3. Chapter 3 — Ty
I've been in the weight room for forty minutes before anyone else shows up.
That's the thing nobody gets right about me. They see the Instagram, the press quotes, the grin I wear to every mandatory appearance, and they build a whole story.
Reckless. Unfocused. One bad headline away from a suspension.
I'm not reckless. I'm just honest, and this league punishes that.
I pull off my last set, rack the bar, and stare at the ceiling.
She threw a drink on me.
That's where my head keeps landing. Not the embarrassment. Not Marcus's face. Not Jax's text.
Just her. The way she held eye contact the entire time the glass was in her hand. Like she'd already decided, and she wanted me to know it before it happened.
Most people look away right before they do something like that.
She didn't look away.
I sit up and reach for my water bottle. The weight room smells like rubber and cold air and early morning, which is the one smell in the world that actually makes me feel like I know what I'm doing.
I know this room. I know exactly how many plates are on that second rack, which cable machine pulls left, which bench squeaks.
I don't know what to do about Ava Ruiz.
***
"You're here early."
Jax Nelson comes through the door at six-fifteen with a coffee he definitely didn't make himself and the specific expression of a man who has been asked to do something he didn't volunteer for.
"Coach called you." Not a question.
Jax sets his coffee on the bench across from me. "Sunday morning."
I nod. I already knew. Ruiz doesn't waste time.
Jax doesn't sit. He looks around the weight room like he's checking for witnesses, then looks at me. He's got a few inches on me, a few years, a whole decade of experience I haven't earned yet.
A few months ago I watched him go through something that would have finished most people in this league. Contract dispute, trade rumors, a very public, very bad month that ended up in three separate sports columns. He came out the other side with his head up.
I watched the whole thing from twenty feet away in the locker room and I haven't forgotten it.
"You know who she is," Jax says.
"Coach's daughter. Yeah."
"You know what that means."
"It means I should've taken Collins's step back."
"It means," Jax says, "that she doesn't exist for you. She's not a person in your building. She's not someone you talk to, think about, look at twice."
He picks up his coffee. "She's a hazard. Same as a wet floor. You see the sign, you go around."
I look at him. "She's going to be in this building."
"Then you stay twelve weeks away."
He says it like it's easy. Like it's a choice you make once and then it's done.
"Ruiz will end you," Jax says, quieter now. Not a threat. Just fact. "Not in an angry way. In a quiet, efficient, this-career-is-over way. He's done it before."
I believe him.
The thing is, I believe him completely, and I am still thinking about the way she didn't look away.
Jax picks up his coffee and heads for the door. He pauses with his hand on the frame.
"You're one of the best receivers I've seen come through this program in three years, Knox."
He doesn't look back. "Don't be the guy who torches it for a girl he met at a gala."
He leaves.
I sit with that for a minute. Then I grab my bag and head for the film room.
***
She's standing outside Sienna's office.
Laptop bag over one shoulder, visitor's credential clipped to the strap, hair pulled back like she means business. She's got a coffee in her hand and a tablet tucked under her arm. She's reading something on her phone, and she does not look up when I come around the corner.
Then she does.
There it is. That exact expression. The one that says I was hoping this wouldn't happen and I am not going to let you know that at the same time.
I stop walking.
I look at the credential. Capstone Research — NYU Stern. I look at the building around us. The hallway. The facility that is, very clearly, my place of employment.
"You're going to be here."
Her chin lifts slightly. "Twelve weeks."
A beat.
"Try not to make it weird."
She walks past me. Close enough that I catch something — soap or shampoo, something clean and uncomplicated that has no business being in a football facility at six-thirty in the morning.
I don't move until she's through the door.
Then I stand in the hallway for three full seconds doing absolutely nothing.
Wet floor sign, I tell myself. You go around.
I go to the film room.
***
Practice should fix it. Practice always fixes it. There's no room in my head for anything except the route tree when Ruiz is on the field.
He runs us through the same third-down sequence four times. The fourth time I hit the corner route so clean that Dante actually stops mid-rep to watch the ball land.
"Again," Ruiz says.
We go again.
I make every cut. I'm where I'm supposed to be, when I'm supposed to be there. I don't drop anything. I don't miss a single mark.
Dante covers me on the third rep and reads the route before I'm halfway through it. He's been doing that since training camp. Six years in this league and he moves like he already knows what you're going to do before you do it.
He doesn't say anything after. Just gives me a look as we reset — the one that says whatever you're thinking about, stop.
