Page 125 of Offside

There it was, next to the coffee maker. A key on a small enamel keychain. A tiny rendering of The Ashby Letters cover art, the moonlit tower I’d recognize anywhere, the same image on the spine of the book sitting on his shelf in the other room. He hadn’t gone out and bought something. He’d taken it off his own keys.

I picked it up and held it in my palm for a moment.

I stood in his kitchen in his T-shirt and the love I’d identified yesterday morning settled into something quieter and certain.

I wrapped my fingers around it, holding it tight in my palm.

CHAPTER 23

RYAN

I’d been planning to talk to Griffin after Friday’s practice. Well, that was the new plan at least.

I had it mapped out. Catch him before he got to his car, ask if he had twenty minutes, find somewhere quiet. Not the locker room, too many ears. Not a bar, too many exits. Somewhere Griffin would have to sit still and hear me out before deciding how to feel about it. I’d been running the opening sentence in my head all morning.

There’s something I need to tell you, and I should have told you a long time ago.

Clean. Direct. No preamble.

I never got the chance. Griffin had a goalie practice, which wasn’t unusual. I told myself I’d find another moment over the weekend.

It was Friday evening, a slow Phoenix night that came with low light and the smell of creosote drifting in through the cracked window above the kitchen sink. Maren had shown up around six with grocery bags and an opinion about what I had in my refrigerator, which was apparently not enough, and we’d been in the kitchen together for the better part of an hour. She was at the stove managing a pan sauce that had been making the apartment smell extraordinary, and I was behind her at the counter breaking down vegetables for a salad. You’re chopping like you’re filing paperwork, Ryan, just do it. The windows were going gold with the last of the evening light and there were two glasses of wine on the counter and the whole thing was so easy it almost didn’t feel real.

I had the knife in my hand when the knock came.

He knocked three times, the middle one harder than the others.

I knew the knock and my stomach turned.

I felt it then. Not panic, but the cold clarity of time running out. I turned to Maren. She’d gone still at the stove, spatula in hand, already reading my face.

“Griffin?” she asked quietly.

“Yeah.”

A beat. We took in the kitchen together. The wine glasses, the two plates already set out, the jacket she’d draped over the back of my couch when she’d arrived. The whole evening arranged like evidence.

I set the knife down and went to the door.

Griffin stood in the hallway in sweats and a Sidewinders cap, a six-pack of beer tucked under one arm, his phone in his other hand. His knee was wrapped. He’d had a rough couple of days and come here for company. It was written in every line of him and I felt like an even bigger piece of shit knowing what was about to happen.

“Hey,” he said. Easy. Unsuspecting. “Thought I’d see if you wanted to watch the⁠—”

He stopped.

His eyes moved past me into the apartment. The kitchen behind me. Two wine glasses on the counter, both used. Two plates set out. Maren at the stove, her hair loose, my Sidewinders training shirt on her because she’d changed out of her own after a sauce splatter, a dish towel over her shoulder. She’d gone still with the spatula in her hand, facing her brother.

Griffin’s gaze moved over the room as he assessed his surroundings. Her, the shirt, the wine, me, and came back to my face.

The easy expression was gone.

He exhaled once, slow and controlled, through his nose. The silence stretched long enough I registered the ticking of the clock on the wall.

“How long.”

It wasn’t a question. It was a goalie reading a play. Flat, precise, the calculation already done and just needing the final number confirmed.

“Griff, let me—” I started.