5. Chapter 5 — Ty
Three days.
That's how long Ava Ruiz has been in this building, and I've already developed a problem.
I know where she is.
Not because I'm watching. Not because I engineered it. It's automatic — the way my brain catalogs every defender's position on the field without me telling it to. Involuntary. Built-in. My internal GPS just updated itself to include one sharp-tongued MBA researcher and now I can't turn it off.
Right now she's on the second floor. East wing. Has been since two-thirty.
I know this without checking.
It's a problem.
***
Film session ran long. Ruiz ran it back three times on one play sequence and nobody said anything because you don't say anything when Ruiz runs it back. You sit there and you watch and you figure out what you missed.
What I missed: my route depth on the third rep. Two yards short. Ruiz didn't even look at me when he said it. Just circled it on the screen with his laser pointer and moved on.
Two yards. Six months ago that would've bothered me for a week.
Now I'm standing in a side corridor at nine-fifteen at night thinking about a woman I'm not supposed to think about.
The building's mostly cleared. The cleaning crew is on the ground floor. Marcus and Jax left an hour ago. I heard Sienna's heels in the main hallway around eight and then nothing.
I should be in my car. I should be home watching film on my own, eating whatever's in my fridge, going to sleep at a reasonable hour like a professional athlete in the middle of a season.
I round the corner toward the side exit.
And I hear it.
Two voices. One of them clipped, dismissive. The other one — hers.
***
I stop walking before I make the decision to stop.
It's coming from the small corridor off the records archive. The one most players don't use because it dead-ends at the administrative suite. I've walked it exactly once by accident.
I turn around.
The man is older — facilities admin, maybe, or something in records. I've seen his face in passing. Gray at the temples, reading glasses pushed up on his head, the particular kind of tired that's actually irritation dressed up as professionalism.
"Your access tier doesn't cover the archived financial filings. That's a separate clearance."
"My clearance documentation is on file with Sienna Hart's office." Ava's voice is even. No heat in it. That's how I know she's already two moves ahead. "I submitted it Thursday."
"Well, I don't have it."
"Then I'd suggest checking with Sienna's office in the morning."
"The morning doesn't solve tonight's problem, does it?"
I walk over and stand next to her.
That's it. That's the whole move. I don't say anything. I'm six-foot-two and I spent this afternoon running routes at full speed and I'm still in my practice gear. I just stop walking and position myself beside her like I was going to be standing in this exact spot anyway.
The man looks at me.
I look back.
"Knox." He nods, the way people nod when they're recalculating.
I don't say anything. I have nothing to say. I'm just here.
He looks at Ava. Looks at his clipboard. Makes a sound in the back of his throat that means he's found somewhere else to be.
"I'll check with Hart's office." He says it to the clipboard and walks away.
The corridor goes quiet.
Ava turns to look at me.
"I didn't need that."
"I know."
"So why—"
"Because he was being a jerk and I was walking past." I shrug. "It wasn't for you. It was for me."
She looks at me for a long moment.
I can't read her expression and it's driving me out of my mind.
"That's a convenient reframe," she says.
"It's the true one."
She looks at me for another beat. Then she picks up her laptop bag off the floor — she'd set it down, I notice, freeing her hands. Ready to hold her ground.
She was handling it. She didn't need me.
I know that. I'm not pretending otherwise.
We start walking.
***
Neither of us says anything for the first stretch of hallway. Her heels are quiet on the industrial carpet. My sneakers are quieter.
We pass the film room, dark now, and the equipment corridor, and the long wall of framed championship photos I've stopped reading because I know all of them by name.
"He's done that before," she says.
Not a question. Not exactly.
"Probably."
"Not to people who belong here."
I glance at her. "You belong here."
"I know that." Her chin lifts slightly. "He doesn't."
"He does now."
Something in her jaw shifts. Not quite a smile. The almost-smile. The same one from the gala that she didn't let finish.
I want to see it finish.
That's a new kind of problem.
***
The parking structure is nearly empty by the time we get there. One security light on the north end is flickering, throwing everything into uneven intervals of yellow and dark. Our footsteps echo in a way they don't inside.
Her car is on the lower level. I know this because I've seen her badge into the lower elevator three mornings this week.
Involuntary. Annoying.
We walk down the ramp and the echo shifts, gets closer, gets louder. She's two steps ahead of me and I'm not trying to catch up.
At her car she stops and turns.
"Goodnight, Knox."
And that's when I realize I'm closer than I meant to be.
I don't know when it happened. We were walking and then she turned and now there's not enough space between us.
The parking structure is dim and quiet and she's looking up at me with that expression I can't read and my hand moves.
Not toward her.
Beside her.
My thumb presses flat against the concrete pillar behind her shoulder. I'm not touching her. I'm not even close to touching her.
My hand is on the wall and she's a full foot of space away and still I can feel her breathe.
She doesn't step back.
For one second. Two.
Her eyes are dark in the low light and she's not looking away and I am not built for this — for standing still, for waiting, for the space between what's happening and what isn't. I'm built for motion. For the next play. For the move after this one.
There is no next play here.
I don't move. She doesn't move.
Then she steps back. One step. Clean and deliberate and final.
"Goodnight, Knox."
"Night, Ruiz."
She gets in her car. I step back. Watch her pull out and take the ramp up, taillights disappearing around the curve.
I stand there.
My hand is still slightly raised. Still against the pillar. Still remembering the shape of the space next to her where I didn't close the distance.
I've never felt the absence of something I didn't do before.
It's a specific kind of bad. Like a play you knew was there and didn't take. The window opens and closes and you're already looking at the next snap and you know — you know — you had it.
I drop my hand.
Pull out my keys.
Don't move yet.
***
My phone rings.
Unknown number.
I'm still standing in the empty parking structure, her space still empty beside me, when I answer.
Silence.
Then a voice. Male. Clipped and professional, the kind of flat tone that means practiced calm.
"You should know who's been asking questions about your contract."
I go still. A different kind of still than a minute ago.
"Who is this?"
The line goes dead.
I pull the phone away and look at it. The call duration reads fourteen seconds.
I look at the empty parking space where her car was.
Look back at my phone.
Two things just happened in the same sixty seconds and I genuinely cannot tell which one is going to cost me more. One of them felt like the edge of something I've been building toward without meaning to. The other one sounds like the beginning of something I don't understand yet.
Someone in this building is running a play.
I don't know who. I don't know what they want. I don't know if it's connected to whatever Ava is digging through in those financial files.
But I know this:
I should have taken the long route to my car.
I didn't.
And now I'm standing here with a missed call from a ghost and a handprint on a concrete pillar, and the only thing I'm certain of is that tomorrow morning I'm going to walk into this building and she's going to be there and one of us is going to have to pretend this parking structure didn't happen.
My money's on her.
I'm not sure I'm capable of it.