Rowan held his gaze for a second longer than usual.
“I am.”
Then she turned.
And walked inside.
Not away.
Just forward.
Sixty One
EPILOGUE
THREE MONTHS AFTER NYC
Mason didn’t call it “after NYC.”
He just called it “normal again,” even though it wasn’t.
Because normal didn’t usually feel like something that had been rebuilt.
It felt like something that had never been broken in the first place.
This wasn’t that.
Practice was quieter now, but not easier.
Coach had stopped referencing New York directly, but everyone still moved like it was inside the room with them.
Like something had changed shape and no one wanted to admit what it was.
Luca noticed it first.
“You’re still not fully here,” he said one day after drills.
Mason wiped his face with a towel. “I am.”
Luca raised an eyebrow.
“That’s not what I meant.”
Mason didn’t respond.
Because he knew exactly what Luca meant.
He just didn’t know how to fix it.
Rowan noticed it too.
But for her, it didn’t look like absence.
It looked like persistence.
Because Mason wasn’t gone from her thoughts in the way distance usually makes someone fade.
He stayed.
