As the crowd thinned, she lingered. He leaned closer and whispered, “I’m okay. Dislocated shoulder. They popped it back in. I’ll probably be out a couple weeks.”
Her throat tightened. She nodded, forcing a smile. “Good,” she whispered back. “Rest up.”
Back in the press box, Cassie slipped into her seat and opened a fresh document. The arena was quieter now, the hum of cleanup crews echoing faintly through the rafters. She rested her fingers on the keyboard for a moment longer than usual, steadying herself, then began to type.
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Luke Anders left the game midway through the second period after sustaining an apparent shoulder injury along the boards, a blow that visibly stunned both the Renegades’ bench and the crowd here in Columbus.
The defenseman skated off under his own power but did not return to the game. The team announced during the third period that he would be evaluated further.
She paused, reread the sentences, and kept going.
Anders, who has logged some of the heaviest minutes on Pittsburgh’s blue line this season, had been a stabilizing presence before the injury—breaking up rushes, winning battles down low, and anchoring the penalty-kill during a tense opening frame.
His absence forced the Renegades to shorten the bench and shuffle defensive pairings as they tried to protect a one-goal lead.
Cassie leaned back slightly, eyes flicking to the ice below where Luke laid crumpled along the boards not long ago. The words were clean. Accurate. Professional. No one reading them would know how tightly her chest had seized when he went down, or how badly she wanted to follow him down the tunnel instead of watching from above.
She filed the story on deadline, closed her laptop, and reminded herself that this—this distance, this discipline—was the cost of loving the game as much as she did.
Eighteen
Back in his hotel room, Luke couldn’t seem to settle down. He’d let the trainers brace his shoulder and wrap it with ice, then he’d shuffled to the bus with one hand gripping the railing, head bowed as teammates patted him on the back. The adrenaline had faded on the ride and left him with a dull ache that seemed to spread from his shoulder down through his chest. He’d been injured before — bruised ribs, a torn oblique in junior — but the sensation this time was different.
This time, he couldn’t get Cassie’s worried eyes out of his head.
He sat on the edge of the bed in Room 1127 and unwrapped the compression bandage. His skin was mottled purple and blue. He rotated his arm carefully, wincing. He should have been focused on rehab, on ice packs and anti-inflammatories. Instead, his mind returned to the way Cassie had leaned in at his stall. He’d seen her jaw clench when he told her he’d be fine. He’d felt the warmth of her breath on his ear when she whispered “Rest up.” He replayed that moment in a loop, trying to parse whether it had been purely professional concern or something more. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the tiny furrow between her brows and the way her hand had trembled slightly as she clicked off her recorder.
Luke flipped through television channels without watching, the glow of late-night infomercials washing over the dark room.He scrolled through his phone, half composing messages and then deleting them. “You okay?,Thanks for checking on me,You looked… worried.” Each one felt inadequate. Outside, the city was quiet. Inside, his thoughts were loud. The shoulder throbbed in time with his heartbeat. He lay back, hoping exhaustion would pull him under, but every time he closed his eyes he drifted not toward sleep but toward a fantasy he’d tried to suppress since training camp.
In the fantasy, Cassie knocked on his door. She stood there in jeans and a sweater, hair pulled back, the same press pass he’d seen swinging from her neck a thousand times now discarded on her nightstand. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you,” she’d say, her voice low. She’d step inside, her eyes softening when she saw the bruise on his shoulder. She’d sit beside him on the bed, gingerly touch the edge of the ice pack and then kiss the spot just above the tape. Her lips would trail from his collarbone to his jaw. He’d forget about the pain as her fingers tangled in his hair. He let himself imagine her climbing into his lap, his good arm wrapping around her waist, their mouths meeting in a kiss that started tender and turned urgent. He could almost feel the weight of her as she straddled him, the warmth of her breath on his throat, the way she’d tilt her head and whisper his name when he moved against her. It was a reckless, delicious thought, and he felt a flush rise up his neck even alone in the dark.
He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling, chest heaving.Get a grip, he told himself. He hadn’t been a teenager in years. Fantasies didn’t belong in the middle of a season, much less with a reporter. He tried to picture the consequences, but all he saw was the way Cassie had looked at him in the locker room, equal parts professional and personal, worry and something like affection.
The clock on the nightstand glowed 2:03 a.m. He rolled onto his side, careful of his shoulder, and picked up his phone again. His thumb hovered over her name. He typed:Room 1127. I need to see you.He stared at the message for a long moment, then deleted it. He set the phone down. Five minutes later, he picked it up again. His shoulder ached; his chest ached more. He typed the message again, hit send and immediately felt both terror and relief. If she ignored it, he could chalk it up to the painkillers. If she came… he didn’t let himself finish the thought. He turned off the lamp and lay in the dark, waiting for the buzz of a reply and listening to his own breathing. He didn’t know if he was inviting salvation or disaster. He just knew he couldn’t pretend he didn’t want her there.
Nineteen
After filing her story and handing off her recorder, Cassie collapsed onto the stiff mattress in her hotel room. She closed her eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come; every time she did, she saw Luke crumpled on the ice, his face contorted in pain, trainers rushing to his side. Guilt and worry ate at her—she had been trained to stay detached, yet the sight of him being helped off had made her throat tighten.
She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling, one hand pressed over her heart as if that could slow its frantic beating. Was he resting? Was he still hurting? She wanted to knock on his door with ice packs and ibuprofen and sit beside him until the lines of strain faded from his brow. She wanted to smooth his hair back and whisper that he didn’t have to carry everything alone. Instead, she stared at her phone, willing it to stay dark.
The screen lit up with a text: "Room 1127. I need to see you."
Her breath hitched. She traced the outline of his name with her thumb, mind racing. Every rational instinct told her to ignore it, to protect her job and the rules she’d sworn to uphold. Every other part of her—especially the part that kept replaying him wincing on the bench—ached to go. She sat up, swung her legs over the side of the bed and paced, torn between duty and desire, between the reporter she had always been and the inexplicable magnetism she felt between herself and Luke.
Finally, she grabbed her key card and walked down the hall to the elevator, pressing the button for Luke’s floor. She walked to the end of the hall to room 1127 and knocked softly. Luke opened the door in a T-shirt, his left shoulder heavily bandaged. His hair was damp from a shower. He looked vulnerable, smaller somehow.
“Hi,” he said, voice rough.
“Hi,” she whispered.
He stepped aside. She entered. The door clicked shut behind her. The silence was thick. They stood facing each other, the unspoken rules laid between them. Cassie felt tears prick her eyes. “This is a bad idea,” she said.
“Probably,” Luke agreed. “But I can’t…not say it.”
“Say what?”
He stepped closer. “That I think about you all the time. That when I’m on the ice, I look for you in the press box. That your articles are the first things I read in the morning. That I know this could ruin everything and I’m still standing here.”
