9. Chapter 9 — Ty
The plane home sounds like a party.
Nine catches. A hundred and twenty-seven yards. Two touchdowns in the fourth quarter when it mattered. Cincinnati was playing keep-away with the lead. Ruiz called my number three plays in a row. Like he was daring me to drop one.
I didn't drop one.
The cabin is loud in the specific way that only happens after a win on the road. Prentiss has his portable speaker going.
Collins is doing a full replay of his third-quarter sack. Complete soundtrack. Complete hand gestures. Someone cracked something open the second wheels left the ground. Nobody's pretending they didn't.
I have my headphones on. Film pulled up on my tablet. I am very visibly watching film.
I am not watching film.
Ruiz is two rows ahead in the front section, tablet open, pen moving. Already on next week. He coaches the way other people breathe. Automatic. Constant. Not something he turns off. The coaches around him match his energy without meaning to. Heads down. Quiet.
Three rows ahead of me, Ava has her laptop open.
She's had the same tab open for forty minutes. I know because I clocked it when we boarded. The financial model she pulls up every time she needs to look busy. The columns don't mean anything to me. They clearly mean something to her.
For the record, I caught two touchdowns tonight. Two. I am a professional athlete in peak physical condition who just performed at an objectively high level in front of sixty-five thousand people. I would like someone to acknowledge that I am not watching film right now because of a spreadsheet.
She stopped reading it about twenty minutes ago.
She's looking out the window now. The tablet glow is the only light in her row. Hair pulled back. Chewing the inside of her cheek the way she does when she's running something through her head.
I know that about her now. I know the cheek thing.
That's the problem with Cincinnati.
I close my tablet. Tilt my seat back two inches. Stare at the overhead panel and think about all the reasons this needs to stop at room 814. The list is long. I've been making it since six-ten this morning.
It's not getting shorter.
We land at eleven-forty. City's still going. Always is. I ride the team shuttle back and then drive home alone. The apartment is quiet. I don't turn on the TV.
I stare at the ceiling for a while.
Then I stare at her contact name in my phone.
Don't.
***
Monday. Facility. Six-fifty in the morning and I go find Jax.
Not because I'm going to tell him anything. Just because Jax has been here. Six years, two contracts, one woman he would've torched his career for without blinking. If anyone understands what I'm carrying right now, it's him.
He's already in the film room when I get there, coffee in both hands like he knew I was coming.
"Rough flight?" he says.
"Win flight."
"You look like rough flight."
I drop into the chair next to him. Take the coffee he's holding out without asking if it's for me. It is. He knew I was coming.
"I don't need a speech," I say.
"I know."
"I just—" I stop. Start again. "I just need to sit somewhere that isn't my apartment."
"That's what this is."
"Yeah."
"Want to talk about it?"
"No."
"Okay."
I drink the coffee. Stare at the film board. "I caught two touchdowns yesterday."
"I know. I watched."
"I feel like that should count for something."
Jax looks at me over his cup. "Does it?"
I think about it. "Not even a little."
Something moves at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. Close enough.
Jax nods. Doesn't ask anything. I drink the coffee and stare at the film board. Talk around it for about fifteen minutes. The Cincinnati coverage. The route adjustments. The way their corner was cheating inside by the fourth quarter. Normal stuff. True stuff.
And then I run out of normal stuff.
"You're already in it, aren't you," Jax says.
Not a question.
I look at the wall.
"I'm not going to tell you what to do," he says. "But I'll tell you this — Wren knew what she was getting into with me. She chose it anyway." He pauses. "The difference is nobody was going to fire me over it."
I sit with that.
He's not wrong. He's not trying to scare me. He's just giving me the shape of the thing clearly. Jax Nelson has never sugarcoated a down and distance situation in his life.
"So what do you do with that," I say. "When the math doesn't work."
He's quiet for a second.
"You figure out what you're actually protecting," he says. "Your career. Her position. Her relationship with her father. All of it. And then you're honest about which one you're actually willing to spend."
He stands up. Picks up his own coffee.
"And you stop pretending there's a version where none of it costs anything."
He's gone before I can answer. Which is probably the point.
***
Practice runs long.
Ruiz has the field locked down by the time we hit it. Tight. No wasted reps. He runs the same play three times until Collins and I are in the same breath on the route timing. He doesn't say good at the end of it. Just moves on. That's as close to a compliment as he gets.
I run every route like someone's grading it. Which they are. Ruiz grades everything. I also run them like I have something to prove, which I always do, which Dante once told me would either make me great or get me killed. Possibly both.
After the last whistle, Dante falls into step beside me heading off the field. Easy. No announcement. The kind of move that means he's been thinking about it for a while.
He doesn't say anything for a few seconds. Just walks.
"You good?" he says finally.
"Yeah."
He looks at me the way veterans look at rookies when they don't believe the answer but aren't ready to push yet. Nods.
"Okay," he says. Claps my shoulder. Keeps walking.
I stand on the field for a minute by myself.
***
Parking lot. Six-fifteen.
I'm heading to my car when I see it.
Dark sedan, parked near the staff entrance. Rear lot, facing out. Engine off, nobody visible.
I wouldn't have clocked it except I saw the same car — or a car that looked like the same car — last Thursday. Different plates this time. Different spot, same angle. Facing the staff entrance.
I'm a wide receiver. I notice when something repeats.
I also notice when the same nothing shows up twice in the same week. That's either a coincidence or it isn't. I have a very bad track record of things being coincidences lately.
I slow down like I'm checking my phone. Take a photo. License plate, angle, location. Don't stop walking.
Get in my car. Drive out of the lot at normal speed.
It's probably nothing.
***
I pull into my garage forty minutes later.
There's a folded slip of paper under my windshield wiper.
I sit in the car for a second before I get out and take it. White. Clean edges. Printed, not handwritten, like someone ran it off a laser printer and folded it twice.
Four words.
Who's asking about you.
No signature. No number. Nothing on the back.
I stand in the concrete dark of my parking garage and read it again. Same four words. I turn it over. Still nothing.
Someone followed me home. Or knew where I park. Or both.
I think about the sedan with the different plates. The insurance rider Ava found in the franchise data last week. The voicemail that wasn't a voicemail — whatever this is.
Separately, none of it is anything.
Together it's a pattern.
I fold the note back along its crease. Put it in my jacket pocket. Ride the elevator up to my apartment and stand in the kitchen for a while without turning on the lights.
Someone in that building is running a play I don't understand yet.
And Ava is right in the middle of it.