33. Chapter 33 — Ty
The press found my floor on Thursday.
Not a big deal by LA standards, apparently. The hotel security guy said it like he was apologizing for the weather. This city's seen bigger, Mr. Knox. We'll move you to a different floor.
I thanked him and didn't move floors. I'd rather know where they were.
That was yesterday. Today is Friday. Two days out. The story has shifted.
By Wednesday afternoon, Harlan Beck's name was everywhere. The hotel photo was three news cycles behind it. By Thursday morning, Wren's counter-narrative had done what Wren's counter-narratives always do.
The franchise crisis is contained. The former exec is the story. The relationship is old news by LA standards, which move at a pace that makes New York look sentimental.
The team has found its rhythm again.
Practice this morning was locked down at a secured facility in El Segundo. Forty-five minutes from the hotel, no press access, Ruiz running the walkthrough like it was week three of the regular season. Economy of motion. One adjustment at a time. No speeches.
I ran my routes and felt the team move around me the way a well-built machine moves. Settled. Decided.
I get back to the hotel at six. Shower. Order food. Eat it sitting on the edge of the bed watching twelve minutes of defensive film. Then I put the tablet face-down on the nightstand.
There's no system to maintain tonight. No careful distance. No professional nod in the lobby, separate elevators, eyes forward. Everything is already public.
The photo, the story, the whole thing — out there, confirmed, moving past us at whatever speed the news cycle runs. I don't know what to do with that yet. Twelve weeks of holding it carefully, and now it's just — there. Visible. Mine.
I pick up my phone. Put it down. Pick it up again.
You up?
I don't wait long.
Yeah.
I put on shoes and go.
***
She opens the door in the Indiana sweatshirt. Mine, technically — the one I left in Philadelphia and never got back. Her hair is loose.
She looks like a woman who has spent a very long week at high altitude and has just now, finally, exhaled.
I have no laptop. No files. No reason that isn't the real one.
She steps back to let me in.
"The press did a piece on Indiana this afternoon," I say. "My dad called the reporter back. Told his side."
She looks at me. Measuring. "How was that?"
"Hard." I sit on the edge of the chair. "Good."
She waits.
"He said he's watching the game."
She crosses the room without saying anything. Sits beside me on the chair's arm. Takes my hand. Not a gesture, just placement — her hand over mine on my knee, easy and certain.
"Tell me about him," she says. "The real version."
So I do.
Not the intake form version. Not the polished-down version I give when someone asks and I decide to give them something. The real one.
My dad in the bleachers at every game from the time I was seven. Friday nights in Indiana in October, breath clouding in the cold, him in the same spot — row four, left side — every single time. Not because he had to be there. Because he couldn't imagine not being.
The absolute certainty of belief that went sideways. Not bad faith. Not greed. He believed so completely that it never occurred to him it could be wrong to act on it.
The two years after when we barely spoke. Not a fight. Worse — a silence with no clear beginning and no obvious way to end. Me in Bloomington learning how to be someone who didn't talk about where he came from.
The way we found our way back. Slowly. Something smaller than before. More honest.
I don't summarize any of it. I just tell her.
She doesn't fill the silence between sentences. She doesn't say I'm sorry or that must have been hard. She just listens. Her hand stays on mine.
I've never told all of it to anyone.
After, the room is quiet in a specific way. The kind that means something real happened and neither of us needs to name it.
I lean back against the headboard. Look at the ceiling.
"Practice was good today," I say. "Ruiz ran the walkthrough."
She shifts to sit beside me, shoulder to shoulder.
"He didn't say much," I say. "He never does. But at the end, there was this moment where he just looked at the room." I pause. "Like he was counting us. Making sure everyone was still there."
She's quiet.
I think about that moment. Ruiz standing at the edge of the field, his gaze moving through the team without settling. Not assessment. Something quieter. A man who has spent thirty years building things he cares about, checking that they're still standing.
"Marcus found me after," I say. "Walked beside me without saying anything for a while. Then asked if I was ready."
"Are you?"
I turn my head to look at her. She's already looking at me.
"Yeah," I say. "All of it."
She holds my gaze. Doesn't look away.
***
I'm not sure who moves first.
