7. Chapter 7 — Ty
The travel manifest goes out Friday afternoon.
Standard operational list. Flight time, hotel block, meal schedule, position meeting rooms. I read it the same way I read every manifest — once, fast, looking for anything that changes my prep.
I see her name and read past it.
Then I go back.
Ruiz, A. — Research Staff / Operations.
I read it a third time. Then I put my phone face-down on my locker shelf.
Also I'm smiling, and that cannot happen.
I press my mouth flat and focus very hard on my cleats. She's coming to Cincinnati. She's going to be on the charter, in the hotel, walking around the same building I'm walking around the night before a game, and I am going to be a professional about it.
I am going to be so professional.
Jax glances over. "You good?"
"Great," I say. "Totally great."
He looks at me for one more second. Then he goes back to taping his wrists.
***
Saturday. The charter. Two hours to Cincinnati.
I'm in my seat with headphones on and my tablet loaded and a very clear plan: watch film, be a professional, do not acknowledge that she exists on this plane.
She's already on board when I get to my seat.
Three rows up. Window side. Laptop open before we even push back, earbuds in, the picture of someone with zero interest in anything except her screen.
Right. Okay. Fine.
I pull up Cincinnati's corner tendencies and stare at them with tremendous focus.
I watch the film interface for two hours while the same corner's zone coverage loops and I learn nothing because my peripheral vision has developed opinions about three rows up.
She doesn't look back. Not once. I know because I checked.
A few times.
Prentiss drops into the aisle seat somewhere over Pennsylvania, shoves one side of my headphones off my ear, glances forward, and then gives me a look I don't like.
"Film," I say.
"Sure." He pulls out his own tablet. Doesn't say another word.
The whole plane knows exactly what we're not doing. I can feel it like weather.
***
Hotel check-in. Floor assignments. I do not clock which elevator she gets into.
I clock which elevator she gets into.
Position meetings run seven to nine. Film from nine to ten-fifteen. Ruiz walks through Cincinnati's third-down packages and I take notes like a man whose entire career depends on being in this room, which it does, which is a useful thing to remember.
I'm in my room by ten-thirty. Showered. Stretched. Food from the team spread sitting half-eaten on the desk.
Alarm set for six. Game plan open on the tablet. I'm going to sleep.
My phone buzzes at eleven-fifteen.
Someone was in my files. I know what they were looking for.
I sit up so fast I nearly knock the tablet off the bed.
No contact name. Unknown number. Except at the top of the screen where the name should be, she's already entered one.
Don't.
I stare at that for a long second.
She named herself Don't in my phone. Which means at some point she had my phone. Which means she planned this, or at least planned the option of this, which means some part of her has been thinking about texting me — and she handled that feeling by labeling it as a warning to herself.
That is genuinely one of the best things I've ever seen.
I'm still smiling when I type: Are you okay?
Three dots. They run for a while.
I need to think through something. Are you awake?
It's 11:17. Game day in six hours and forty-three minutes. Her father is my head coach and he is in this hotel and I should type: No. Goodnight. Monday.
I sit on the edge of the bed and run through the list. Her father. My contract. Whoever's been in her files, which means someone is watching, full stop. The list is real. The list is correct. The list is the kind of list a person with good judgment would follow.
I put my shoes on.
Sit there.
Text back: On my way.
Then I walk down the hall to 814.
***
She opens the door in an NYU sweatshirt and bare feet.
No makeup. Hair loose, a few pieces falling forward. Laptop open on the bed behind her, yellow notepad covered in tight columns of handwriting.
Not gala Ava. Not facility Ava with the blazer and the careful expression. Just her, at almost midnight, holding the door open like she absolutely invited me here to talk about spreadsheets.
"I checked the hallway both ways," I say. "Twice."
"I know. I watched you do it."
"You were watching the peephole?"
"Get in, Ty."
I get in. She closes the door.
I take the desk chair, spin it around, pull it close to the bed.
"Walk me through it," I say.
She does.
Forty minutes. She starts with the insurance rider — the liability language, the timestamp discrepancy, the signature that shouldn't exist. Then she maps it forward: Shore's financial decisions, the pattern of short-term optics over roster health, liability quietly shifted in ways that wouldn't surface without a full audit.
Every claim backed up. Every anomaly cross-referenced.
I lean in on my elbows and pay attention, which isn't hard because she's building something real and she's good at it.
"Whoever accessed my session was looking for this specific folder," she says. "They didn't find it. But they knew what to search for."
"Which means they know what you found."
"Or what I'm looking for. Which is worse."
"Pull up the Shore decision from the February trade window."
She does. I study the screen.
"Three guys were up for renegotiation that month. Shore held the line on cap space." I point. "That's not a cap figure. That's a reserve adjustment."
