Page 133 of Offside

“You’re right,” he said.

“I know.” I dropped my arms. “Ryan. I understand what you’re trying to do. You want to fix things Griffin before you come back to me. You don’t want to bring the mess with you. That’s—” I exhaled. “That’s very…you. And I love that about you…well, your intent, at least. But you don’t get to put me on pause while you do it.”

“I’m not putting you on pause⁠—”

“If you want us to be something,” I said, “you have to include me. And if you don’t⁠—”

“You know I do.” He said it immediately. No hesitation except he was holding himself back from coming closer, I could tell by the tic in his jaw and his stance, like he was ready to run to me. It broke my heart a little, but he needed to hear what I had to say.

I held his gaze. “I don’t know that. When you go quiet on me, I don’t know anything. That’s the problem.”

The last of his restraint gone, he crossed the room in two strides and stood in front of me, and I let him take my hands, and I looked up at him and saw it. The genuine cost of the past few days written in his expression, the exhaustion of carrying it, the misery of having caused pain he hadn’t meant to cause.

“I’m going to talk to Griffin,” he said. “This week. I’m not waiting for the right moment anymore. I’m going to make the moment. And I’m not going quiet on you again while I do it.”

I nodded. I believed him. I also knew, with the bone-deep certainty that came from several days of managing my own feelings alone, that an apology and a promise weren’t quite enough tonight.

“Stay,” he said. Low. His hands tightening on mine slightly.

I studied him for a long moment. I wanted to. That was the honest answer. I wanted to stay more than I wanted to make the point I was about to make, and I made it anyway because I’d spent enough of my life giving ground when I should have held it.

“I have an early morning,” I said.

His jaw tightened. “Maren⁠—”

“I need a little space to think.” I said it gently, because I meant it gently. This wasn’t punishment, it was truth. “I’m not going anywhere. I just need tonight.”

I could see him working through it. The urge to ask again, to make his case, to fix this the way he fixed everything. I watched him choose not to.

“Okay,” he said.

I reached up and put my hand against his jaw briefly, and he turned his face into it the way he sometimes did when he was tired, and the warmth of him under my palm met the complicated ache of wanting to stay and knowing I shouldn’t.

I dropped my hand and stepped back.

“Ryan.” I picked up my bag from the chair by the door. “I want this to be a relationship. A real one, where we’re both in it and both making decisions about it.” I met his eyes. “But if putting distance between us is what you need to fix things with Griffin, then you need to really think about what you want. Because I’m done not being included in decisions about my own relationships.”

His expression didn’t change, but his body changed. A stillness settling into him that meant he was taking it seriously. “Are you giving up on me?”

“No.” I said it without hesitation. “But I’m giving you the space you seem to need to figure out what you want.” I reached for the door handle.

“Maren.”

I turned.

“I want you.” His voice was low and certain. The plainness of it sat between us. I could see it, the way it sat in his chest, the way he held himself around it. “Solsken.”

I knew what it meant. I’d known for weeks. I felt it move through me now like something irreversible, hearing it said out loud, to my face, in this light, after this week. Sunshine.

I did the hard thing.

“Then take care of this,” I said quietly. “And we can talk then.”

I left before either of us could say anything else. Before I couldn’t contain my emotions any more. I had come to his apartment straight from work and I was tired.

I made it to my car. Sat in the parking garage with my hands on the wheel and the engine off and the keychain hanging from the ignition. The little enamel logo, The Ashby Letters, the thing he’d taken off his own keys and left on the counter for me and let myself feel all of it.

The tears came before I’d decided to let them, which was annoying, because I’d wanted to at least get out of his building first. Preferably, make it to my own couch. I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes and sat with the full weight of the evening. The treatment table with Griffin, Ryan standing in his living room in that careful composed stillness, solsken said out loud like he was begging me.