35. Chapter 35 — Ty
She's in the hallway in her NYU sweatshirt and bare feet. Hair down. The careful expression completely gone. She looks like a woman who got up from bed, walked to an elevator, rode it two floors, and is still figuring out why.
I know the feeling. I sent the text and then lay there for forty seconds wondering if I'd actually send it.
I did.
"I'm not good at quiet things," she says.
I wait.
"But I'm in love with you." She says it the way she says everything that costs her something — straight, no softening, eyes steady on mine. "I have been for a while. I needed to say it in person instead of reading it off a screen."
Something in my chest cracks open so wide I'm not sure it's ever going to close back up.
Fine. I'll leave it open.
I pull her in.
***
She comes through the door and goes quiet, like she already spent everything she had in the hallway. I close the door behind her.
Good.
I turn around. She's standing in the middle of the room looking at me with that expression. The one I've been watching surface for three months.
Not the controlled one. Not the professional one. The real one — slightly disbelieving, like she didn't entirely decide to be here and is still catching up to herself.
I cross the room.
I don't rush it. I've been rushing things my whole life — moving too fast, talking too much, taking up more space than the moment needs.
Not tonight. Tonight I have nowhere to be until six in the morning and the woman I'm in love with is standing in my hotel room.
I stop in front of her. Close enough. Not touching yet.
She looks up at me.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi."
She smiles. "You're doing the thing."
"What thing."
"The slow thing. You're being deliberate."
"Is that a problem?"
She considers it for exactly one second. "No."
I take her face in my hands.
***
She kisses differently when she's not calculating the exit.
I noticed it for the first time in Philadelphia. That brief window before she rebuilt the distance, where she was just herself, just present.
I've been thinking about it since. About what it would feel like if she stayed there.
She stays there.
Her hands find my chest. Not pushing — just resting, like she needs the contact to stay grounded. I walk her back toward the bed slowly, both hands still framing her face. She makes a small sound against my mouth when the backs of her knees hit the mattress.
I pull back just enough to see her.
Her hair is loose around her shoulders. The LA light coming through the curtain gap catches the angle of her jaw, her collarbone, the hem of the sweatshirt riding mid-thigh.
I've seen her controlled and sharp and armored and exhausted and furious. I've never seen her look like this.
Unhurried. Decided. All the way here.
"Ty." Just my name.
"I know." I push her hair back from her face. "I've got you."
She pulls me down.
***
The sweatshirt comes off first.
My hands slide underneath it — warm skin, the curve of her waist, her sharp exhale when I find the places I've learned. She arches into my hands. I take my time. She's been running a hundred miles an hour for three months and tonight I want her to stop moving.
"You're still doing the slow thing," she says against my jaw.
"Yeah."
"I'm not — I'm fine with it, I just—"
"Ava." I press my mouth to her throat. Feel her swallow. "Stop talking."
She laughs — the real one, the sharp bright one. Then I drag my mouth lower and she stops laughing.
I work my way down deliberately. Her collarbone. The soft place below her ribs.
I have her hands pinned lightly above her head and she's not fighting it. From Ava Ruiz, that means something.
She trusts me with her stillness. I take that seriously.
When I finally give her what she wants she makes a sound that's just my name, broken in half. I feel it in my sternum.
***
She pulls me back up when she's ready. Her hands in my hair, her mouth finding mine. She rolls me onto my back — no hesitation, no calculation, just Ava knowing what she wants and taking it.
She sits up over me. Looks down.
This is the version of her I'll remember when I'm eighty. Hair loose, eyes clear, that faint almost-smile at the corner of her mouth when she's stopped performing anything. The LA light through the curtains turning everything gold.
"What?" she says.
"Nothing." I put my hands on her hips. "Just looking."
"That's extremely sentimental of you."
"I'm a sentimental person."
"You're a ridiculous person."
"Also true."
She leans down and kisses me quiet.
***
It's different from every other time.
Not frantic like Cincinnati — that first night when we were both pretending it was about the files. Not the careful deliberate thing from Minneapolis that felt like a decision we were making in real time. Not even Philadelphia, which was the best of the before-versions.
This is after.
We're already public. Her father knows. The team knows. The Super Bowl is tomorrow and Harlan Beck is somebody else's problem. She is here because she wanted to be — because she got up and walked to an elevator and said I'm in love with you in a hotel corridor at two in the morning and meant it.
She's here because she chose it. All the way.
That changes everything.
***
She takes her time. So do I. We keep finding each other's eyes in the dark — not dramatic, just present.
The specific intimacy of two people who are paying attention.
She knows things about me now that nobody else knows. The Indiana version, the father version, the version that isn't the grin and the noise and the too-much.
She knows all of it. She's still here.
When she finally comes apart she turns her face into my shoulder. I hold her through it. Something in my chest cracks open so wide I'm not sure it's ever going to close back up.
Fine. I'll leave it open.
***
After.
She's lying against my side, her head on my chest, one hand flat against my sternum like she's checking for a heartbeat. Her breathing evens out slowly. I watch the ceiling.
The city hums outside. LA always hums.
I run my hand through her hair. She doesn't tell me to stop. That's new — the old Ava would have already found a reason to move, rebuilt the distance, had her shoes on before the air finished settling. This one stays.
"You okay?" I ask.
A pause. "Yeah."
"That was fast."
"I was processing."
"And?"
She tilts her head up to look at me. The LA light catches her eyes. "And I'm okay."
I grin. "High praise."
"Don't push it."
I press my mouth to her forehead. She makes a sound that is not a complaint.
***
We sleep.
Not for long — it's already close to three and I have a five-thirty alarm. But we sleep. Her back against my side, no countdown running between us for the first time in three months.
I wake at five-fifteen on my own.
She's still there.
I lie still for a minute just to confirm it. Not a drill. Not a Cincinnati situation where I'm sitting on the edge of the bed running through every reason this was a mistake.
She's here. She's warm and she's real.
She chose to stay.
Then she moves.
She slips out from under my arm — careful, quiet — and crosses to the window in her NYU sweatshirt. She doesn't turn the light on. Just stands there, looking out at the city.
I get up.
***
She doesn't look at me when I come to stand behind her. She doesn't need to.
Neither of us talks for a while.
"How do you feel?" I ask.
She thinks about it. She always actually thinks about questions. It's one of the first things I noticed about her, back when I was still pretending I wasn't noticing everything.
"Ready," she says.
***
My backup alarm fires at five-forty. I turned off the first one when I woke up.
GAME DAY. All caps. Set by my roommate freshman year as a joke. Never changed it. Never had a reason to want to.
Ava looks at the phone. Then at me.
I grin. The full one. No dimmer. No right-yourself-in-under-a-second.
Just the grin, all the way open.
It's five-forty in the morning in Los Angeles on Valentine's Day. I'm twenty-two years old. I'm about to play in the Super Bowl.
The woman I love is standing at my window.
I am not even slightly interested in dimming anything.
"Let's go win a Super Bowl."
She turns from the window. Faces me. Reaches up with both hands and straightens my collar — smooth, certain, like muscle memory she didn't know she had.
"It's Valentine's Day," she says.
"Yeah." I look at her. All of her. The real version, all the way here. "It is."
She rolls her eyes. "Don't make it weird."
I kiss her.
She makes a sound against my mouth that is absolutely not a complaint.
"Too late," I say.