Page 136 of Final Drive

She studies my face. “So was it a bad call?”

“Yes.” I look at her. “It was also the right one. Both can be true.”

“Would you do it again?”

“Yes.”

That answer comes too easily, but there’s no point lying about it.

Reese reaches out and gets a fistful of my shirt. She doesn’t pull me toward her. She just holds on, standing beside a boat trailer in front of nine crews with her chin up and my mark plain on her throat.

“Don’t tell the others.”

“Reese.”

“Not today. There’s a final tomorrow and eight men who need to sleep tonight. You tell them now, not one of them will.” Her grip tightens. “Tomorrow night. After the final. I’ll tell them myself.”

I don’t like it, but it’s reasonable. Worse, it’s the same thing I’d ask for in her place.

“Tomorrow night.”

“Thank you.”

We finish the trailer. Bennett takes us back to the hotel and gives the room a ten-minute talk about the final that mostly amounts to eat something and go to bed. At the door, he stops with his hands in his pockets.

“Whatever’s happened this weekend, that was the best semifinal I’ve ever had a crew row for me.”

Then he leaves before anybody can answer, which is probably why Bennett doesn’t give speeches either.

At four-fifty that afternoon, Reese’s phone rings.

We’re in the lobby. Half the crew is on the floor around a low table playing with a deck of cards Zane borrowed from the front desk. Tyler is reading the lane draw. I’m in a chair by the window with my legs stretched out in front of me, doing nothing, which I’ve only recently learned how to do.

Reese looks at her screen and stands. “I’ve got to take this.”

Nobody looks up except me.

She walks through the glass doors into the parking lot but doesn’t go far, stopping near a planter about fifteen feet from the building with her back to us. Through the glass, I watch her say three or four words and then listen. After a few seconds, she puts her free hand on top of the planter and leans some of her weight into it.

She asks one question, listens again, then says something I can’t hear and lowers the phone. For about twenty seconds she stays exactly where she is.

I’m out of my chair before I decide to be, but I only make it as far as the doors.

I can see her shoulders from here. They’re set exactly as they get in the ninety seconds before she walks into a room where somebody wants something from her. She’s putting her face on, and if I go outside, she’ll have to put it on faster.

So I go back to my chair.

A minute later, Reese comes through the doors looking fine. Better than fine. She takes the deck out of Zane’s hands and deals him out of a hand he was already losing. She tells Tyler the lane draw won’t post until eight and he should stop refreshing it. On her way past Cameron, she puts a hand on the back of his neck before dropping onto the floor with the rest of them.

“Everything all right?” Bo asks.

“Compliance. Paperwork on the registration. It’s handled.”

Nobody questions it.

I do, but not because there’s a tell. That’s the problem. It’s a complete sentence delivered flat, with no adjustment for the fact that eight men are listening. Until this morning, I’d only ever heard Reese lie to somebody who wanted to hurt her.

I sit in my chair and say nothing.