It doesn't matter. The careful version of this — the calculated distance, the forty-five-minute work session, the clock always running somewhere in the back of my head — is gone. There's nothing left to be careful about. Everyone already knows.
I've thought about that a lot in the last four days. That the secret ending would feel like loss. Like the thing we built would change shape without the weight of secrecy to define it.
It doesn't feel like loss.
It feels like the first time I've been able to look at her directly. No dimmer. No management. Just me looking at her and knowing she sees the same thing back.
I reach up and tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. She goes still the way she does — not pulling back, just watching me, waiting to see what I do with the moment.
"Hi," I say.
She almost smiles. "Hi."
"We don't have to do anything tonight."
"I know we don't."
"I just want to be here."
She looks at me for a long beat. Then she reaches up and takes the hem of the Indiana sweatshirt in both hands. Pulls it over her head in one smooth motion. Drops it on the floor between us.
Nothing underneath.
I exhale slowly through my nose. "Okay," I say. "That's — okay."
"You were saying something."
"I genuinely cannot remember what it was."
She laughs — the real one, low and bright. I decide right then that making Ava Ruiz laugh is something I will spend a significant portion of my life working toward.
I reach for her.
***
She tastes like the room service coffee she had an hour ago and something underneath that's just her. I take my time finding it.
My hands move up her sides. Her skin is warm under my palms.
She makes a small sound against my mouth. Whatever I was thinking about disappears completely.
"You're still dressed," she says.
"Working on it."
"You're not, though."
I pull back long enough to yank my shirt over my head and toss it. She puts both hands flat on my chest. Traces the lines of me slowly, like she's learning something by feel.
I watch her do it with my jaw tight. That look on her face — focused, unhurried, completely unguarded — might actually end me.
"Ava."
"Mm."
"You're doing that on purpose."
"Completely." She glances up. "Problem?"
"No problem." I hook my fingers into the waistband of her shorts and pull her closer. "Just want you to know I see what you're doing."
"And?"
"And I plan to return the favor."
I walk her backward toward the bed. She goes — not because I'm pushing, but because she's decided to. That's the only way Ava Ruiz ever does anything.
She sits on the edge. I stand in front of her. She reaches for my belt with the same calm efficiency she brings to everything.
I watch her hands work and think I have never in my life been this grateful for any skill set.
I step out of my jeans. She looks up at me.
"There you are," she says.
I drop down over her. "Been here the whole time."
***
We take our time. No performance. No careful version. Nothing to manage or contain.
Just this.
I map her slowly — the curve of her shoulder, the dip of her waist, the place just below her ear that makes her breath catch every single time. I've been paying attention all season. I know her responses the way I know my route tree.
I know what makes her arch into me. I know what makes her pull back just to make me work for it.
She does both.
"You're smiling," she says.
"Can't help it."
"It's distracting."
"You love it."
She makes a face that is trying very hard not to confirm that. I grin wider. She grabs my face in both hands, which is not the deterrent she intended.
I get my mouth on her collarbone. Trace down. She makes a sound that's half impatient, half something else. Her fingers slide into my hair.
"Ty."
"Mm."
"I need—"
"I know what you need."
I take my time anyway. She is not thrilled about this, which is the point. By the time I work my way back up she is flushed and breathing hard and looking at me with an expression that is somewhere between finally and I will ruin you for this.
"Happy?" I say.
"Ask me in five minutes."
I laugh into her neck. Shift over her. She pulls me in — hands on my back, her legs wrapping around me. The laugh dies somewhere in my chest as I press into her slow and certain, all the way, watching her face the whole time.
Her head tips back. Her eyes close.
"Yeah," she breathes. "There."
I still. Give her a second. She opens her eyes and finds me already watching. Something moves across her face — not the armor, not the control — just her.
"Don't stop," she says.
I don't stop.
***
The first time is slow and unhurried, both of us learning the shape of no-clock, no-system, nothing-to-maintain. She comes with her face pressed into my shoulder, my name quiet in my ear, her whole body going taut and then loose against me.
I follow her over, my forehead dropping to hers. We stay still for a long moment while the city outside just keeps moving.
After, she lies sprawled across my chest like she lost a structural argument with gravity.
"Hi," I say again.
"Stop saying that."
"It keeps being applicable."
She pinches my side. I catch her hand.