Page 157 of Final Drive

“She’ll be fine.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

I look at him and catch the twitch at the corner of his mouth.

Asshole.

There’s something I haven’t told them.

Webb called me in July, three days after development camp ended. I’d spent the first four days riding in a launch. On the fifth morning he handed me a lineup, pointed at an eight, and said, “Your boat.”

I thought he meant for the morning.

He meant for the week.

On the last day, he asked me to stay behind. The competition bar means I can’t attend the January selection camp, and neither of us needed to spend much time discussing that. Then he reminded me the bar expires in May.

World Under-23s are next summer.

He wants me to come back.

I’ve thought about that conversation every morning since. For a while I told myself I wasn’t keeping it from them because I was still thinking, and those were different things. Except I know exactly what keeping something from them feels like now, and apparently that’s another habit I’m supposed to be getting rid of.

I take a drink of coffee. “Webb called.”

Eight men go still behind me, which would be funny if I weren’t suddenly aware that I’ve been sitting on this for almost two months.

“When?” Tyler asks.

“July.”

“July?”

“Don’t.” I glance back at him, and he closes his mouth. “He wants me back after the bar expires. For U23 selection.”

Nobody says anything right away. Bo is smiling. Eli looks like somebody just handed him Christmas, and Jackson has both hands in his jacket pockets, but I know that face. Beckett opens his mouth, so I point at him before he can get started.

“Don’t you dare make a spreadsheet.”

He closes it again.

Tyler pushes his glasses up. “I wasn’t going to.”

“You were absolutely going to.”

“I was going to make a calendar.”

“Tyler.”

“Noted.”

Gray stays quiet through all of it. When he finally speaks, he doesn’t ask when I’d have to leave or how long I’d be gone. He doesn’t ask where the training center is, what flights cost, or what it means for the house.

“You want to go?”

The question catches me harder than it should.

Not when. Not how. Not what do we need to do about it.