Riley steps through first. I follow into the brightness and the buzz, and the hallway closes around us like a throat that’s about to say our names. I feel the pull to reach for her again as the door sighs shut on the night we almost chose. I don’t.
The guards fan out ahead and behind like parentheses. Overhead, the CCTV bubble reflects us back—two separate figures walking the same line. My phone buzzes in my pocket like a trapped hornet. I let it.
We hit the split—trainers left, players right. She doesn’t break stride. She doesn’t look back. She just peels off, clean, into her corridor, into her job, into the version of this where she survives me.
“Riley,” I say, a fraction louder than a thought.
She hears it—the way your body hears the person it learned by heart—and doesn’t turn. Her hand lifts just once at her side, a tiny, palm-down gesture that means steady. Then it falls.
The guard at my shoulder angles me toward the player hall. The service door thunks shut behind us and the winter air we stole is gone. I taste metal and restraint and the echo of a breath I didn’t take.
Somewhere down the corridor a walkie barks my name like a verdict. I square my shoulders into the noise and keep the only promise I made that anyone can verify: I don’t follow her.
Chapter 13
Thin Ice
Riley
The elevator doorsslide shut and the world shrinks to brushed steel and our breathing. Metallic cleaner stings my nose, and the cold from the rink still clings to Jason’s hoodie—ice and sweat and something that’s always been him. I jab the button for our floor with more force than necessary, pretending my hands aren’t shaking.
He doesn’t pretend. He’s already turned toward me, shoulder blocking the panel, eyes dark like the space between periods when the arena goes black. “Riley.”
My name in his voice lands low, right where my composure lives. I swallow hard, count the floor numbers lighting up: 7… 8…
He reaches past me and taps the red button.
The car shudders, a soft mechanical groan, and then stillness. The emergency stop. Of course he does.
“Jason.” My tone is a warning—trainer voice, policy voice, the voice that makes rookies sit down and ice their egos. It would work on him too, if he didn’t already know every way around it.
He leans in, not touching, that infuriating restraint of his that makes heat curl under my skin. “Say stop,” he murmurs, warm and quiet, like this is the only room left in the building and maybe the city. “If you want me gone, say it.”
I should. God, I should. The rulebook in my head flips to the right tab all by itself: staff-player boundaries, ethics clauses, the words you could lose everything scrawled across the margins. Instead, I hear my own heartbeat ticking time with the elevator’s soft hum.
I don’t say stop.
Something flickers in his eyes—relief, hunger, I don’t dare label it—and the little distance he’s left between us evaporates. Not a slam, not that. He’s careful, always careful with me, like he learned the hard way what happens when he isn’t. His knuckles skim my jaw, a question asked in skin, and then his palm slides to my cheek and I’m moving before I make the decision, crossing the last inch because gravity is real and apparently so is muscle memory.
His mouth finds mine like a secret remembered. Heat licks up my spine, crowding out the cold. I curl a fist in his hoodie, tugging him closer until my back meets steel. We bump the mirror—soft thud, my breath ghosting on glass—and the reflection catches us: my ponytail askew, his lashes lowered, two reckless people caught between a past we burned down and a future we have no business wanting.
He breaks the kiss long enough to rest his forehead to mine. “Say stop,” he whispers again, and it’s not a dare. It’s a lifeline he’s handing me. The fact that he offers it makes me fall a little more and I hate that.
I don’t say it.
His hands bracket my hips, warm through the thin fabric of my team polo, the heel of his palm pressing against the jitter in my pulse. I feel him breathe, slow and careful, like he’s tryingnot to spook me. I’m not a skittish colt; I’m a woman who knows exactly how much trouble she’s inviting in. My rules slam back, hard enough to rattle my teeth: job, policy, consequences. Nolan’s arctic stare. Julia’s clipped tone. Miles’ too-quiet disappointment. The headlines practically write themselves.
Jason’s chest rises under my palm. Solid. Human. Mine, my traitor brain supplies, and I press my hand flatter, feel the steady thud beneath the armor he wears for the rest of the world. “This is a terrible idea,” I whisper, voice unsteady. It sounds like please don’t stop.
His mouth curves against my temple. “Most of the best ones are.”
“Don’t go poetic on me,” I mutter, because banter is safe, and safety is a lie I am choosing anyway. My fingers slide up, catching at the edge of his hood, and he exhales like I’ve got my hand around something fragile and vital.
The car is too warm now. Or I am. My skin prickles with the awareness of every place we touch—his thumbs stroking slow circles, his thigh braced between mine, the faint rasp of stubble when he tilts to kiss the corner of my mouth again. I taste the adrenaline and the mint he chews to keep his mouth from going dry in scrums. It tastes like games won at the buzzer and hotel rooms with thin curtains and the ache that followed when I walked away.
“Riley,” he says, softer, the sound sending a shiver through all the steel in me. “Tell me if?—”
“I’ll tell you,” I cut in, and it’s true. I will. I always have.
