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My chest tightened, but I did not look away.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” she said.

Not warm. Not cold. Careful in a way that cost her something to offer.

“Yeah,” I said. “Tomorrow.”

She adjusted the strap on her camera bag again, a practical gesture from a woman preparing to walk away, and moved past me toward the exit.

Close.

Close enough that the air between us carried her shampoo, something citrus and clean, and the warmth of her shoulder registered against the cold of the corridor.

I did not turn around until I heard the lobby door open and close.

Then I stood in the empty hallway, alone with the hum of the building and the weight of everything that had been said and everything that had not, and felt the next breath come easier than the last.

Not fixed.

Still breathing. Still in the same building. Willing to say tomorrow like it meant something.

I picked up my bag and walked toward the exit. The parking lot was dark. The sky was doing that San Antonio thing where it could not decide between stars and clouds and offered both.

My truck sat where I had left it, uncomplicated, the one object in my life that never required an emotional response.

I got in and sat there.

My phone was in the cupholder. Her name was in it.

I could text her. Something simple. Something that acknowledged the hallway and the fact that she had asked if I was okay when she had every reason not to.

I picked up the phone.

Set it down.

Some conversations were not meant for screens. They were meant for the next time you stood in front of someone and tried, imperfectly, to show them you were worth another chance.

Tomorrow.

I could work with tomorrow.

Chapter twenty-two

Samantha

We had not had the real conversation yet.

The bus to the scrimmage smelled like a locker room that had been given a promotion and a travel budget.

Same sweat. Same cologne that should have been classified as a chemical weapon under the Geneva Convention. Just mobile now, contained inside a vehicle heading up I-35 while twenty-six professional athletes debated whether gas-station sushi was a viable meal option.

Consensus: it was not.

Brick remained philosophically committed.

Sandra sat two rows ahead of me, tablet open, looking like a woman trying to manage a rolling steel tube full of professional hockey players with nothing but good posture and a data plan. She caught my eye, gave me a clipped thumbs-up that was somehow both encouraging and supervisory, and went back to whatever color-coded grid was keeping her sane.

Evan sat in the back.