Far away over her shoulder, Aiden could see the indifferent bustle of his former audience.
With an effort, the woman smiled. Her smile wasn’t even a good fake.
“Ah,” she said, and nodded. “Sorry to bother you, Aiden. I wish you all the best.”
She turned and walked away. Aiden listened to the sound of her retreating steps, and the door slamming. He waited for the screech of car wheels.
Coach Williams approached him instead. The coach was dressed in a gray suit rather than her usual bright sportswear, her hair trying to escape its pins. She was also wearing a different expression than normal.
“Demonstration went well, didn’t it?” Aiden spoke lightly. “Don’t think I will be doing another, however. Next time you must content yourself with a less alluring model. Be brave, Coach. Don’t weep at the thought of unworthy substitutes.”
“What did you say to her?” Coach asked.
“Who?” Aiden returned, slinging his bag carelessly over his shoulder and picking up an épée.
He swished the sword about, watching the play of light on steel, and the dancing shadow against the wall. He refused to meet Coach’s eyes after that first glance.
“She came to one of the very few matches you actually attended your first year on the team, and I saw how she watched you,” Coach informed him. “She came to a match you didn’t attend last year, and I saw she was disappointed.”
“Who wouldn’t be if they came somewhere hoping to see me in all my glory and didn’t get to?” Aiden shrugged. “Whatever her expectations were, it’s not my problem.”
Coach wielded truth like one of her beloved sabers. “She didn’t have any expectations. She’s married. She has kids. She just wanted to see you, because you mean something to her. When I went to talk to her last year, she said she didn’t want to annoy you. I was the one who told her you’d be happy if she approached you.”
That was… a different situation than the one he’d assumed.
Sometimes, when Aiden felt the impulse to act on all his worst instincts, he thought, Would Harvard be disappointed in you if you did that? And then he didn’t do it, whatever it was.
It had never occurred to Aiden that anyone else cared enough to be disappointed in him.
Disappointment was in Coach’s usually twinkling brown eyes now. “I always thought you were a good kid at heart. Careless, but careless isn’t the same as cruel. Tell me, Aiden. Was I wrong about you?”
Oddly, it wasn’t Coach’s eyes or the echo of a woman’s voice or even the thought of Harvard that changed his mind. It was that when Aiden turned away from Coach, his roving gaze fell on the stage where he’d stood, gleaming and empty, and he thought, Do you want to put on a show for the rest of your life?
Aiden threw down the bag and his épée, and ran. Out through the double doors, down the flight of stone steps, and into the parking lot crowded with shining cars that would soon speed away.
She hadn’t got into her car yet. She was standing with her shoulders stiff under a thick camel coat, her hand braced against the door. He noticed the wedding ring on it now, and the way her knuckles went pale on the handle before she turned and faced him.
Aiden’s lungs were burning from his sprint. His hair had come loose again, flying strands suddenly a wild snarl getting in his eyes, and he was still wearing an open fencing uniform, his plastron lost somewhere in the town hall. He must look absolutely ridiculous. The wind had its freezing-cold claws curled in around the open jacket, he was breathing raggedly, and he didn’t know if he had a best friend to return to. All these years trying not to break, and he would anyway. It might as well be now.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Aiden gasped. “Rosina, I’m sorry. Of course I remember you.”
The golden clock hands cut time like swords. She stood unmoving, watching Aiden in the clear cold light of day. It was just the two of them in the parking lot, with no audience left to impress, and Aiden knew the way he’d acted was unforgivable, that he would always mess up when it truly mattered, that every time he’d been abandoned, he’d deserved it.
Then she lifted a hand to his face and smiled.
“Look at you, Aiden,” said Rosina, in her familiar beautiful voice, speaking as if she were singing to him again. “You got so