Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 131 - Chapitre 140

Marianna POVI find the shoe under the hotel bed at 7 AM.Duane is asleep.He looks younger.He looks, actually, like someone who is allowed to sleep.I sit on the edge of the bed with my shoe in my hand and look at him for a moment. The scar on his ribs. The specific stillness. The paper airplane he folded last night from the hotel notepad—terrible, asymmetric, listing left—sitting on the nightstand because apparently this is just what he does now, in hotel rooms, fold paper airplanes at midnight and leave them places.I pick it up."That's mine," he says, without opening his eyes."You're asleep.""

Marianna POVI am seven years old and I know three important things.One: my brother Marco is nine and knows everything and is wrong about half of it.Two: the best spot in our apartment is the window seat in the living room because you can see the street and the street always has something happening.Three: Papá loves me best.This is not something I say out loud. You don't say things like that out loud. But I know it the way I know my own name—he calls me his principessa, he brings me the good crackers from the high shelf, he lets me stay up past Marco's bedtime to watch the nature documentaries he likes. Mamá is the warm one, the loud one, the one who holds you when you cry. But Papá is mine specifica

Marianna POVWe fly home on a Wednesday.Fourteen hours, Dubai to Miami, and I sleep for nine of them with my head on Duane's shoulder in a way that leaves a visible imprint on his shirt that he doesn't mention and I pretend not to notice. Marco is three rows back. I know this because he texted me from three rows back when we boarded: I can see you from here. Don't do anything weird. And then, ten minutes later: Sleeping already? It's 11AM. And then nothing, which means he also fell asleep, which means the Reyes siblings have inherited their mother's ability to sleep anywhere, anytime, as a stress response.Miami arrives in the window looking exactly like Miami. Warm, green, slightly chaotic, completely itself.I press my hand against the glass.

Marianna POVThree weeks after Abu Dhabi, my life looks like this:7 AM: Kinetic. The linebacker's knee is officially discharged—full clearance, the kind of outcome that produces a very large man doing something that looks uncomfortably close to a happy dance in the middle of Recovery Suite 2, which I document in the clinical notes as patient demonstrated full functional mobility because I am a professional.9 AM: Oliver's final session of the season. He's going back to Monaco for the winter, which he announces by presenting me with a gift-wrapped box of Belgian chocolate from a specific shop in Bruges that he has apparently had shipped to Miami because Oliver Hale does not do things by halves."You went to Belgium since Abu Dhabi?" I say.

Marianna POVThe thing about planning a wedding when your fiancé is a three-time—sorry, four-time—world champion is that everyone has opinions.Everyone.Patrick emails me a spreadsheet. An actual spreadsheet, formatted with the same precision he brings to race strategy, with columns for venue capacity, catering lead times, and what he's labeled weather probability matrix for various Miami months. I stare at it for four minutes before forwarding it to Jill with the subject line: help.Jill calls immediately."He made a spreadsheet," she says."With a weather matrix," I say."I love Patrick," she says."Everyone loves Patric