Page 257 of Across His Line

Not January.

Not June.

Not her.

She’s right here.

Afterward, she lies on her stomach with her chin on my chest, and taps her finger on my sternum, like she’s counting something.

“You’re going to figure it out,” she says.

I don’t say anything. I put my hand on the back of her head and leave it there.

She leaves at three for a thing with Kylie. She gets dressed in about four minutes and kisses me on the forehead on her way out the door.

Kennebeck comes in an hour later from the weight room with his bag over his shoulder. He puts his things down.

“Kylie said she’s watching a movie with Tessa.”

I don’t know his point. I’m reading the paper that Berwyn gave me.

“And?” I say, looking back at the paper.

He stops in the doorway. “Let’s go up to Koda’s.”

“No.”

Nash doesn’t say anything.

I turn back to the paper. Three names. Three logos I’ve known since I was eleven.

This was supposed to be easy. Get drafted. Go. That was it. The whole plan. I’d go wherever they sent me, play, and never look back at anything because there wasn’t anything to look back at. Just a house at the top of a hill, and a man at the head of a table telling me where to sit.

Now I look at the paper in my hand and go has things attached to it. The two on my line. Corvin. Three doors down.

I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t try. I fold the paper in half and put it in my desk drawer, under the accounting book, and close the drawer.

Two hours later, my phone buzzes on the comforter.

Tessa: So, we’re watching a movie about people with cancer, and they’re in love, and I’m already crying. This is your fault.

I look at it.

Me: How is it my fault?

Tessa: I’m so emotional after what you showed me today.

I grin at my phone like an idiot.

35

The Custody Schedule

Tessa

The email comes on a Friday in January while Rafe is four hundred miles away at a game.

I’m on my bed with my laptop open to two windows. One is a spreadsheet of everything I’ve listed in the last week, color-coded by how long it’s been sitting there. The other is the live stats page for the game, which I’ve been refreshing every ninety seconds since seven o’clock because it’s a road game in New Hampshire and nobody streams it, and the stats page is the only way to know anything. It’s a list of numbers that updates when somebody in a press box somewhere remembers to hit a button.