Chapter 36
Evan
Sunday night, I picked Sam up at seven.
Not a driveway. Not a family porch. Not a house loud enough to make my nervous system start negotiating terms.
Downtown.
That was what she had asked for when I texted her that morning.
Sam: Take me somewhere that feels like San Antonio.
I stared at the message for three full minutes, because that was a dangerous amount of responsibility to put in the hands of a man whose idea of planning usually involved ice time and knowing which gas stations had decent coffee.
But I knew one place, because every time I had driven past it after a late game, it looked like the city was still awake and not apologizing for it.
She was waiting outside her building when I pulled up, wearing a black dress, low boots, and a jacket she did not need but had probably chosen because it made the outfit look less like she had planned to ruin my concentration.
It did not work.
She opened the passenger door and got in.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
Her eyes moved over my face, quick and practiced. “You look nervous.”
“I’m driving downtown with a woman who asked me for atmosphere.”
“That does sound difficult for you.”
“I’ve faced easier penalty kills.”
She smiled and buckled her seat belt.
I pulled away from the curb before I could stare at her long enough to embarrass both of us.
The city changed as we drove in. Neighborhood streets gave way to restaurant windows and people crossing at corners with their phones in their hands. The skyline rose ahead of us, familiar and different from this angle.
Sam looked out the window like she was taking it in without a camera.
That mattered.
I found parking near La Villita and killed the engine.
Before she could reach for the door, I looked at her.
“You good with this?”
She turned back. “With dinner?”
“With being seen.”
That shifted something in the truck.
Not badly.
Carefully.
She looked toward the street. Couples walking. Families headed toward the river. A man in a Spurs cap laughing into his phone.
Then she looked back at me.
“Are you?”
Fair question.
I had spent most of my life being seen only in ways I could control. Helmet on. Jersey on. Short answers and a face arranged for cameras. Anything personal held behind a wall and labeled unavailable.
This was different.
This was my hand on the console between us, close enough to hers that the choice was obvious.
“Yes,” I said.
She studied me for one second longer.
Then she put her hand in mine.
“Then yes.”
We walked into downtown like that.
Hand in hand.
No distance. No pretending we had arrived separately and ended up beside each other by coincidence.
The restaurant was small and tucked off a narrow street near the river, with tile floors, low light, and a hostess who recognized me and then very clearly decided not to make it anyone else’s problem.
I respected her immediately.
They seated us at a table near the back, not hidden exactly, but not on display. Sam noticed. Of course she did.
“You called ahead,” she said.
“I asked for quiet.”
“That is very romantic in your language.”
“It was either that or show up and hope the universe had good spacing.”
“Never trust the universe with spacing.”
A smile threatened.
The server brought water. Sam ordered first, confident and fast, like a woman who knew what she wanted and did not require a committee. I ordered what she recommended because she had opinions about food and I had learned to respect most of them.
Most.
“You looked good today,” she said after the server left.
I looked at her.
“At practice,” she added.
“That’s what you meant?”
Her mouth curved. “Mostly.”
That went straight through me.
She knew it, too. I could tell from the way she looked down at her glass like innocence was still an available defense.
It was not.
“You looked good in the hallway,” I said.
Her eyes lifted.
“When Cross asked. You didn’t hide.”
The humor left her face, not completely, but enough for the truth to come through.
“I didn’t want to.”
“I know.”
“That was new.”
“I know that too.”
She reached for her water. Her fingers were steady. Her voice, when she spoke, was quieter.
“Part of me kept waiting for it to feel like exposure. Like I had handed the room something it could use against me.”
I listened.
“But it didn’t feel like that,” she said. “It felt like saying my own name and having it belong to me.”
Something in my chest went still.
I thought of a hallway full of players. Sam’s clear voice. Me and McKinney.
Not claimed like property.
Named like truth.
“Good,” I said.
She smiled faintly. “That’s it?”
“No. But if I say more, you’re going to make fun of me for being emotionally literate before the appetizers.”
“I would never.”
“You absolutely would.”
“Probably,” she admitted.
Dinner came. We ate slowly, which was not something I did often. Food in my life had mostly been fuel. Calories arranged around work.
This was not that.
This was Sam stealing one of my peppers and pretending she had not. This was her laughing when I let her do it twice and stopped her on the third. When the waiter asked about dessert, she said yes before he finished the question.
