19. Ryan #3
“I’m not angry.” She tilted her face up toward me.
Her eyes were steady in the low light. Tired, maybe, and very direct.
“I really just wanted you to know what it was like. My mom asking me if I thought you looked tired in the third period, and me having to answer like I didn’t already know which shoulder was bothering you and exactly how many minutes you’d logged.
Asking me like I was just Griffin’s sister and the team trainer sitting on her couch watching a game.
” She paused. “And I am Griffin’s sister.
That’s the thing. I’m always going to be Griffin’s sister.
But I want to be more. I want to be…yours too.
Out loud. I want to walk into a room with you and not perform like we’re strangers.
I want both things and I can’t have them like this. ”
I was quiet for a moment. Outside the desert held its two-in-the-morning silence. I watched the ceiling fan turn. This was what I wanted all along. For her to be mine. Out loud.
“How much longer can you do it,” I said. Not a question. I’d already heard the answer in the shape of what she’d said. I was asking because she deserved to have it asked.
“Not much.”
I nodded. I’d known that. I’d known it in Calgary and in Vancouver and in every hotel room where I’d lain awake thinking about this exact conversation and what it meant I had to do.
I would do it gladly, and the more I thought about it, and the more time that passed with our secret strong, and our feelings for each other even stronger, the worse this would be when I talked to her brother.
I took a deep breath. “I want to be clear about something.” I kept my voice even.
“I never wanted this to be a secret. Not from the start. Hiding you—hiding what this is—is not something I chose because I wanted to. I chose it because Griffin deserved to hear it from me first. But don’t mistake that for me being fine with it.
I have not been fine with it.” A pause. “This was always going to be real. You were always going to be mine out in the open, in front of everyone. I just needed to do it right.”
“You mean that?” she asked, sitting up.
“Of course I mean it. We can be done hiding.” I held her stare and reached up to cup her jaw in my hand.
“You don’t have to sit on that couch and be half of who you are.
You don’t have to lie, Maren. I’d take an ad out in the Arizona Republic proclaiming my feelings for you if you’d let me.
I carry the burden too. I only kept this a secret because that’s what you wanted. I would do anything to protect you.”
She studied me. Careful measurement. I let her look. I had nothing to hide from her. I hadn’t had anything to hide from her in a long time.
Whatever she found was enough.
“Okay,” she said with a soft smile. “We’ll figure out how to do it, together.”
She laid her head back down on my chest.
I kept my hand moving through her hair. She believed me. I could feel it in the way she’d relaxed against me, the tension leaving her shoulders all at once, her body going loose and easy against my chest.
I thought about how the Griffin conversation might go.
I’d been running versions of it like I was running plays.
Different openings, different tones, the one where Griffin listened and the one where he didn’t.
None of them were easy. All of them were necessary.
The only version that wasn’t an option was the one where I kept waiting for a better moment, because the better moment wasn’t coming and Maren Callahan had told me quietly and without ultimatum that she was running out of patience for the one I was in.
“Ryan,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Stop thinking so loud.”
I exhaled through my nose. “I’m not—”
“You go quiet but it’s not quiet.” She pressed her palm flat against my chest. “I can feel you thinking.”
In the low lamplight she was settled. That’s the word I kept landing on for this version of her, the one she showed when she’d stopped being careful about how she felt.
I’d been watching her manage and measure and protect herself since September.
I knew how rare this version of her was, and how much she was choosing to let it show, and that I was the only person she showed it to.
It was a gift, and I was not going to be careless with it.
“After the holidays,” I said. “First week of January. I’ll talk to Griffin. It’s time.”
“Thank you.” She turned her face briefly into my shoulder. “You don’t have to rush. I just thought it was time I told you how it felt. How I felt.”
“I know how it felt,” I said. “I share the ice with Griffin. And the plane. And everything…except this.”
She made a small sound of agreement.
I pressed my lips to her hair, a pit forming in my stomach that I’d done something to make her feel bad. I’d rather die than hurt her.
“I’d never do anything to make you feel less than, Maren. You know that, right?”
She pressed up onto her elbow again, meeting my concerned stare, searching my eyes.
“I know you wouldn’t.” She ran her hand down the side of my cheek, her thumb caressing my jaw. Her touch gave me the chills, and I was certain I’d never tire of being with her. It was impossible. I loved her.
I sat up and kissed her, slowly, trying to show her how I felt. But it was going to take more than a post coital kiss in the early morning hours to prove we were end game, and I’d do anything to show her.
After the kiss broke, she resettled, her hand finding my ribs. I lay in the dark and thought about Griffin, and about the conversation coming, and how I had something I needed to tell Maren too.