Page 91 of Final Drive

“I’m aware.” I get a breath in. “It’s a normal autonomic response to bond formation. There’s literature.”

“Tyler.”

“I know.” I put my face against her neck. “Give me a second.”

She gives me several.

Later, when the knot has gone down and she’s asleep with the bitten wrist tucked under her chin, I reach across her and wake the monitor.

The spreadsheet is where I left it. Column E, still titled Actionable, still empty.

I look at it until my eyes ache. I don’t type anything into it. I put my hand back down and close my eyes. Nothing in me objects, and that hasn’t been true in weeks.

That holds until 5:40, when my phone lights up on the desk and won’t stop.

Six missed calls. All Gray.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Reese

Iwake up in Tyler’s bed with his hand closed around my bitten wrist and the front door banging open downstairs.

The clock on his desk says 5:52. Tyler is already sitting up, phone in his other hand, and he doesn’t have his glasses on.

“He’s home,” he says.

By the time I get down the stairs in Tyler’s shirt, most of the house is in the kitchen. Bo has coffee going. Jackson is standing at the counter with his arms crossed. Beckett is on a barstool in yesterday’s clothes, and I don’t think he ever came in off the porch.

Gray is in the doorway in the suit he left in.

He hasn’t been to bed. The tie is pulled loose, there’s a coffee stain on the cuff, and he’s carrying his keys in his fist instead of his pocket.

“Where were you,” I say.

“Home.” He corrects it. “The house.”

“All night.”

“Most of it. I sat in the car in the drive after.” He sets his keys on the counter and puts both hands flat on either side of them. “Harrison called the athletic department yesterday afternoon. Before we were out of the hearing.”

Bo turns the burner off.

“He’s been on the phone with the development office since the start of the week,” Gray says. “Three generations of Lockwoods on that boathouse. He’s put it to them plainly that the family’s continued support depends on how the department handles what he’s calling a conduct problem in the men’s program.”

“He’s threatening the money,” Tyler says from the stairs.

“Nothing that direct. He’s discussing it with them. That’s the entire skill.” Gray still hasn’t looked at me. “And then he told them he was concerned, as an alumnus and a parent, that a member of the men’s roster may have competed under a designation registration that doesn’t reflect her status.”

The kitchen goes very quiet.

“He named me,” I say.

“He didn’t have to. There’s one woman on the roster.”

Zane comes in from the hall and stops when he reads the room.

“So we’ve been here before,” Bo says.