I look at him fully. “I am.”
And this time there’s no correction needed.
22
RAFE
March is supposedto mean thawing, which is absolute bullshit. In Minneapolis, it mostly means everything looks softer while still being cold enough to hurt.
Snowbanks shrink at the edges of sidewalks. Ice turns to gray slush. The air smells faintly of meltwater and salt. It’s the kind of transition that makes you think something is easing up, even when the cold is still buried underneath.
We’re a little over a week from our anniversary.
That thought sits warm in my chest most mornings. The date used to belong only to memory. To something we guarded like contraband. Now it’s real, visible, and public knowledge.
And apparently so is she.
Vinny doesn’t dramatize things. That’s one of the reasons I trust him. When he speaks, it’s because something requires attention, not reaction.
He steps into Ollie’s kitchen just after ten in the morning while Ollie is finishing a protein shake and checking something on his tablet. Practice is in two hours. He moves differently these days; he’s not tense or brittle. He seems centered, more so than I’ve ever seen in person before. His shoulders sit where they’resupposed to. His breathing is even. I watch him more than I mean to, like I’m still calibrating this version of him.
“There’s been activity,” Vinny says calmly.
He doesn’t have to clarify who. This shit has been bubbling over the past three weeks.
Ollie looks up first. “Her?”
Vinny nods once. “She’s been attempting contact again.”
A pulse of heat starts at the base of my spine. My anger trying to surface. For now, it’s controlled. But fuck, I’m over this bullshit.
“What kind of contact?” I ask.
“Voicemails to Ollie’s foundation’s public line. Direct messages from multiple burner accounts. She attempted to tag your studio location on socials yesterday. This morning, she was seen near the outer perimeter of the practice facility.”
The air shifts.
She’s here, in Minneapolis?
Ollie sets his tablet down slowly. “Near the facility?”
“Yes.”
I step forward without thinking. “How near?”
“Across the street. She didn’t cross barricades. She was escorted away when she lingered.”
Escorted away.I barely contain my scoff. What, like it’s a minor inconvenience?
I grind my teeth. “She’s under a restraining order.”
“She is,” Vinny confirms. “We’re documenting every violation.”
Ollie’s fingers flex once against the edge of the counter before settling flat. There’s no visible panic. No flicker of that faraway look he used to get when something felt too big and he needed to outrun it. What settles over him instead is focus. Intent. The kind he wears in the fourth quarter.
“She doesn’t get to orbit us,” he says quietly.
Us.
