Page 206 of Wild Card 13

“It was already fairly mangled before you arrived.”

His hand came out of his coat pocket and rubbed once over the back of his neck, a familiar motion that pulled at something old inme. Teenage Ty in my father’s kitchen, pretending not to be nervous before a math quiz. Ty beside Betsy, snow in his hair, trying to ask a serious question and hating that seriousness made him visible. “I was going to go home,” he said.

“You mentioned that.”

“And then I saw your light.”

“I also believe we covered that.”

He huffed a quiet laugh. “You are really making me work for this.”

“You have not identified what this is.”

“Fair.” Ty took a breath. “Wanna call it and have a drink by a lake?”

For a second, I only stared at him.

The sentence was casual enough that it should not have landed with any weight at all. A drink. A lake. A late night after a win. It could have been nothing. It could have been the kind of invitation he gave everyone, easy and loose and backed by the assumption that the world usually bent toward him.

But his voice was not loose.

And I knew exactly which lake he meant.

The one outside Northbend. The house I had never seen. The private, quiet place people mentioned in passing when talking about summer barbecues or small team gatherings.

My chest tightened. “That sounds dangerously close to going home with you.”

His face changed. “It’s not the same ask.”

My throat worked. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

“A drink?” he asked.

I gave him a look.

He lowered his gaze for half a second, then lifted it back to mine. “I’m only asking a friend to have a drink for old times’ sake.”

The word friend did something strange in the room. Made it safer and more painful at once.

His smile faded again. “You can say no.”

I looked away from him and down at my desk. The access audit still waited. Charlotte’s email sat tucked into the folder where it belonged. The lo mein had gone cold. My father had gone home.Sarah had gone home. Naomi had locked up Paper Lantern and told me to stop using work as a bunker.

Dottie lifted her head from her bed, watching both of us with the solemn intensity of a dog who had chosen a side and was not above making it known.

“This is a terrible idea.”

“Maybe.”

I looked back at him. He simply stood there, tired and hopeful and trying not to make either thing my responsibility.

The old Ty would have charmed. The old Ty would have filled the silence until I laughed or snapped or both. The old Ty would have made saying yes feel inevitable and saying no feel like I had ruined the fun.

This Ty waited.

That was what undid me.

My hand moved before I had fully agreed with it, reaching for the lid of my laptop. I closed it slowly. The screen went dark, and my reflection vanished with it.