Jace is mid-story, standing because of course he is, one foot on a chair, telling a blow-by-blow of the last ten seconds of Game Six for the twentieth time.
“…and I swear to God, I look over and Zed’s just staring at this guy like he’s picking a cut of meat. I bet the bastard peed a little.”
Laughter ripples down the table.
Zed is at the far end, nearest the grill. He doesn’t smile, but there’s a tiny tick at the corner of his mouth that, on him, qualifies as hysterical.
Jess slips into the empty chair beside mine and I pull her closer automatically, my hand finding the bare strip of her thigh under the table.
She leans into the touch with a smile and sets her plate down.
Our plates are a mess of color. Grilled vegetables, some kind of salad, three different things Zed put over fire that look damn good. Mine is mostly protein, because playoffs might be over but my body doesn’t know that yet.
“Here,” she says, spearing something off her plate I definitely did not put on mine. “Open.”
“What’s this?” I give her a flat look.
“Just try it.”
I do what she says, because apparently that’s my thing now, and she slides the fork between my teeth. Something charred and smoky and sweet hits my tongue.
It’s good.
“See?” she says, smug. “Carbs won’t kill you.”
“Jury’s still out,” I say around the bite, but my free hand squeezes her thigh in thanks.
She grins, eyes bright in the string lights we threw up a few nights ago when the Cup first came home.
She’s different now. Same laugh. Same stubborn mouth. Same need to do everything herself. But there’s more of her now. I could say the same about myself.
Her phone’s been buzzing nonstop all week. Sometimes she checks it, sometimes she doesn’t. When she does, it’s names I recognize. Houses. Magazines. Brands. They want her as a junior designer, as head of a capsule, as the name on a collaboration. Her runway lit a match under the right asses and now everyone’s scrambling to pretend they’ve always believed in her.
She did that.
I still haven’t told her about what I did. She doesn’t know I wired money to wipe out her parents’ debt. It took days to convince them to let me help, and they eventually relented with promises to pay me back, even though I told them not to worry about it.
I don’t like secrets. Not after all the years of smiling for cameras and saying things I didn’t mean to save other people’s faces.
But some secrets are better left as such.
Same as the show. She still thinks it was a last-minute miracle—this unheard-of guest designer slot at a major event, the director “just happening” to have space, the PR people “just happening” to see her work and put her on the list.
Truth is, I called in favors. Pulled strings I hadn’t earned in rooms she’d been trying to get into for years. Put my weight behind a list of names and made sure hers didn’t get lost.
In the end, I wasn’t the reason she got the offer. Her talent was. I just made them notice it.
So yeah, I’ll keep that part to myself. I don’t want to be the ghost behind her every success. I want her tostand in front of it and know, with all that bone-deep certainty she carries, that she earned it.
Her head tips onto my shoulder for a second. Her hand finds mine under the table and laces our fingers together.
“Penny for your thoughts,” she murmurs.
“You can’t afford them,” I say.
She snorts.
I look down at her—the curve of her mouth, the tired happiness in her eyes—and my chest aches again. She woke something in me I didn’t know was sleeping. Not the need to win; that’s always been there. The need to… share it.
