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His eyes come back to mine, and I have to fight the urge to look away because that is exactly what I did. For one terrible second in Dad’s office, I reduced the man who held me while I slept to someone I’d never seen before.

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“I know.”

“You don’t sound like you know.”

He lets out a breath through his nose. “What do you want me to say, Calliope?”

I flinch at the use of my name again because it makes this feel more real than anything else has. “I don’t know.”

“Well, that makes two of us.”

The tired edge in his voice strips away whatever explanation I was still trying to piece together. I drop my gaze, my attention catching on the bare space between the rings already covering my fingers. Mom’s ring. The reason I came looking for him in the first place presses through everything else so suddenly that my thumb brushes over the empty place on instinct.

“I left something at your house.”

When I look up again, some of the tension has left Jubal’s shoulders.

“I know.”

He answers so quickly that it takes me a second to understand what he’s saying. I’ve spent days imagining Mom’s ring sitting abandoned on a nightstand. Even after seeing Jubal in Dad’s office, some part of me still hadn’t let myself believe the solution could be this simple.

“You found it?”

Instead of answering immediately, Jubal reaches for the collar of his shirt. I watch his fingers disappear beneath the fabric without understanding why until he catches hold of something and pulls. A thin chain slides into view first, glinting briefly beneath the fluorescent lights, and then the small amethyst stone appears against the center of his chest.

For a brief moment, I’m back in my apartment in Houston with my purse dumped across the bed and the velvet pouch turned inside out in my shaking hands. I’d spent days blaming myself for losing it, except it was never lost. He’s had it the whole time.

“You found it,” I say again because my brain has abandoned every other word I know.

My feet carry me closer before I decide to move, my attention fixed on the ring as though looking away might somehow make it disappear again.

“It was sitting on the floor in front of the nightstand when I woke up.”

Before I can respond, Jubal reaches behind his neck and unfastens the chain. He draws it away from his skin carefully, keeping one hand beneath the ring so it doesn’t swing free.

“Wait, you’ve been wearing it?”

Jubal looks down at the chain stretched between his hands as if he hadn’t considered what it might look like from my side until now. “I didn’t want anything to happen to it.”

For the briefest moment, he looks almost self-conscious, like he hears what he said at the same time I do and doesn’t know whether to take it back. He doesn’t. He could’ve tossed it into a drawer and forgotten about it until I became nothing more than some woman who disappeared from his house before sunrise. Instead, he threaded it onto a chain and carried it with him all the way from Houston to Charlotte.

For days, the empty space on my finger has felt like one more thing I failed to protect. All that time, Jubal has been keeping it safe.

“I figured if somebody wore that many rings and bracelets, but still noticed one missing, it probably mattered.”

My eyes sting as he extends his hand toward me. I reach across the space between us, but my fingers shake badly enough that I hesitate before touching it. Jubal doesn’t move his hand closer or try to put it into mine. He simply waits until I’m ready, the same way he waited every time he touched me in Houston, and that nearly undoes me more than seeing the ring did.

I curl my fingers around the necklace, and the familiar shape of the ring presses into my palm. My eyes close as I finally let myself feel the relief I’ve been waiting for. “Thank you.”

When I open my eyes again, Jubal is watching me. There’s no sign of the irritation that had sharpened his expression a few minutes ago. Concern takes its place, and when he shifts toward me, I know exactly what he’s going to ask.

“Don’t.” I shake my head, blinking quickly before the tears gathering in my eyes can fall. “Please don’t ask if I’m okay because I really don’t want to cry in the quarterback room.”

“I was going to ask if you needed a minute.”

“That’s practically the same question with better manners.”