Across the room, someone glanced at us, looked away, then looked back again.
Sam saw it.
So did I.
I waited for my body to lock down.
It did not.
The man whispered something to the woman beside him. She turned, smiled once, and went back to her meal.
That was all.
No phone. No damage.
Sam’s thumb moved once over the back of my hand where it rested on the table.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
I meant it.
Her eyes softened in a way that made me want things I was not going to say in the middle of a restaurant.
We left after dessert and walked toward the River Walk.
The night had cooled. Not much, but enough that Sam moved a little closer when we reached the steps down to the water. I put my hand at the small of her back because the stone was uneven and because I wanted to touch her.
Both things were true.
She knew both things were true.
The river was crowded enough to feel alive but not so crowded that we had to fight for space. Tour boats moved under the bridges. Music drifted from somewhere behind us. Cypress branches leaned over the water, black against the restaurant lights.
Sam walked beside me without rushing.
No camera.
That kept hitting me.
She had chosen to see this with her own eyes.
“What?” she asked.
“No camera.”
She looked ahead. “Not tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because some things are allowed to happen without proof.”
I did not answer right away.
The river moved beside us, dark and shallow, carrying light in broken pieces.
“I like that,” I said.
“Me too. It is inconveniently healthy.”
We walked until the noise thinned, then came back up near the cathedral. The plaza was lit, people moving through it in loose groups, voices low under the bells and stone. Sam stopped at the edge of the square and looked around.
“This city gets under your skin,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“I thought I was passing through.”
I looked at her.
She kept her eyes on the cathedral.
“I told myself San Antonio was work. A contract. A season. Something temporary enough to survive.”
“And now?”
She breathed out.
“Now Bella knows my coffee order, Sandra can read my face, and your team keeps making room for me like I am not leaving.”
The words were quiet, but they changed the air around us.
I stepped closer.
“Are you?”
She turned then.
The light touched her face unevenly. One side shadowed. One side warm. She looked like the version of herself I had been trying to learn without taking more than she offered.
“No,” she said.
One word.
No decoration.
Enough.
My hand found hers.
“Good.”
Her gaze dropped to my mouth.
That was all it took.
I pulled her in slowly enough that she could stop me and close enough that I knew she would not.
The kiss started soft.
That lasted about two seconds.
Then her hand slid into my jacket, her fingers curling in the fabric at my side, and my body forgot every reasonable argument for restraint.
She kissed me in the middle of downtown San Antonio with people walking past and music somewhere behind us, and I let the whole world exist around it without trying to step out of frame.
When she pulled back, her eyes were dark.
“Take me home,” she said.
My hand tightened around hers.
“Yours or mine?”
“Mine.”
I nodded once.
We made it to the truck without running.
Barely.
The drive back to her apartment was quiet in a way dinner had not been. Her hand stayed on my thigh for most of it, light enough to be decent and steady enough to ruin me.
At a red light, I looked over.
She was already looking at me.
“Green,” she said.
I looked back at the road.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
I drove.
Fast enough to feel her hand tighten once on my leg.
Not fast enough to earn a ticket.
By the time we reached her building, every nerve in my body had gone tight and focused. She unlocked the door with hands that were not as steady as she wanted them to be. I noticed. She noticed me noticing.
“Do not look smug,” she said.
“I’m not.”
“You are internally smug.”
“I’m internally a lot of things right now.”
She opened the door and pulled me inside by the front of my shirt.
The apartment was dark except for the light over the stove. Her camera bag sat by the entry table. A pair of shoes waited by the couch. A book lay facedown on the armrest.
Her life, unarranged for company.
That mattered too.
She shut the door behind me.
For one second, neither of us moved.
The public part was over. The city had seen us and not taken anything.
Now it was just us.
Sam stepped close and took my hand.
Not hurried.
Not performing.
She turned it palm up and set her thumb in the groove worn there by years of stick tape.
The same place she had found before.
My breath changed.
She heard it.
Of course, she heard it.
“This still gets you,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Then she kissed the center of my palm.
I had been hit by men twice her size and stayed upright.
That nearly took my knees.
“Sam.”
“Bedroom,” she said.
There were times when the best thing a man could do was follow directions.
This was one of them.