In the chaos he turns.
I don’t know why I notice it — there are forty people in this room, players and staff and the specific electric energy of a team that just punched their ticket to the Conference Final — but I notice it. He turns and his eyes find me across the room and they stay there for exactly one second.
One second.
Then Brody’s on him and Aiden has him in a headlock and the moment’s gone.
The photo posts at eleven PM.
I’m in bed when it hits my phone. Aurora’s Instagram. The locker room celebration. The arena still losing its mind, and somehow she caught this one frame — Jax turning, me across the room, chaos behind us, both of us just — looking.
I stare at it for a long time.
I am professionally horrified.
I keep looking at it.
The thing about this photo is it doesn’t lie. That’s the thing about Aurora’s photography — she doesn’t dress things up. She just catches what’s there. And what’s there is a man who turned in the middle of everything and found me first and a woman who was already looking back.
Forty thousand people liked it.
I save it to my personal camera roll.
I immediately judge myself for doing that.
I do not delete it.
Then I see Griffin’s comment:
I see you’re covering more than just the game. ?? Good work NV.
NV.
His nickname for me. The one he used when we were together, six weeks of it, his voice saying it like he owned the abbreviation and everything attached to it.
Nobody else calls me that.
Nobody else would know to call me that unless they knew me as V. North first.
He’s letting me know he knows.
I go very still.
He’s seen the photo. He’s read the byline — Nova Shaw, not V. North — but he knows they’re the same person because he was there when I made the switch.
He watched me bury the pen name when I left Tampa.
And now he’s digging it back up.
For leverage.
For exactly this moment.
My hands are not steady on the phone.
I screenshot the comment.
Delete it from the photo.