The name hits like a glass shattering in my chest.
I snap the last cup onto the stack. “I’m over him.”
Her brows lift, but she doesn’t push. “Good. Because the last thing that man deserves is real estate in your head.”
“I said I’m over him,” I repeat, sharper this time. My throat tightens around the words. I busy myself wiping the counter, scrubbing the same spot long after it’s clean.
Maya studies me for another beat, then sighs. “Alright, alright. I’ll shut up. But if you start blending your smoothies with rage again, I’m staging an intervention.”
I manage a weak smile. “Deal.”
She moves off to help a customer, and I take a breath that’s supposed to steady me. It doesn’t. Because no matter how much I want to believe I’m over him, the way my pulse jumps at the sound of his name tells a different story.
And the worst part? I can’t tell if it’s fear or something darker—something that remembers him before he became the monster I had to run from.
On my break, I sit in the alley behind the café with my phone balanced on my knee and a lukewarm latte beside me. The city hums on the other side of the brick wall—sirens, traffic, the muffled rhythm of someone’s music from a passing car. Normal life. Safe life. The kind I’ve been building piece by piece.
Until my thumb scrolls too far.
The headline stops me cold.Leo Voss: Playing Sloppy Off the Ice Too?
The article’s from Puck Whisperer. The same site that went after him last week. There’s a photo of Leo at practice, shouldershunched, expression unreadable. The caption below might as well be poison:Sources say Voss has been crashing with a female acquaintance after losing his condo to water damage. Distraction much?
My stomach turns. Even without my name, it feels like someone’s aimed a spotlight straight into my life.Female acquaintance.Distraction.
God, I can practically hear Grayson’s voice saying it, all smug and poisonous—I told you, you make men weak.
The memory hits so hard I have to put the phone down. My hand shakes as I set it beside the cup. I breathe through my nose, slow and deliberate, counting heartbeats.
The screen dims, but the headline burns behind my eyelids. I can’t shake the thought that someone fed them this. Someone who knew.
The flowers. The text. The smell.
What if it isn’t a coincidence?
A gust of wind rattles the lid of my cup, and I jump like it’s a gunshot. My pulse won’t slow.
Maya pokes her head through the back door. “Hey—your break’s over. You good?”
I force a smile that doesn’t come close to reaching my eyes. “Yeah. Just—reading something stupid.”
“Then stop reading it.” She grins. “Come on, we’ve got a line out the door.”
I tuck my phone away, but the words crawl under my skin, burrow deep.
Because if someone knows Leo’s here—if someone knowsI’mhere—then maybe I haven’t outrun anything at all.
By the time I get home, the sky’s gone slate-gray and heavy with the promise of rain. I can feel the pressure of it in my temples. Leo’s sprawled on the couch, half-watching gamefootage, still in his compression shirt and joggers. He looks tired—more than that, he looks worn.
He glances up when I drop my bag by the door. “You’ve been twitchy all day,” he says, voice low but laced with concern. “Something happen?”
I freeze for a beat, trying to keep my tone light. “Just a long shift. Too much caffeine, not enough patience.”
He doesn’t buy it. “You sure? You look like you’re about to sprint out of your own skin.”
I busy myself in the kitchen, pulling out ingredients I don’t even remember deciding to use. “I’m fine, Leo. You hungry?”
He frowns but doesn’t push right away. “Always.” He leans back, eyes still on me. Watching. Waiting.
