Page 31

My therapist would have so much to say about the word fine.

Then he moves. Gets up without a word, completely unselfconscious about being naked in a way I find both unfair and extremely useful, and pads into the bathroom. I hear the water run. He comes back with a warm washcloth and takes care of me with the same focused, unhurried attention he brings to everything he does for me in this bed, and I lie there and let him, because I’ve been getting better at letting him, and also because I’m genuinely wrecked and my bones have left the building.

He drops the washcloth, comes back to bed, pulls me into his side. Quiet for a moment. And then:

“We didn’t use a condom.”

Not a question. Not an accusation. Just the fact, set down between us the way he sets down everything true — plain, no decoration, taking up exactly the space it needs and no more.

I’ve already done the full internal accounting on this. I know. I’ve known since roughly thirty seconds after, lying here running the numbers while he was still breathing against my hair. But there’s something about him being the one to say it — the man who doesn’t look away from the hard thing, who’d rather say the uncomfortable sentence than let it sit and rot — that loosens something in my chest I didn’t know was wound up.

“I’m on the pill,” I tell him. Even. Certain. “Have been since I was sixteen. We’re okay.”

I feel the breath go out of him. Not dramatic — just the specific release of a held thing let go. His arm tightens around me by a fraction.

“Okay,” he says.

“Okay,” I agree.

Neither of us says the other part. The part that isn’t about the pill at all — the part that’s about the condom niether of us reached for, the careful neither of us was, the fact that the arrangement was supposed to be so many things and apparently forgot to be that one. We don’t say it. We’re very good at not saying things.

But he knew. He noticed. He named it before I had to, and I didn’t have to carry it alone, and that is — that’s a thing.

“For the record,” I say, when I can talk, “Beau absolutely knows.”

Theo makes a sound that’s almost a laugh. “Yeah.”

“Like, a hundred percent. He gave me a look at dinner.”

“I know which look.”

“He gave me the whole —” I do an impression of Beau’s silent, meaningful expression, tilting my chin and raising both brows slightly.

Theo turns his head and looks at my impression and actually laughs, a real one, short and low, surprised out of him, and the sound of it does something to me I have no business letting it do.

“That’s accurate,” he says.

“He’s not going to say anything.”

“No. Beau doesn’t —” A beat. “He lets people get there.”

“Smart man.”

“Annoyingly.”

I settle into his side, and he pulls me in, and we’re doing the thing we’re technically not supposed to do, which is lie here like two people who don’t have a list of rules about exactly this. And I know I should care about that but I just…don’t. Not right now, anyway.

“Tell me about the scout.”

I say it soft, into the dark, like if I’m quiet enough it won’t count as asking. His arm tightens a fraction around me, the tell that something landed.

“Coach told me third period. Line change.” A beat. “Bruins.”

The word sits in the air between us, and I let it sit, because I’ve learned that Theo fills silences when he’s ready and not before, and filling them for him just makes him lock up tighter.

“Your team,” I say finally.

“Since I was seven.” Another beat, and then something comes loose in him — I feel it happen, the same way I felt it happen the first time his dad slipped out mid-argument — like a drawer he’s opening on purpose because he’s decided to, not because he lost control of it. “My mom took me to the Garden for my birthday. We couldn’t really afford it. She saved up. And I watched the whole game, and I decided right there — that was the door. Not just the NHL. The Bruins, specifically. Boston. Getting back to Boston, getting her into a bigger house, getting her off her feet.” A pause. “She’s an ER nurse. She’s been on her feet for thirty years so I could —” He stops. Edits. “So we could have options.”