Liam sat on the bench at the edge of the training ground and picked up the rag from beside him.
He dragged it across his face first, then the back of his neck, then held it loosely in both hands and looked at the grass in front of him while his breathing settled.
The morning was fully there now, the light sitting clean and even across the grounds, the fountain on the east side catching it, the trees along the boundary wall throwing shadows that would be gone in an hour when the sun moved.
He reached for his phone on the bench beside him and unlocked it.
The screen had six missed calls on it. All from Tasha. All from the previous evening, the timestamps stacked on top of each other across a window of about forty minutes like she had been trying repeatedly and then stopped trying at some point and the stopping had a different quality from the calling.
Below the calls three texts.
The first one: *are you there.*
The second: *Liam I'm outside your door.*
