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He reaches over and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear with one wet hand, not even looking, mid-sentence about something Cash said, and I let him, and I file the weight of his fingers, and I do not let my face do anything at all.

“You’re quiet,” he says.

“I’m tired.” I hang the towel on the oven door. “It was a lot of people.”

“Good lot, though.” He pulls the plug and the water goes, and he turns around and reaches for me the way he reaches for me, without deciding to, his hands finding my waist like they’ve got a standing appointment there, and he pulls me in. I put my forehead against the cold zipper of his hoodie and his arms close over my back and his chin lands on the top of my head, and he says, easy, into my hair, “Best night in a while.”

“Yeah,” I say.

And I stand there inside the warmest thing I have ever been allowed to stand inside, with his heart going steady and unsuspecting against my cheek and his hands moving slow on my back, and I hold on, and I let myself be held, and behind my eyes where he can’t follow I go around the room one more time and say goodbye to all of it — the fridge hum, the four-note song, the chipped mug, the dishwater, the arm along the back of my chair, the standing appointment of his hands — quietly, thoroughly, the way you walk through a house you’re leaving and touch the door frames.

“Love you,” he says, half into a yawn, certain, the way you say a fact about the weather.

“Love you too,” I say.

It’s true. It’s the truest thing I’ve got. And I’m still going to leave, and he’s standing in a warm kitchen with no idea, planning a dinner for next month.

I hold on a little longer. He lets me. He thinks it’s because I’m happy.

I let him think it.

Chapter 29

Sloane

I’m in the living room when the truck pulls up.

I’ve been hearing trucks all afternoon and deciding they weren’t his. This one is.

My bags are by the door. Two of them. Everything I came with and a few things I didn’t, the things I’m leaving behind because they’re his, or they were ours, and ours stopped being a word somewhere between the closet and the front door.

Today only has room for one hard thing, and I picked this one.

I packed this morning while he was at practice. It didn’t take long. That’s the other thing the bags tell you — three months of the best life I’ve had folds down into almost nothing, like it was always meant to be portable, like some part of me kept it ready to walk out the whole time. I found his grey hoodie in the clean laundry. I held it longer than I’m going to admit to anyone, including myself. Then I folded it and left it on the end of the bed. I’m not a thief. Whatever else I am.

I’ve rehearsed it. I rehearse everything. I know all my lines.

I don’t know his. That’s the part I can’t plan around. I never could.

So I sit very straight on the edge of the couch with my hands folded and my coat already on, and I wait, and I am not going to cry. I decided in the shower this morning with my forehead on the tile. I’m not going to give him that. Crying would make it a tragedy, and a tragedy is a thing you can be talked out of. This isn’t a tragedy. This is maintenance. You shut the water off before the pipe bursts. You don’t weep about the valve.

I ran the whole speech in my head while I packed, start to finish, twice, the way I used to run lines pacing the wings before a call. I know the load-bearing sentences. I know which ones do the work and which ones are only there to carry me to the next one. I know to keep my hands folded so they can’t give me away and my voice low so it can’t climb. I know everything except how to make myself believe the part where this is good for him. Which is fine. I don’t have to believe it. I only have to say it like I do.

The door opens.

They come in loud, the way they always come in. Cash first, mid-story. Then Wyatt. Then Theo. The cold comes in with them and the noise comes in with them.

Then the noise stops.

They see me. They see the coat. They see the bags by the door.

Hockey players read a room in under five seconds. I’ve watched them do it before. I watch them do it now, all four faces landing on it one after another, and I watch the easy go out of the afternoon.

“Hey.” Beau’s still got his practice bag on his shoulder. He looks at the bags. He looks at me. “What’s going on?”

“Can we talk?” My voice comes out level. I made sure of it. “Just us.”

Nobody moves for a second.