For a beat, the only sounds are our breathing and the distant hum of the shaft, a low mechanical heartbeat under the mess of mine. I let my head tip back against the mirror and I let him kiss me like we aren’t about to pay for this in a currency I can’t afford. I let myself remember—his patience, the care that the tabloidsnever write about, the way he listens with his body when he’s not listening to anyone else.
Then the rulebook shoves its way between us again, hard and necessary. I press a hand to his chest, not pushing him away, just—anchoring. “Jason,” I say, and my voice is steadier now, trained. “We can’t?—”
“I know,” he answers, and the way he says it tells me exactly how much he knows and how little he cares. His pulse thrums under my palm, and mine answers, traitorously in sync.
I draw a breath, trying to gather my scattered professionalism like towels off a locker room floor. The elevator walls throw our reflections back at us. I look like a woman breaking every rule she wrote. He looks like the man I never stopped wanting, swearing he’ll behave while his hands memorize the geography of my hips.
“Say stop,” he repeats, last time, and I hate him for making it my call and love him for it in the same breath.
I still don’t say it.
The elevator doors part with a theatrical hush, and we step into noise. Voices bounce down the hotel corridor—two staffers debating towel counts, someone laughing near the ice machine, the distant squeak of a cart’s wheel that needs WD-40 yesterday. The hallway smells like citrus cleaner and industrial coffee.
A housekeeping cart blocks most of the passage, a linen mountain teetering on top. A sign clipped to the handle reads SORRY FOR THE MESS in cheerful font that does not match my current pulse.
“Evening,” the housekeeper says, stepping out of a room with a bag of trash and the kind of weary smile that knows exactly what kind of guests sports teams become after a win. Her eyes flick over Jason—hood up, hands shoved into sleeves, six-foot-three of famous—and widen just a fraction. Heat flashes undermy skin. I’m suddenly aware of the rawness around my mouth, the too-bright look in his eyes that I hope only I can read.
“Hey,” Jason answers, easy and gravel-soft, the polite tone he saves for service staff and small children. He tips the cart a few inches with two fingers so we can pass. The simple gentleness almost undoes me.
I slide by first, shoulders angled, brushing a stack of neatly folded towels. The cotton smell hits like a cue: act normal. “Thanks,” I say, meeting the housekeeper’s gaze with my best I-have-clipboards-and-boundaries smile. “Long night.”
She grins. “Looked like a good game.” Her eyes flick toward Jason’s hands. “Good hands.”
My brain short-circuits for one humiliating beat. Jason coughs—an actual cough, because he’s a coward right now—and nudges the cart the rest of the way aside. “Team effort,” he says, and I mentally award him a medal for the least helpful answer possible.
We move, not quite fast enough to be suspicious, not slow enough to be casual. The carpet muffles our steps. Behind us, the housekeeper hums and the cart squeaks its complaint.
“Recovery intervals,” I say under my breath, picking up the thread from the elevator in case anyone is listening. “Forty-five on, fifteen off tomorrow. Mobility first.”
“Of course,” he murmurs, the corner of his mouth tipping like he’s trying not to smile. “I’ll double the mint supply.”
“Don’t be cute.”
“Can’t help it.” He’s walking close without touching, a narrow current of heat at my side, and the not-touching is a worse temptation than contact.
We pass a cluster of team staff near the ice machine—Jessie from PR among them, frowning at her phone like it insulted her ancestors. She glances up, clocking us, and offers a distractednod. My heart lodges in my throat. Smile. Neutral. Trainer brain. “Jessie,” I say, breezy. “Hydration station working okay?”
“It better,” she says without looking up, thumbs flying. “Seven AM sponsor call. Don’t burn the internet between now and then, okay?” She says it to the hallway at large, but it lands like a warning. Jason’s inhale is so quiet I only hear it because my whole system is tuned to him.
“We’re good,” I answer, meaning it like a vow and hating that it feels like one.
The cluster dissolves back into their screens. We keep moving. The hallway bends, quieter here, the noise falling away until it’s just the familiarity of hotel art and the low rush of the HVAC. My shoulders ease a centimeter.
“Riley.” Jason’s voice is low, meant only for me. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For getting us out of there before I did something we’d both regret.”
A laugh slips out, breathless and a little savage. “Speak for yourself.”
He huffs, and the sound is almost a smile. We share it for two steps that feel dangerously like peace.
Then the suite numbers pop into view: our block. The players’ floor is split—singles down one side, shared suites down the other. Ours is at the end, past a potted plant trying and failing to be a tree.
“Almost home,” I say, and the word tastes complicated. The keycard burns in my pocket like a secret I shouldn’t hold. I quicken my pace, professionalism strapped back on like gear.
We round the corner toward our door, the quiet thickening into a new kind of tension—the kind with walls, an address, and choices waiting on the other side.
