34. Chapter 34 — Ava
The meeting starts at nine.
I know this because Ty told me last night, his voice low and certain in the dark. I know what it means too. Ruiz. Full roster. The last thing before the biggest game of their lives.
I've been inside this franchise long enough to understand what that room feels like — even from the outside.
***
The hotel is quiet in a specific way this morning. Not empty. Just held.
I can feel it one floor up — fifty-three men in a room that smells like focus and collective will. I've sat outside rooms like that my whole life. My father's film sessions since I was twelve. His playoff walkthroughs since I was sixteen.
I know the weight of it. I respect the weight of it.
I open my laptop and get to work.
***
The capstone documentation is almost done.
The final sections drafted, the supporting data clean and cross-referenced. Three months of work compressed into something Stern will receive next week and the league will receive shortly after. I've checked every figure twice. I'll check them again.
The LA sunshine comes through the window at an angle I'm not used to. February in New York doesn't look like this. February in New York is gray and absolute.
This light is warm and completely indifferent to what happens tomorrow. Nothing outside this window cares about the Super Bowl. That helps me think.
***
I work through the morning without stopping.
The Shore documentation. The insurance rider timeline. The Voss communications chain and how it connects to Beck's network. All of it organized now, all of it traceable.
The kind of case that holds up because it was built carefully, cross-referenced obsessively, never moved before it was ready. My father taught me that without meaning to. You don't run a play until you know it.
I close the final section at ten-forty-three. Read it through one more time. Save it.
My phone buzzes.
***
Ruiz just said we leave nothing. I'm going to leave absolutely nothing.
I read it twice. Then I type back: Please also leave yourself. I need you after.
Three dots. Then his reply loads.
Alone in a hotel room in Los Angeles the day before the Super Bowl, I laugh out loud, the sharp bright one that my sisters say I got from our father. The one I spent most of my twenties trying to make quieter.
Very Ty. Also very funny. Those two things stopped being separate problems sometime around Philadelphia.
I put the phone face-down on the desk. Look out the window at the city.
Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. Tomorrow is the Super Bowl. Tomorrow is the end of the season and the beginning of whatever comes after it.
I don't have a name for whatever comes after it yet. I've been too busy getting here to think about there. But I know Ty will show up to that conversation the way he shows up to everything — too loud, completely certain, ready before he has a plan.
I'll bring the plan. He'll bring everything else.
I pick the phone back up. Read his message again.
I'm going to leave absolutely nothing.
I believe him completely. That's the thing about Ty — he means everything he says. Every single word. It took me three weeks to stop finding that exhausting and start finding it extraordinary.
***
The afternoon is quiet.
I order room service at one and eat at the desk while I read through the final capstone summary. I fix two sentences. Change a word in the executive abstract that was technically correct and tonally wrong.
Small things. The kind of precision that means the work is finished and I'm just sitting with it.
At two-fifteen, I close the laptop.
I'm done. It's done. Three months of work inside a franchise I grew up watching from the outside.
I found the thing. I built the case. I protected my father without him knowing it needed protecting.
Shore resigned. Beck is facing civil liability. Claire Osei's union filing goes public Monday alongside the capstone submission.
I sit with that for a moment. Just that.
***
At three I pull up my email and find something I wasn't looking for.
A sports outlet ran a feature this morning — context piece on Ty's father's story, what the gambling actually was, what it wasn't. The kind of reporting that happens when a story gets too big to stay one-dimensional.
They linked footage.
High school. Friday night game. Indiana.
I click on it.
***
The stadium is small in the way high school stadiums are small — the kind of small that looks enormous when you're sixteen and it's everything.
Bright lights against a black sky. The particular noise of a crowd that knows every player's name.
Number eighty-two runs a route.
He's sixteen. Lean in a way that's still growing, still becoming the version I know. But the movement is already his — the specific kinetic certainty, the release off the line, the way his head turns at exactly the right moment.
He catches it.
The crowd reacts. Small roar. Real joy.
I pause the footage. Back it up. Find the bleachers in the background.
Row four, left side. A man standing. Not sitting. Standing the whole time, the way you stand when you can't help it, when the thing happening on that field is the most important thing in the world to you.
He's a small figure at this distance. But he's there.
I watch the route again. Watch the small figure stand.
Then I close my eyes.
***
I know what it cost. The gambling. The four years of distance. The intake form Ty answered no to because it was technically true and also the only way he knew how to protect himself.
I know what it takes to carry something like that inside a league that wants to own every part of you.
The man in row four loved his son in the most destructive and absolute way possible. Believed in him so completely that the belief went sideways. That counts for something. My father said so.
***
I pick up my phone.
I found the footage. Row four, left side.
I wait.
Three minutes. Then:
He never missed one.
I know what's underneath those three words — four years of complicated love, the version that hurt and the version that held. All of it. I close the laptop.
Look at the ceiling of a hotel room in Los Angeles the night before the Super Bowl.
Outside the window the city moves, indifferent and automatic. Inside this room it's very quiet. The good kind.
I feel the weight of it. The warmth of it. On his behalf, because he's one team meeting away from the biggest game of his life and he doesn't have time to sit with it right now.
I'll sit with it for him.
I put my phone on the nightstand. Look at the ceiling a little longer.
He never missed one.
Tomorrow Ty is going to walk onto that field and play the game of his life. Somewhere in Indiana, a man in the bleachers is going to watch his son do what he always knew he could.
I close my eyes.
Get some rest, Ava.
Tomorrow is everything.