Page 166 of Make the Play

Her lips quirk. “You don’t even remember her name.”

“Don’t need to. I’d just start with ‘Hi, I’m Zoe’s sex life. We have a situation.’”

She snorts, then slides her arms around my waist to rest her cheek on my chest, and I feel something in me ease. Not all the way, but enough to keep breathing.

“Can we wait until after coffee to start emailing people?” she murmurs.

“We can wait until after pancakes.”

“You making pancakes?”

“No, but Jake might make us pancakes.”

Her laugh is muffled against my shirt, but I don’t miss the way her arms tighten a little, fingers tracing a lazy circle on my lower back. It’s absentminded, barely-there, but it feels like everything. A grounding wire, a reset button.

“I’ve ordered you another phone,” I say softly. “With the SOS setting.”

She pulls back enough to look at me. “What, like a burner?”

“No.” I brush a strand of hair off her cheek. “Like a backup. It’s preloaded with emergency contacts, location tracking. All youhave to do is hold the side button, and it’ll ping me to let me know where you are.”

Her eyes search mine. “You really don’t trust anyone, huh?”

“I trustyou…I don’t trustthem.”

She nods, quiet for a beat.

“Okay,” she says finally. “I’ll use it. I’ll keep it with me.”

Relief thuds in my chest as my mouth curls, and I stroke my forefinger down the slope of her jaw.

“My good girl.”

She rolls her eyes, but there’s a blush blooming at the base of her throat that I want to kiss out of her, but I tuck it away and save it for later.

“I want to tell Raines and Storm too,” I say. “Not just about the new message and photo, about us.”

Her head tips. “About us?”

“That we’re not fake.”

Zoe doesn’t flinch, she just slowly blinks, as if she was expecting it or knew this moment was coming, and now that it’s here, she’s weighing every word before she touches it.

“I don’t want to lie to them anymore,” I continue. “Not when PR’s talking about end dates. Not when someone’s stalking you and I’m—” I break off. Swallow. “I’m not letting them think I’ll step away from you at some tidy scheduled endpoint.”

Zoe doesn’t say anything for a second. Her eyes flicker to the window, to the empty mug on the side table, then back to me.

“You’re ready to say it’s real.”

“I’ve been ready to be real about you for years.”

She bites her lip. “I just… I need time.”

I nod, jaw tight.

“It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just…” She lifts a shoulder. “There’s something about keeping it quiet that makes it feel like ours. Something untouched, before we’re sitting in meetingswhile people decide how to manage us… Before people look at me like I strategized this from the start.”

Her voice is soft, but her eyes are sure, and I know she means it. Not because she’s ashamed, but because she’s still scared to hand it over to a world that will want to twist it into something smaller.

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