Page 58 of The Grumpy Defenseman

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

The late-afternoon light moved across the yard in warm bands. I held my coffee in both hands, even though it was too hot and I should have set it down.

“Talk,” Bella said.

“About what?”

She gave me the look. The one that had probably made grown men confess to crimes they had not committed just to make it stop.

“Fine.” I exhaled. “Silas brought us both into his office. A reporter called about me and Evan. Someone saw us at Paramour. The trade stuff is public. The whole thing is converging.”

“Converging,” Bella repeated. “That is a very diplomatic word for everything is happening at once and I am processing it through denial and caffeine.”

“I’m not in denial.”

“You’re in something. Let’s figure out what.”

She took my coffee out of my hands, set it on the step between us, and turned toward me with the focused calm of a woman about to dismantle every defense I had built.

“First question,” she said. “Do you want him?”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

“That’s not…”

“Yes or no. Do you want him?”

The directness of it hit like a flashbulb, impossible to look away from.

“Yes,” I said.

The word came out quieter than I intended.

“Good. That’s settled. Now the harder question: what are you going to do with that information?”

“I don’t know. There’s the trade and Silas’s concerns. There’s the reporter. There’s the fact that he still owes me more than a hallway conversation.”

“Correct.” Bella pointed at me. “Do not do his work for him. I cannot emphasize this enough. If he wants access to you, he can bring the truth with both hands and no defensive nonsense.”

“That’s oddly specific.”

“I know men. I know avoidance. I know you. The Venn diagram is irritating.”

I stared at her. She stared back. Neither of us blinked, because blinking was a concession in whatever this was.

“My problem,” I said slowly, “is that I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of being the one who moves first. Of putting myself out there with someone who might leave.” I swallowed. “Of trusting someone and having it cost me.”

Bella was quiet for a moment. The family noise filled the space between us: a child yelling goal, Mack objecting on procedural grounds, Mamá laughing from somewhere inside the house.

“I’m going to say something,” Bella said, “and you’re going to listen without deflecting, because I know you and deflecting is your superpower and I’m not allowing it right now.”

This is going to hurt.

“I noticed you the second you walked into my office,” Bella said. “You were not loud or trying. You moved like someone who knew exactly who she was. That’s rare, Sam. People feel it. I felt it. And I would bet everything I own that he felt it too.”