Chapter 23
Already There
West
Jane Cooper is holding my hand on a Cedar Falls sidewalk and I am acutely aware of every single point of contact.
Her palm. Her knuckles. The small callus at the base of her ring finger I didn't know existed until right now.
Grace is twenty feet ahead. She’s exactly how she sounded over the phone calls.
And she hasn’t stopped talking since we exited the arena. She’s now describing the overtime goal to a woman she met a few minutes ago whom I’m pretty sure was also there.
The woman is nodding enthusiastically. She is absolutely on board with this.
Jane watches her sister. Something in her expression is soft and fractured at the same time—the particular look of someone watching a person they love step into their own future and feeling the exact weight of what that means.
I tighten my hand around hers.
She looks at me. Her eyes are bright, and she squeezes back.
"So," I say.
"So," she says.
"You're in Cedar Falls."
"You're in Cedar Falls."
"I was here first."
She tips her head sideways. The skeptical angle. The one I've been cataloguing for three weeks from photographs on my phone at eleven at night like a man with no remaining dignity. "You were here earlier by approximately twelve hours. That's not a flag-planting moment."
"It absolutely is."
"It really isn't."
Grace spins to face us, walking backward, entirely unbothered by the physics of doing this on an unfamiliar sidewalk at eight-twenty in the morning. "Are we going to Mane Street Bistro or are we discussing territorial claims for the next forty-five minutes? Because I require eggs."
"You require eggs," I say.
"Desperately. My body is running on patriotism and a granola bar from the vending machine at the arena entrance. I need protein. I need it now."
Jane looks at me. "Is the bistro good?"
"The windows were fogged last night."
"That's your metric? Fogged windows?"
"Fogged windows mean people are inside. People inside means the food is worth staying for." I pause. "Or the heating system is catastrophically broken. But I'm optimistic."
Grace points at me. "I like him. He reasons correctly."
She turns back around and continues her narrative to the woman who is now, apparently, named Karla, who may or may not run the town's rumor mill and is very invested in both the gold medal play-by-play and whatever is happening between Jane and me.
Jane watches Grace for a moment.
"She's going to be okay here," I say. Not a question.
"I know." Jane's voice is quiet. Certain. The kind of certain that has some sadness tucked underneath it. "That's the part that keeps surprising me."
"Surprises you that she's ready?"
"Surprises me that I am."
I don't answer that. It doesn't need one. I just hold her hand and walk.
Mane Street Bistro sits maybe eighty people.
Every single one of those seats is occupied.
Grace assesses this with the focused energy of a hungry woman who is not above collateral damage. "There are four people almost done at that table by the window."
"Grace, we can't just—"
"I'm not doing anything. I'm observing. Tactically."
A server cuts through the crowd with the practiced urgency of someone who has handled a gold-medal-watch-party breakfast rush before.
She's in her sixties, red apron, reading glasses on a chain, running a controlled emergency.
She spots us. Points.
"Two?" She is looking at me.
"Three."
She looks at Jane. Looks at me. Her expression shifts approximately two degrees in a direction I can't fully read. Then she turns and leads us through the dining room before I can clarify anything.
We follow.
She deposits us at a corner table—not the window seats Grace identified, but better. A quieter corner with good sightlines, making private conversation possible.
She hands out laminated menus without ceremony. "Welcome to Mane Street Bistro, where you can come hungry as a horse.” She winks at Grace. “Coffee?"
"Yes," all three of us say simultaneously.
The menus are single-page. Everything on them sounds like it was made from scratch before five this morning by someone who takes food seriously.
Grace reads hers with the focus of a woman completing a finals exam. "What's mountain hash?"
"I'm guessing potatoes," Jane says.
"With what?"
"Unclear. Possibly elk. Possibly standard ingredients, just branded with geographical confidence."
"I'm getting it."
"Obviously."
I watch Jane watch Grace and feel something loosen in my chest that has been wound tight for three weeks.
This. This specific texture—the banter, the sideways attention, the way she pays attention to everyone around her without performing the attention.
It was real on the island. It's real here. It was never the island.
The coffee arrives. Real coffee—dark roast, wide mugs, the kind of temperature that means it was brewed recently.
Jane wraps both hands around her mug. Closes her eyes for one second.
"Good?" I ask.
"Aggressively good." She opens her eyes. "Why is everything here so good?"
