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I don’t ask her the question again. The one I’ve been carrying since this morning — the one about whatever’s sitting underneath the muted quality I’ve been tracking for a week now. I want to. I almost do, standing right here, her arms around me and the whole night finally quiet enough to actually talk.

But something tells me she’s not ready. And I’ve learned, the hard way, with the people who matter most to me, that pushing before someone’s ready doesn’t get you the truth.

It just gets you a better performance.

So I hold her instead, and I let the question wait, and I tell myself — the way I’ve been telling myself all week — that whatever it is, she’ll bring it to me when she’s ready. She always has before. She told me about the eating disorder in a shower in Charleston, in her own time, on her own terms, and I held it the way I’m going to hold whatever this is when she finally decides to hand it to me too.

That’s how this works between us. She sets the pace. I stay close enough to catch her whenever she’s ready to fall.

I just hope I’m not wrong about how much time that gives us.

Chapter 25

Margo

The weeks compress into something I can barely track.

Regionals for Theo’s team. Two rounds, both wins, both games I watch from section four with my hands pressed together like a woman praying at church instead of a hockey rink. I’ve learned to read the tape now too. Not just his shoulders and his gaps — the specific quality of a team that’s starting to believe its own hype. The way Coach O’Grady tightens the practices instead of loosening them the closer they get to Vegas. Nationals qualifiers for mine, tightening every day in exactly the same way. Coach Torres running us through full-outs until my legs shake. The pyramid sequence rehearsed so many times I could run it in my sleep — which some nights I actually do. Waking up mid-dream with my arms already extended, my body running the count even unconscious.

Theo’s stretched thin in a way I’ve never seen him. The specific exhaustion of a season peaking at the exact moment everything else in his life is peaking too. The draft conversation still humming underneath every practice. Every game. Every rep. Dan Reiss calls twice more during these weeks, quick check-ins Theo relays to me in three-word texts because he doesn’t have the bandwidth to make them bigger than they are right now. Pete Kowalski’s name comes up again, then a mock draft list Theo doesn’t want to look at and looks at anyway. It’s a lot, all of it stacked on top of a Frozen Four run that’s now genuinely, terrifyingly close.

I’m grateful for it. That’s the part I don’t say out loud to anyone. His stress gives mine somewhere to hide. Nobody looks twice at me being tired, being distracted, being a half-step behind myself, because everyone around us is tired and distracted and running on fumes right now. It’s the best cover I could have asked for. I hate that I’m using it that way. I use it anyway.

Here’s the system, refined over three weeks into something close to precision.

Water breaks, timed. I learned early that the nausea peaks in specific windows — worst first thing, worst again mid-afternoon if I haven’t eaten enough — and I’ve built my whole schedule around those windows without telling anyone why. Gum, always in my bag, the specific mint kind that settles my stomach when a smell catches me wrong. A stomach bug story I deployed once, three weeks ago, that’s apparently still circulating through the squad as a general explanation for anyone looking a little pale. There’s something going around. Generous of them. Convenient for me, in a way I try not to examine too closely.

The exhaustion I chalk up to overtraining, which nobody questions, because overtraining is real and everyone on this team has experienced some version of it during qualifier season. I sleep nine hours and wake up tired anyway. I’ve started taking naps between classes — curled up in empty study rooms, alarm set for forty minutes, which is not a thing I’ve ever done in my life before this.

The tenderness I manage with wardrobe. Looser sports bras. Layers. The specific art of never letting anyone get a clear enough look to notice anything’s different. I’ve become an expert at changing quickly. At angling myself in the locker room. At being fully dressed before anyone else finishes their shower.

There’s a system for my mother too, though she doesn’t know she’s part of one. She calls twice a week, same as always. Asks the same questions she always asks — LSAT prep, Nationals, whether I’ve heard back from any summer internship programs. I answer all of it in the bright, easy register she expects. She has no idea that underneath every answer I’m doing a separate calculation. How long I can keep doing this before she hears it in my voice the way mothers sometimes do, even through a phone line. I call less often than I used to. I tell myself it’s because I’m busy. That’s not entirely a lie.

It’s working. That’s the terrifying part. Three weeks in, and it’s actually working, and every day it works is another day I don’t have to have the conversation I know I’m eventually going to have to have.

Thursday night, I end up at Raven House anyway.

I tell myself I won’t. I have a stunt sequence to review. An LSAT practice test I haven’t touched. A body that needs actual sleep instead of forty-minute study-room naps. I tell myself all of this on the walk over, which should tell me everything about how seriously I meant it.

The house is quiet when I let myself in — Cash and Wyatt out somewhere, Beau’s door closed, the specific settled quiet of a house that’s been through a long week and is recovering from it. I go up. Third step, wide left. I know this by heart now, the way I know most things about this house, about him, about the specific shape our life has taken without either of us ever formally deciding on it.

Theo’s on his bed when I let myself into his room, laptop open, the specific posture of a guy who’s been staring at game film for two hours without fully absorbing any of it anymore. His eyes have that unfocused, glazed quality of someone whose brain checked out a while ago and whose body just hasn’t caught up yet. He looks up when I come in and something in his face does the thing it does. Relief. Want. The specific warmth that’s only ever aimed at me. I feel the pull of it the way I always do. The thing neither of us has ever been able to talk ourselves out of, no matter how much either of us has going on.

“You’re supposed to be resting,” I tell him, closing the door.

“You’re supposed to be reviewing your stunt sequence.”

“Touché.”

He closes the laptop. Sets it aside without looking at it, which for Theo mid-film-session is basically a love letter. I climb onto the bed beside him, and he pulls me in without either of us discussing it, the way we do everything now. For a while we just lie there. His arm around me. My head on his chest. Both of us too tired to do anything except exist in the same space and let that be enough.

“How’s the draft stuff?” I ask, because it’s easier to ask about his pressure than sit with mine.

“Loud.” He exhales. “Mock draft has me going late second, early third. Pete says don’t trust mock drafts. I’m trying not to and failing a little.”

“You’ll be fine.”

“You keep saying that.”