the way she works through a recovery plan.
“How.”
“I — two summers ago. Tampa.”
“How long.”
“Six weeks.”
She closes her eyes.
Just for a second.
When she opens them she looks at me different than she was looking at me a minute ago.
“Six weeks,” she says. Quiet. Almost to herself.
“Yeah.”
“Six weeks, Nova.”
“Yeah.”
She picks up her water. Drinks. Sets it down.
“That fucking prick.”
Said low. Said real. Three words and she means every one of them and her hand is flat on the table now in a way it wasn’t a second ago.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“There’s more.”
“Okay.”
The next part is harder.
I have to climb to it.
I look at my tray. The salad bar plate I assembled forty minutes ago when I had no idea I was about to do this.
I move a tomato to the side with my fork.
Move it back.
“V. North.”
She blinks.
“V. North was me. The piece on Jax two seasons ago. I wrote it. Griffin fed me the angle. I knew it was off. I knew it was off the whole time I was writing it and I knew it was off when I ran it, and I ran it anyway because I was twenty-six and I was tired and I had stopped trusting my own gut about anything connected to him.”
I stop.
“I came to Canyon Bay as Nova Shaw because V. North is dead. I killed her. But the piece is still out there and Griffin knows and he’s been making sure I know he knows and I haven’t told Jax and I haven’t told anyone.”
A pause.
“Until now?”
“Until right now.”
She nods once.
She doesn’t say anything for a long second. I can see her sorting it. The facts. The timing. The damage.
Katarina has the kind of face that stays calm because her brain is already moving.
“Nova.”
“Yeah.”
“You were twenty-six.”
“Yeah.”
“And he was — what. Thirty-two.”
“Thirty-two.”
Her jaw tightens.
“Yeah.”
She doesn’t say I’m sorry. She doesn’t need to. The way she responded is apology enough and I caught it.
“Here’s what I’m going to do.” Quieter now.
Faster. The Katarina voice that sets up a meal plan or a recovery protocol — the one she uses when she’s working.
“I’m going to tell you a few things and then you’re going to tell me what you want me to do with them, and I’m going to do that thing.
Not what I think is best. What you tell me.
Because this is yours, and I’m sorry I didn’t see it sooner. ”
“Okay.”
“One. He doesn’t get my address from me.
He hasn’t been to my house since the wedding.
That doesn’t change. Two. I’m not telling him I know.
Not yet. He’s better when he doesn’t think anyone’s watching, and right now I want to watch.
Three.” She stops. Exhales. “He’s still my brother.
I’m not cutting him off in a phone call this afternoon and I’m not going to lie to you about that.
But I’m done covering for him. Done managing the family around him.
Done pretending he’s the version of himself he plays at Christmas.
” She looks at me. “If that’s not enough, tell me. I’ll figure out more.”
“It’s enough.”
“You sure.”
“Yeah.”
“Does Jax know.”
“Some of it.”
“Not all.”
“Not all.”
“You should tell him.”
“I know.”
“Soon.”
“I know.”
She nods. Doesn’t push.
The cafeteria is doing its working noise around us. A tray clatters somewhere behind me. Someone’s laugh from three tables over. Katarina’s phone vibrates on the table — a meeting reminder, probably, the one o’clock — and she silences it without looking at it.
She picks up her water again. Sets it down without drinking.
Her hand goes flat on the table near mine.
Not touching.
Close.
“I’m glad it’s you,” she says.
“What.”
“In Canyon Bay. With him. With this team. With me.” A pause. “You deserved a soft landing somewhere. I’m glad this is it.”
I don’t say anything for a second.
She doesn’t make me.
She just sits there with her hand near mine and waits while I find my way back to the cafeteria.
“I have to get to my meeting,” she says eventually.
“Yeah.”
“Walk me out?”
“Yeah.”
We bus our trays. We walk out of the cafeteria. We don’t say anything in the hall — there are people, there are cameras, there are reasons — but at the stairs she stops.
“Nova.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
She goes up the stairs.
I go down.
My phone is in my pocket and the missed call from Griffin is still on it and I haven’t looked at it again.
I don’t have to.