"Fogged windows."
Grace eats pancakes like she's training for something.
She attacks them—fork in fist, syrup applied with the generous hand of a woman who screamed for two straight hours and has earned every carbohydrate on that plate.
She's still wearing the face paint. Red and blue stripes, slightly smeared now, one cheek brighter than the other.
She also hasn't stopped looking between me and Jane with the subtle restraint of someone actively not commenting on a wildfire.
Jane sits across from me. Her coffee is between both hands. She hasn't taken a sip in four minutes.
I know this because I’ve looked at nothing else.
Twenty-one days. That's how long it's been since I had her in the same room. Since the casita. Since Anguilla. Since I watched her walk through an airport terminal and disappear into the plane—and felt something in my chest rearrange itself permanently.
It feels surreal. She’s now here. In Cedar Falls. Her hair still slightly wild from the wind outside, and the February light through the restaurant window hitting the side of her face in a way that makes basic cognitive function unreasonable.
"You're staring," Jane says, without looking up.
"I'm looking at you. There's a difference."
"The difference being?"
"Staring implies I'm going to stop."
Her eyes lift. The corner of her mouth moves—barely, the kind of almost-smile that takes her entire face from beautiful to devastating.
Grace, between bites. "This is so uncomfortable for me, just so you both know."
"Then eat faster," I say.
"I've been trying, can’t you tell?"
"You've been on those pancakes for six minutes."
"Because I'm also trying to savor them. Some of us appreciate things, West."
Jane hides her mouth behind her coffee cup. I catch the laugh anyway. It lands in my chest like a match strike.
The server refills my coffee. I don't taste it, My sensory processing has been permanently hijacked by the woman in the green coat who keeps not looking at me while being completely aware that I'm looking at her.
She knows.
She knows and she's letting me suffer.
Jane Cooper. Twenty-six. Professional fixer. The woman who blew up a billionaire wedding in eight days, dismantled my celibacy in less time, and is currently torturing me with the way she wraps both hands around a coffee mug.
I want to put my mouth on the inside of her wrist.
I want to ask her to say my name in the voice she uses at two in the morning on the phone when she thinks I can't tell she's been thinking about me.
Instead, I'm sitting in a bistro eating eggs I can't taste.
The mountain hash arrives for all three of us—without drama, without presentation, just the thing itself placed in front of you with the implicit understanding that it will be excellent and you should eat it.
It is excellent.
Grace makes a sound after the first bite of mountain hash that causes the couple at the adjacent table to look over. She doesn't notice or doesn't care.
"This town," she says, with the reverence of a religious conversion.
"Too much?" Jane asks.
"Not enough." Grace points her fork. "I want to eat here every day."
"You've been here less than twenty four hours."
"Time is irrelevant when the food is this good." She takes another bite. Looks at me. "So. West, tell me about the coaching."
I glance at Jane. She's watching me with the neutral expression she deploys when she's actually listening hardest—the one that gives nothing away and takes everything in.
"AHL affiliate," I say. "Cedar Falls Mustangs. The team doesn't formally exist yet. Arena's new. Starting from scratch. That's it."
Jane and Grace both tilt their heads at the same moment, reminding me of those cat and puppy videos on social media. The Cooper-sisters gesture. Identical on both of them.
My knee presses a little harder against Jane’s under the table.
Grace waves her fork. "Well… my nursing program, the program director said the simulation lab runs twenty-four-seven. Twenty-four-seven, Jane. Now, that's a lifestyle."
"You mentioned that."
“Also, the clinical housing has mountain views."
"You mentioned that too."
"I'm mentioning it again because I’ve never seen them up close like these before."
Jane gives me a look that means help me and I adore her in equal measure.
I hold her gaze. Don't look away.
Something shifts between us. Not dramatic. Molecular. The kind of adjustment that happens when two people who have been orbiting at a distance finally share atmosphere.
"The penthouse at Skyridge has a view of those mountains, Jane." I say. "You should see them up close as well."
I deliver this with a straight face.
Jane's coffee cup freezes halfway to her mouth.
Grace makes a sound like she's inhaled her orange juice.
The couple two tables over looks up from their omelets.
“You have mountain views worth seeing from your penthouse?”
"That's what I said."
Her eyes are doing something I'm going to need a long time to recover from. Equal parts I see exactly what you're doing and keep going.