Chapter 17
Cole was tying his shoes when I set my phone on the table.
The screen was still open to the headline. San Diego. Two years. Club option for a third. A photo snapped from a distance: blue T-shirt, backpack, and his name beneath a figure nobody had confirmed.
He looked up from the edge of the mattress. One side of his hair was flattened from sleep, with a crease from the pillowcase marking his temple. For a second, he looked ready to ask what was wrong. Then he saw the screen.
He didn't finish the knot.
“How long?” I asked.
Downstairs, the trumpet attacked three notes and abandoned the fourth. Outside, tires cut through the wet pavement with a long, steady hiss. Cole rested his forearms on his knees, favoring his left shoulder.
“Rick called me Tuesday. San Diego wanted to know if I’d listen to an offer.”
“And you listened?”
“I said I’d talk to them. Friday he brought the framework. Two years with a club option. Formal call is Monday.”
He’d slept beside me with all of that locked away. He’d minced garlic, washed dishes, and placed his phone face down between our plates.
The clasp of my watch clicked open beneath my thumb.
“So the headline is accurate.”
“In the essentials, yeah. There’s no full offer on the table, and I haven't accepted anything.”
“I didn't ask if you’d accepted.”
Cole finished tying his shoe. He did it slowly, without using the time to construct a visible defense. Then he straightened up.
“No. You asked how long.”
“And now I have my answer.”
My voice had taken on the flat, crisp precision I used in meetings when someone had just presented a false number. I recognized the tone by the way Cole left his hands resting open on his thighs.
“Kate, I should've told you on Friday.”
“Tuesday.”
“Tuesday was just a phone call.”
“Tuesday you decided to listen. Friday your agent brought terms to the facility. Last night you told me he’d talked to some people.”
Cole looked down at the phone. He didn't try to touch it.
“Yeah.”
The absence of excuses stripped away my easiest surface to fight against. I walked over to the window and cracked the blinds. The morning came in gray, the building across the street a flat silhouette against a depthless sky. On the sill, the new shoots of the basil leaned toward the glass.
“Were you planning on telling me after the call?” I asked.
“I was planning on telling you when I knew whether it could turn into a real offer.”
“It already could.”
“I know.”
I turned around. Cole hadn't stood up. Given his frame, staying seated was a deliberate choice; it kept me from having to crane my neck to hold his gaze.
“Why?” I asked.
He rubbed his right palm against his sweatpants.
“At first, because I didn't want to dump another variable on you when it could vanish in two days. After that...”
I waited. Downstairs, the trumpet started the scale over from the bottom.
“After that, it wasn't about you anymore,” Cole said. “It was because if I told you, I had to admit I might leave. I didn't want to see what that did to this.”
He gestured toward the space between us, not my apartment.
The phone was still glowing on the table. I tapped the screen to lock it.
“You let me find out from an alert.”
“Yeah.”
Anger climbed up the back of my neck. Heat pricked the skin beneath the collar of my T-shirt. I couldn't stop the red flush from spreading. I could have hidden it by turning back to the window, and I chose not to.
“You didn't need to protect me from a conversation, Cole. You weren't avoiding a rumor anymore. You were deciding what part of your life I was allowed to know while you slept in my bed.”
“You’re right.”
“Stop agreeing with me like it fixes something.”
He stood up. The movement pulled a tight wince from the corner of his mouth as his left shoulder took the strain. He didn't step closer.
“I don't know what answer won't sound like a defense. I got scared, and I hid it. I thought telling you ‘I might leave’ would become the first thing you saw every time you looked at me. I thought you’d start planning your exit before I even knew if there was a door.”
The precision of the hit held me still.
“That’s not fair.”
“No. And it wasn't fair not telling you either.”
I crossed my arms, the watch digging hard against my wrist bone. Cole waited. He didn't argue that I would never walk out without a word. We both knew my version of bracing for a loss was engineering it on a scale I could control.
I drew in a breath. The room smelled of stale coffee and the lemon from last night’s dinner sitting in the trash can.
“I’m in the final round for New York,” I said.
Cole didn't shift his stance. He just stopped rubbing his palm.
“The IPO travel?”
“No. Something else. Leading the operational expansion. Nine months based there, potentially fourteen. Hiring my own team. Starting late June or early July.”
The silence stretched long enough for the trumpet downstairs to complete an entire scale for the first time.
