Griffin.
I keep my face completely neutral and keep talking to Ryan and think —this is fine, this is manageable, I have been managing harder things than this since I was eight years old— and from across the table Jax’s expression is completely neutral.
His jaw is doing something.
Brody sees it. His eyes go wide and find the ceiling immediately. Liam does one slow look — Ryan to Jax, back — and says nothing because Liam never says anything and means everything. Aiden examines his bread roll with great interest.
Ryan puts his hand briefly on my arm, making a point.
Across the table Jax goes very still.
Not obvious still. The crease still. The kind of stillness that means he’s tracking everything: Ryan’s hand, my face, the phone buzzing in my pocket, the lie sitting behind my teeth.
Nothing gets past him unless he lets it. And right now, he is letting too much past. I know what it would cost him if he did.
I know exactly what it would cost him and the fact that he’s sitting there holding it together while I’m managing Griffin buzzing in my pocket and Ryan’s hand on my arm and the secret that’s been sitting in my chest since day one —
I reach for my water glass. Take a sip. Keep going.
Ryan asks for my card on the way out.
Professional. Perfectly reasonable. I give it to him.
Jax is three feet away.
He doesn’t look at us.
He doesn’t have to.
Outside.
Florida night. The dinner crowd thinning. Jax beside me, jacket on, keys in his hand, jaw set in a way I’ve learned to read.
“He was just being friendly,” I say.
“I know.”
“Ryan Holt is a sports agent. He talks to journalists. That’s literally—”
“I know, Nova.”
“You look like you want to hit someone.”
He doesn’t say anything.
My phone buzzes again.
He clocks it. Doesn’t look at my pocket. Looks at my face.
“Griffin,” he says.
I don’t answer. That’s an answer. Something moves through his expression. Everything going inward. Quiet and cold and certain. He walks to the edge of the parking lot. Stands there.
I watch his shoulders. The way they drop slightly when he’s processing. His right hand flexing — the ghost hand, the hand that carries everything.
The hand I called a disciplinary issue.
The hand I now know is a two-season ghost he’s been managing alone.