I'm not thinking about anything.
I'm thinking about the way she held the laptop strap. Both hands. Like she needed something to hold onto.
"Knox." Ruiz's voice cuts across the field. "Again."
I line up.
***
The locker room empties fast after practice. Guys want to get home, eat something that isn't a protein bar.
By the time I'm out of the shower, there are maybe four people left and none of them are near my locker.
I grab my phone off the shelf.
There's a sticky note on the back.
Four words, handwriting I don't recognize. Small, precise letters. The kind that doesn't waste space.
Stay out of my way.
And beside the words — a cocktail glass. Drawn in ballpoint pen, maybe two centimeters tall. The little olive on a stick included.
I laugh.
Out loud. Alone. In an empty locker room, holding a sticky note with a tiny cartoon cocktail on it, laughing like an idiot.
She put a note on my phone.
She drew the cocktail glass.
She was in this locker room at some point today, which means she has facility access, which means Sienna's office badge gets her basically everywhere, which means for twelve weeks this woman is going to be in every corner of this building.
And she drew the cocktail glass.
I'm in trouble. I knew it Saturday. I know it worse now.
I peel the note off carefully — which is embarrassing — and put it in the front pocket of my bag.
***
My apartment is quiet.
I eat standing over the kitchen counter because I'm tired and I don't feel like sitting down. I watch eleven minutes of film before I give up and get in the shower.
She's still in my head.
Try not to make it weird. The way she said it like the next twelve weeks were a problem she was already solving and I was the variable she hadn't accounted for yet. The laptop strap. Both hands. The cocktail glass in two centimeters of ballpoint pen.
The water runs hot. The bathroom fills up with steam and I stop fighting it.
I don't make a decision. It just — happens.
I'm thinking about the hallway this morning. The credential against her collarbone. The way she walked past me close enough that I could've reached out, and I didn't, and I've been thinking about that not-reaching all day.
My hand drops.
I wrap it around myself and I'm already half-hard just from the memory of her walking past me in that hallway, and that is embarrassing, and I don't stop.
I think about what she'd say if I closed that distance.
If I'd stepped into her space instead of watching her walk away.
Whether she'd step back or hold her ground — and I already know the answer.
She'd hold her ground. She'd tilt that chin up and look at me like I was a problem she was deciding whether to bother solving.
I work myself slow. Deliberate. The way she talks — like every word costs something and she's choosing which ones to spend.
In my head she lets me back her against the wall. Not because I pushed her there. Because she decided to let me. That's the version that gets me — Ava Ruiz making a choice, looking at me like I'm finally worth one.
I picture her hands. The way they gripped the laptop strap this morning, both of them, tight. I put those hands on me instead and my grip tightens and my breath goes uneven against the tile.
She'd be quiet at first. That controlled stillness she wears like armor. But there's something underneath it — I felt it at the gala, the half-second before the drink, the moment where she almost smiled and hated herself for it. I want that version. The one she doesn't show the room.
I want her to look at me the way she looked at me when she said try not to make it weird — like she already knew she was losing that particular fight.
My forehead drops against the tile.
I'm stroking myself harder now, chasing it, and in my head her mouth is at my jaw and her voice is in my ear in that flat, deliberate tone — not soft, not performed, just real and specific and her — telling me exactly what she wants done about it.
Yeah.
That's all it takes.
My whole body locks up. I groan into the back of my wrist, muffled, and ride it out with my palm flat against the wall and the hot water running down my back and her name sitting in my chest, permanent, already there.
I stand there for a long moment after.
Breathing.
I knew it Saturday. I know it worse now. I know it in a way I've never known anything about anyone before, which is the part I'm not going to think about.
I turn off the water.
***
My phone buzzes on the bathroom counter.
I wrap a towel around my waist and check it.
A calendar notification. One I didn't set.
Capstone Orientation Complete — Full facility access begins Tuesday.
Sienna's office. Auto-sent to the shared roster calendar.
I stare at it.
Full facility access. Not just Sienna's hallway. Not just one floor. Every room, every corridor, every corner of this facility — weight room, film room, training suite — starting tomorrow morning.
Which means it went to every player on the active roster.
Fifty-three men.
By tomorrow morning, the entire team is going to know that Coach Ruiz's daughter is in the building. Twelve weeks. Starting tomorrow.
I set the phone face down on the counter.
Look at myself in the mirror for a long moment.
Try not to make it weird.
I have approximately eight hours to figure out how to do that.