Page 51 of Beyond Protection
He took it like I'd handed him a live grenade.
"I'm working."
"You're also dehydrated. Drink."
"You're not my doctor."
"Lucky for you. My bedside manner's terrible."
His mouth did something that almost qualified as a smile. There it was, the crack in the armor.
He raised the cup. Steam curled between us, smelling like Christmas nostalgia.
Our fingers brushed when I adjusted my grip. Heat shot up my arm and settled low in my belly. His eyes darkened—he felt it too.
Not an accident this time.
His eyes met mine over the rim of his cup—steady, searching. "Thanks," Eamon said quietly.
We stood there together, drinking cider that was too hot and tasted like every Seattle winter I'd ever survived. Eamon's shoulders dropped half an inch—something adjacent to ease.
It was the first real softness between us.
I wanted to press into it. See how far it could bend before it broke.
Instead, I finished my cider and dropped the cup in the recycling bin. "Come on. There's something I want to show you."
"What—"
"Trust me."
We made it twenty feet.
The main arcade opened ahead—vendors hawking salmon and halibut on ice. They were the famous fish-throwers in their aprons and rubber boots. Tourists pressed three deep at the counter.
"Holy shit—you're Mac McCabe!"
Every muscle in my body locked.
I flashed an automatic smile. It was a reflex that bypassed conscious thought. My shoulders squared. I raised my chin and made eye contact.
It was the posture I adopted on every magazine cover, in every post-game interview, and every time someone pointed a camera and expected me to be Mac McCabe, Inspiration.
My brand.
The guy appeared thirty-ish. He wore a Mariners cap and had a tech company badge clipped to his jacket. Harmless. Excited. Already pulling out his phone.
"That diving stop against the Dodgers—ninth inning, bases loaded—" He gestured as he relived it. "Unreal, man. Absolutely unreal."
"Thanks. Appreciate it."
"You madehistory." He spoke as if he were announcing a new revelation, like I hadn't lived inside that word for three years, inhabiting it like a second skeleton. "First openly gay MVP. That's—God, that takes guts."
I maintained the fixed smile. "Just doing my job."
"Can I—" He raised his phone. "Quick picture?"
Every cell in my body screamed no. Not here. Not now. Not when I'd started feeling like a person instead of a monument.
