Page 88 of Her Rival

"It's over."

"For real."

"For real, Hartley."

She closed her eyes again.

"Okay," she said.

I held her. The sun came down on the valley. The day ended. The first one she'd ever lived in his absence. The first one she'd ever lived with the man who'd haunted her childhood physically removed from her city by an institution she was now, by virtue of her own choices, on the inside of.

It was a good day to end.

It was a good day to start.

I held her until the room went dark.

She did not let go of my hand.

21

DANI

I woke up at six-fourteen in a bed that wasn't mine and turned my head on the pillow and found him already awake.

He was on his back. His hands folded on his chest over the duvet. He was looking at the ceiling the way a man looks at the ceiling when he's been doing it a while.

"Morning," I said.

"Morning."

"How long have you been up."

"Forty minutes."

"Why didn't you get out of bed."

"Because I'd have woken you up. And the only thing I wanted to do for the first hour of this day was be in this bed with you, so I figured I'd do that for a while before I went and did other things."

I closed my eyes again.

It was the simplest sentence he'd ever said to me. No architecture in it. A man telling a woman why he'd been still for forty minutes, and the answer was you, and the answer was unadorned.

"What time's your morning skate," I said.

"Skipped it."

"What."

"I texted Coach last night. He said take the day. He said don't make me say it twice, Sturgill. So I'm not."

"Coach knows."

"Coach knows what he needs to know. The official version is I was at the arena during a security incident yesterday afternoon and he's giving me a day. The unofficial version Brynn handled with her mother last night, who handled it with Coach, who's decided he doesn't need to be in the loop on the unofficial version, which I appreciate about him."

"Okay."

"You can go back to sleep."