“How long have you known?” he asked.
“The shortlist, since Tuesday. The draft terms arrived last night. I have until Monday to decide if I want the full offer.”
Cole glanced toward the chair where he’d left his jacket. Then his eyes came back to mine.
“Last night you asked about Rick.”
“Yeah.”
“And I asked if you’d had a brutal day.”
“Yeah.”
“You said it was a long one.”
“You said nothing was locked down.”
The words were out before I could bite them back. Cole ran the tip of his tongue along his capped incisor—a tell I already knew signaled the start of a reply he’d rather swallow.
“I don't want this to turn into a tie,” he said.
“I’m not trying to tie the score.”
“You just used my lie to prop up yours.”
“I didn't lie to you.”
“I didn't say anything technically false either. That’s the problem.”
I took a step toward the table. I lined up the edge of my phone with the grain of the wood, caught sight of my own fingers, and pulled my hand back.
“I didn't know if I’d make the final round.”
“I didn't know if San Diego would put terms on paper.”
“I didn't want to force you to think about a cross-country move that might not even exist.”
“I didn't want to force you to think about the exact same thing.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
Cole tilted his head.
“Explain to me why.”
I opened my mouth. I had arguments ready: his contract was expiring, my position was still in Seattle, he’d let an agent and a club advance negotiations while I’d merely confused discretion with nonexistence.
Every one of those points was true. None of them erased the draft terms sitting in my inbox.
“It’s not the same in the details,” I said. “Everywhere else, it’s too close.”
Cole sat back down, this time in the chair beside the table. The bed remained unmade behind him, the top sheet twisted toward my side. He checked the time on his wrist.
“I have to leave in thirty-five minutes.”
“I’m not cutting this conversation short because you have a match.”
“I’m not asking you to. I’m telling you how much time we have before the coaching staff sends someone to drag me out of here.”
I pulled out the other chair. The wood was cold against the backs of my bare thighs.
“I wanted to have the complete picture before I told you,” I said. “Dates, terms, a proposal that actually justified destabilizing our week. But when it landed, I thought about your shoulder, about today’s match, about how tonight wasn't a good time. I chose to wait.”
“To protect me?”
There wasn't a trace of sarcasm in his voice. That made it much harder.
“Partly.”
“And the other part?”
I looked down at my nails. The dark burgundy polish on my index finger had chipped away to a bare crescent.
“I didn't want to know what you were going to ask of me.”
Cole rested his elbows on his knees.
“I didn't have the right to ask you to turn down New York.”
“I know that. But you had the right to ask me to factor us in while I decided. And I didn't know if I was going to resent you for it.”
The admission scraped against my throat. I left it out in the open, unedited.
Cole sat motionless for a beat. Then he asked,
“Do you want to go?”
“I want them to make the offer.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It’s the only honest answer I have.”
He nodded. He accepted the distinction without demanding a tidier version.
“I want a proposal that Seattle is forced to look at,” he said. “I don't know if I want San Diego. I just know I can't finish the season waiting around for my body to lose value at the negotiating table.”
The tightness in my chest eased just enough to make room for something else. Not relief. The map still had two opposite coasts.
“So what do we do?” I asked.
Cole checked his watch again and stood up.
“Right now, I go play. After that, if you still want to see me, we talk until we have an answer that doesn't involve flipping our phones face down.”
“And if we don't find one?”
He picked up his jacket with his right hand.
“Then at least we’ll both know where we stand.”
It wasn't comfort. Which was why I believed him.
* * *
My shoulder started throbbing before the end of the first half.
In the locker room at halftime, the physio strapped a fresh line of tape from my chest across to my shoulder blade and told me not to try being a hero.
Marcus, sitting on the bench across from me, suggested it was a little late for an intervention on my personality.
I tossed a towel at him. Missed by two feet.
We took the win by four points. Reyes scored in the corner off a pass with his elbows tucked exactly where they belonged, and I walked off the pitch with grass wedged inside my sock and a deep bruise already blooming over my hip.
In the tunnel, Tessa stepped in front of two reporters trying to ask about San Diego.
“No comment on contract discussions,” she said before I could even part my lips. “Rick is free to hate me during standard business hours.”
“Thanks.”
“Don't thank me. Just don't post a location tag from the San Diego airport and we’ll be fine.”
The joke didn't land. Tessa clocked it and let the silence sit.