Before they leave, Susan makes Ryan lean close enough to fuss at him without effort.
“Go home, shower, eat something that isn’t coffee.”
“Dad can…”
“Your father will sit here and irritate me in shifts.”
Bill lifts a hand. “I have a system.”
“You have a face,” Susan says. “It hovers.”
I look at the floor to hide my smile.
Susan catches that too. “Don’t encourage him.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
“You would. I can tell.”
Ryan’s eyes find me over the bed. Tired, amused despite himself, too open for the amount of people in the room.
The look lands low in my body before I can convert it into anything professional.
The helicopter waits in the hospital lot.
No cameras. No PR. Just the pilot, the heat, and the thump of rotors turning the air physical.
Ryan comes out last, red-eyed and composed.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
On the flight back, he sits beside me instead of up front with the pilot.
The cabin is too small for everything we are trying not to say.
When the helicopter banks, his thigh presses against mine. Three seconds. Maybe four.
He shifts away.
I stare out the window and feel the absence like his hand had been there.
At the tarmac in San Antonio, he starts toward the lot without waiting.
I catch up halfway across the concrete. “Ryan.”
“Don’t.”
“I just…”
“Whatever you are about to say, don’t.” He turns, and the exhaustion in his face cuts deeper than anger would have. “You got what you came for. My family. My mother in a hospital bed. A nice human angle to make the profile feel expensive.”
“I’m not writing that.”
“Then what are you writing?”
“I don’t know yet.”
