13. Chapter 13 — Ty
We win on a Sunday night in Philadelphia and the locker room after is loud in the way only night game wins are loud.
Somebody's Bluetooth speaker. Prentiss doing a full play-by-play of the fourth quarter to anyone who will hold still long enough to listen. Collins celebrating like he personally held the entire defensive line in place, which, honestly, he kind of did.
I stay for all of it.
Ruiz moves through the room at the end. One word per player, never the same word twice. He gets to me and stops.
"Hands," he says.
That's it. He keeps walking.
I stand there a second. Hands. Two months ago that would've read as a compliment and nothing else. Now it reads like a man who is clocking me under pressure and hasn't made his call yet.
***
The team migrates to the hotel bar around ten-thirty. I go. Stay twenty minutes. Then I extract myself, take the elevator up, close the door.
Away game hotels blur together by October. This one has a window facing another building and a desk lamp angled wrong. I sit on the edge of the bed and scroll my phone without reading anything.
The knock comes at midnight.
I check the peephole.
Not Ava.
I recognize her from the sideline media circuit. The kind of woman who turns up at away game hotels and always knows what floor the players are on. Attractive. Easy. Not complicated.
Three months ago I would've opened the door wider.
"Not tonight," I say. "Sorry."
I close it before she can respond.
Stand in the middle of my room.
That's the thing nobody explains to you. The moment it stops being easy to do the easy thing — that's when you know you're in real trouble. I didn't decide not to open that door. I just didn't want to.
For the first time in my adult life, the uncomplicated option makes no sense at all.
I pick up my phone.
You awake?
Three minutes. Then: Why?
Just checking.
Longer pause. I'm awake.
I put the phone face-down on the nightstand. Don't go to her room. Don't ask her to come to mine. She set the terms in Cincinnati. I agreed to them. I meant it.
That should be enough.
***
The knock comes at twelve-eighteen.
I already know before I open the door.
NYU sweatshirt. Bare feet. Laptop bag over one shoulder. The expression that says she has a professional reason for being here and means it.
"I have a theory about the email chain." She holds up the laptop bag slightly. "I need a second opinion."
I look at her.
She looks at me.
"Knox."
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
I open the door wider. She comes in. The laptop bag goes on the desk.
She doesn't open it. I don't point that out.
"You watched the game," I say. The TV is still on mute, post-game analysis rolling.
"I was working."
"Right."
A beat.
"I watched," she says.
***
She asks me about the third quarter coverage. I explain the safety read and she asks a question so specific it takes me half a second to recalibrate.
She's been watching film. Not casually.
"Why do you break left on the slant?"
"Safety cheats right. He's done it all season. First two snaps I'm reading him before I'm off the line."
"And if he adjusts?"
"I adjust faster."
She considers this. "That seems like a high-variance strategy."
"I'm a high-variance person."
"Yes," she says. "I'm aware."
I laugh. Something loosens in her face. That's the version of Ava I've been chasing since the parking structure — the one where the armor slips just enough.
She reaches for the laptop bag.
We work through the email chain the way we worked through the financial model in Cincinnati. Her screen tilted toward me, my elbows on my knees, both of us building from different angles. She's mapped the communication pattern between Shore and the consulting firm by date.
I fill in what I remember from those weeks — what was moving through the locker room, what contract talk was circulating, what Ruiz locked down and when. Things you absorb just by being in the building.
At some point I move to sit beside her to read the screen better.
Neither of us moves back after.
***
The room goes quieter somewhere around one in the morning.
The analysis is open on her screen but she's not typing. She's looking at a line of text I can't quite read from this angle.
I am very aware that she's warm and close and the lamp across the room is doing something I've been trying not to think about.
She closes the laptop. Sets it on the nightstand.
I look at her.
She looks at me.
She kisses me first — the same way she did in the office. Certain. Deliberate. Like something she decided before she walked through my door. The careful version of this thing we've been maintaining snaps clean in half.
I'm fine with that.
I pull back just enough to look at her.