She goes still. "You're sure?"
"My agent walked me through this exact structure before I signed my rookie deal. It's how they make the cap look clean when it isn't."
She opens a second file, lays it next to the first.
"That's what the rider does," she says. "Limits what the franchise pays out if a player gets hurt in a contract year. Shore reduces the liability, the reserve line cleans up, and the numbers look fine."
"Until someone gets hurt."
"Until someone gets hurt."
We look at each other across the laptop.
Between us, we just mapped something I don't think Shore expected anyone to find.
"You can't take this to Ruiz. He'll go at Shore directly, Shore pulls the files, and whoever's been in yours will know exactly what you surfaced."
"I know, Ty."
She says my name and I lose my train of thought for half a second. Not Knox. Just my name, quiet, while she's staring at her screen like she confirmed something she was hoping was wrong.
"You've got more than a capstone here."
"Yes."
"What are you going to do with it?"
She looks up. "I don't know yet."
The room is very quiet.
I've moved without noticing — I'm on the bed beside her now, laptop between us. She leans over to show me something on the screen and I lean in to see it and then we're not looking at the screen anymore.
She's looking at me. I'm already looking at her.
The distance between us is very small.
She closes the laptop.
The click of it is the only sound in the room.
Neither of us moves. Her hands are still on the lid. My elbow is still on the mattress. The whole season compressed into six inches of space that neither of us is closing and neither of us is leaving.
Her eyes drop to my mouth for exactly one second.
Come back up.
That's all. That small thing.
I kiss her first.
Slow. Not careful — just slow. I want to actually feel it.
My hand goes to her face. She lets me. That small thing, she lets me, does something to my chest I'm not thinking about right now.
She pulls back just far enough to look at me.
"This is a terrible idea," she says.
"I know."
"We're in Cincinnati."
"I'm aware."
"My father is four floors down."
"Ava." I brush the loose hair back from her face. "I know."
She looks at me for one more second. Then she reaches for my shirt.
I take it off for her. Her hands press flat against my chest. She makes a sound — quiet, barely there. I file it away. I plan to hear it again.
I push her back against the pillows. Take my time. Her sweatshirt comes off. She's warm underneath. I get my mouth on her throat. Her collarbone. The curve of her shoulder. I work down until she's got a fist in my hair.
"Ty—"
"I've got you."
I get rid of the rest. She pulls me back up by the neck and kisses me like she's annoyed she wants to. Most Ava thing possible. I love it.
I settle between her thighs. She arches up and I have to stop. Just stop and breathe. She is genuinely trying to end me.
"You okay?" she asks.
"Give me a second."
"We're not—"
"I'm fine, I just—" I drop my forehead to hers. "You're a lot."
She laughs. Short and real. Surprised out of her. I feel it against my chest. I grin like an idiot. She sees it and rolls her eyes.
"Don't," she says.
"Too late."
I get a hand between us. She stops laughing.
Her head tips back. I watch her face. Want to watch it. Learn what she likes by feel and sound. The way her hips move. The way her breath catches.
She's not sharp-tongued right now. Not controlled. None of the things she uses as a shield.
"Ty." My name again. Wrecked this time.
"There it is," I say.
"Shut up—"
She pulls me back up by the neck. I stop teasing. Give her what she's asking for. She makes a sound against my shoulder that I'm going to replay for the rest of the season. Possibly my life.
After, we're both quiet.
Hotel AC. Her breathing slowing down. She doesn't move away.
I take that as a good sign.
"That wasn't—" she starts.
"Planned?"
She's quiet. "Responsible."
"Also true." I shift so I can see her face. "You okay?"
She considers the ceiling. "Ask me again in the morning."
***
The room is dark. She's on her side, facing away. I'm on my back staring up at nothing.
I'm thinking about her laughing against my chest. The way she said my name. The specific feeling of being somewhere you know is a bad idea and not caring the way you should.
My phone lights up at 1:07 a.m.
I don't reach for it. I listen to the room. Her breathing, even and slow.
Then I reach for it.
Marcus Hale.
Four words.
Good game tomorrow, Knox.
I read it twice.
Marcus sleeps eight hours every road trip. He turns his phone off at ten. I have watched him end conversations with coaches at nine-fifty-five because he said he would. He always does. All season I have never once seen a text from him after ten.
It's one in the morning.
He's awake at one in the morning, the night before a game, texting me four words that say nothing and mean something.
Which means he knows. Or he suspects. With Marcus, that's the same thing — he doesn't text to chat. He texts when he's already landed somewhere and he's letting you know.
I put the phone face-down on the nightstand.
Ava's breathing doesn't change. She doesn't know yet.
But Marcus Hale is awake at one in the morning. The clock just started.
I knew it would. I came to room 814 anyway.