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“You can.”

She doesn't answer immediately, and I don't push. I let her have the silence.

“The breakup was bad enough,” she says eventually. “But the worst part was what came afterward. The way it stopped being a relationship that had ended and became a story everyone wanted to tell. People took pieces of what they thought they knew and filled in the rest. They decided who I was, what I'd done, what I must have wanted.” Her expression hardens. “I couldn't correct every lie. I couldn't explain every misunderstanding. And I couldn't make people stop talking about me without giving them more to talk about.”

I understand that more than I want to. “I feel that.”

She grins, “And I felt that press conference to my core. He looked like he’d use his bare hands to kill whoever that was that came after you.”

“Wait, what?”

“Oh my God, you have to see it,” she says leaning down, and coming back up, phone in hand. “I totally favorited it.”

The footage is from a post-game press conference, the first game I went to, where he had to do press. Reporters asked Rez about it, and he told them he'd shared the footage with the police.

He hadn't told me.

I don't know why that surprises me, but it does. He'd been doing something about what happened, actively trying to hold the men who'd cornered me accountable, and he'd done it without making a show of it to me or waiting for me to ask. He hadn't needed me to know he was doing something, hadn't used it to reassure me or convince me he was someone worth trusting. He'd simply acted.

There's something about that which gets under my skin in the best and worst ways. I'm used to people making plans for me, telling me what's best for me, deciding what my future should look like. Rez took my safety seriously without trying to take my choices away. He'd seen something wrong and done what he could to make sure it didn't happen to someone else.

I wish I knew what to do with that.

“That’s… confusing,” I admit. “Of course it is.” Bernie lifts her glass. “If it were easy, I'd have figured it out by now.”

The way she says it makes me pause.

“What do you mean?”

She looks at me, then laughs softly, almost at herself.

“Oh, Anna. You thought I was going to spend an entire transatlantic flight talking about my ex and not confess to anything else?”

“I was hoping you'd get distracted by the champagne.”

“Tempting. But no.”

She settles farther into her seat, her gaze drifting toward the clouds.

“Hank is wonderful,” she says. “And that is precisely the problem.”

I raise an eyebrow. “That sounds terrible.”

“It's awful. I'd much rather he were a complete bastard. Then I could make a sensible decision, get on with my life, and stop thinking about him.”

“But he isn't.”

“No. He's kind. He's thoughtful. He remembers things I tell him. He makes me laugh when I don't want to laugh. He does these ridiculous, practical things that make it impossible to pretend he isn't paying attention.”

Her expression softens, and I recognize the look. I've seen people fall in love before. I've watched it happen slowly and all at once. I've seen what it does to a person's face when they speak about someone who matters.

Bernie looks almost annoyed with herself.

“And then I get scared.”

“Of what?”

“Of wanting him.”