"The laptop bag theory," I say.
"Didn't pan out."
"Shame."
She pulls me back in.
***
I walk her back to the bed. She sits on the edge and looks up at me.
The controlled, composed Ava Ruiz is completely gone. What's underneath is better.
I take the NYU sweatshirt off her slowly. She lets me. Doesn't rush it. Just watches me while I learn what Cincinnati didn't give me time to learn.
She's not wearing anything underneath it.
"You came to my door like this," I say.
"I was in a hurry."
"Were you."
"Knox."
I pull her up by the waist and stop talking entirely.
***
Her throat first.
The place below her ear — I find it inside thirty seconds. She makes a sound she clearly didn't plan to make. I do it again.
"Stop being smug," she says.
"I'm not."
"You are."
I lift my head. Look at her. "You want me to stop?"
A beat.
"No," she says. Flat. Like it costs her something.
I smile and drop my head back down.
***
I work my way down her body like I have all night.
Because I do.
She's responsive in a way she'd never admit to in daylight. Small sounds. Sharp exhales. Her hips moving before she catches herself. I learn every tell. The way her breath goes shallow right before something good. The way her hand finds my hair and tightens.
I don't let her rush me.
"Ty—"
"Stay with me."
She stops talking when I put my mouth on her. Her whole body goes tight. Then releases completely. I keep going — steady, unhurried — one hand flat against her stomach while she comes apart.
One hand over her mouth. The other gripping the back of my head. She doesn't push me away.
***
When I finally push up to look at her, she pulls me in by the back of the neck.
No preamble. No negotiation.
I groan against her throat when I sink into her. She's warm and close and her legs wrap around me before I've fully settled.
I move slow at first. Reading her the way I read a field. She makes a sound low in her throat that tells me everything.
I stop being slow.
Her nails find my back. My name in her mouth — not Knox, Ty — and I'm gone. Completely. Every careful thing I've been managing since December burns off in about thirty seconds flat.
I press my forehead to hers when I finish. Both of us breathing hard. Neither of us moving.
***
This is different from Cincinnati.
Cincinnati was urgent. Charged. Two people finally letting go. This is slower. Quieter. Like we actually have time.
She says my name twice more before we're done. Not Knox. Ty. Both times unhurried. Both times real.
I keep every single one.
***
She reaches for the laptop bag after a moment. Back to work, like she can just decide that's where we are.
We work another thirty minutes, shoulder to shoulder. She scrolls to the third message in the chain.
Stops.
Goes very still.
Not the controlled stillness she uses in meetings. This is something underneath that — the kind that means something just landed and she's not ready to say it out loud.
I look at the screen. She tilts it away from me.
"What is it?"
"Give me a second."
She reads it again. Her face doesn't move.
"Ava."
"I said give me a second."
I wait. I've learned when to wait.
She closes the laptop. Puts it in the bag. Methodical. Unhurried. Hands busy so she doesn't have to answer anything.
"I need to think through something."
"Tell me what you found."
"When I know what it is." She zips the bag. Stands. "Not before."
She pulls the sweatshirt back on. Picks up her phone, checks the screen, puts it in her pocket.
Whatever she found in that email chain shifted something. She's put the professional face back on but it doesn't quite fit right over what's underneath it.
"I'll see you on the charter," she says.
"Ava."
She looks at me.
"I'm okay." Flat. Like she's saying it to herself as much as me. "I just need to think."
I don't push. She's told me enough times in enough ways.
"Text me when you're back in your room," I say.
She glances back. The ghost of something crosses her face.
"Good night, Knox."
The door clicks shut at two-oh-four.
***
I stare at the ceiling.
The TV is still on mute across the room. Somewhere down the hall a door opens and closes.
I go back through the email chain in my head. Third message. The line she tilted away from me. She was on that line for less than ten seconds before she closed the screen.
Ten seconds and it changed the whole shape of her face.
I turn it over. Add it to everything else I've been carrying since Cincinnati.
I don't like what it might mean.