“I can’t believe Connor got decked,” she said. “That chirp was pretty tame…for him, at least.”
Luke shook his head, smiling now. “Connor lives for moments like that.”
Cassie leaned back in her seat, the tension of the night draining out of her. “You know, you tackled that guy like you were breaking up a bar fight.”
“He shouldn’t have touched the goalie.”
“Captain energy,” she teased. “It was pretty hot.”
Luke glanced over at her, eyes warm. “Someone’s gotta keep him alive.”
They drove the rest of the way in comfortable silence, laughter still lingering between them.
Thirty-Five
By Thanksgiving, the Renegades sat atop the Eastern Conference standings. They were ten games over .500, their power play clicking at 23 percent, their penalty kill even better. Luke and his partner, veteran stay-at-home defenseman Nick Delgado, were one of the stingiest duos in the league. Cassie wrote about balanced scoring, about Damien Morris’ uncanny ability to deflect pucks and Caleb Zheng’s breakout year. She also wrote about small cracks. In November, Connor Martin allowed six goals in a loss to Toronto. She penned a column questioning whether the team had enough depth in net to make a deep run in the playoffs. She also wrote about Luke’s tendency to take bad penalties when frustrated, something he insisted he was working on.
The more she wrote, the more the lines blurred between objectivity and intimacy. When Luke had a bad night, she was harder on him in print than on others, overcompensating for her bias. When he had a good night, she sometimes downplayed his role. Luke noticed.
“Do you hate me now?” he said one night in December, half teasing, half wounded. He had been minus-three in a loss to New Jersey, and Cassie’s story had highlighted a turnover he made in the second period.
Cassie sat cross-legged on his kitchen counter, nursing a glass of wine. “No,” she said. “I love you. Which is why I have to treat you like everyone else. Maybe tougher. So no one can accuse me of being soft on you.”
Luke sighed, running a hand through his hair. “It’s weird reading your name next to words about me playing like shit.”
“If it ever becomes too much, say so. I’ll…figure something out.”
He shook his head. “No. I’d rather you hold me accountable. Even when it hurts.” He leaned down, the foot of height between them disappearing as he kissed her gently.
His kitchen still smelled faintly of garlic and olive oil from dinner, the counter cool under Cassie’s hands as Luke leaned in again, slower this time. The kiss deepened, unhurried but intense. His palms slid up her back, anchoring her there, and she tilted into him without thinking. For a moment, the world narrowed to the press of his body, the low sound he made when she tugged lightly at his shirt. He slid his hands around her waist, up to her ribs and slipping under the band of her bra, eliciting a gasp as his cool hands touched her warm skin. She started to trace the waistband of his sweatpants, then slipping lower to graze the bulge that was growing by the second.
Then, from the corner of the room, her phone lit up.
Cassie barely registered it at first—just a flicker of light against the darkened kitchen. Luke’s lips were at her jaw now, his breath warm, his focus absolute. But the screen lit again, brighter this time, and her instincts kicked in before desire could drown them out. She pulled back just enough to glance over and see the new email alert.
MEDIA ADVISORY: RENEGADES RECALL DEFENSEMAN
Her stomach dropped.
She went still, the shift immediate. Luke felt it and froze too, his hands loosening as he followed her gaze. She stared at the screen, already mentally drafting a lede, calculating who she needed to text, how fast she could get something up.
“I—” She swallowed. “I have to file this. Now. It’s news, it can’t wait.”
Luke’s expression flickered—hurt, disappointment, something darker—but it was gone almost as soon as it appeared. He nodded once, stepping back to give her space, even though it clearly cost him. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I get it.”
Cassie jumped off the counter and reached for her phone, fingers already moving, but her chest ached. The kitchen felt suddenly colder, the intimacy evaporating into the hum of the refrigerator and the distant noise of traffic outside his windows. She hated how automatic the choice had been. Hated that part of her didn’t even debate it.
Luke leaned back against the counter, watching her with a mixture of understanding and restraint, his jaw tight. “Do what you need to do,” he said. “I’ll make some coffee.”
She nodded, already half gone, typing as she crossed the room. But as she perched on one of his stools, laptop open, the question she’d been avoiding surfaced fully formed and unwelcome:
“Is this what it’s always going to be like?”
She loved the work—the urgency, the responsibility, the way being first still mattered. But standing in Luke’s kitchen, with something unfinished humming painfully between them, she wondered whether the job she’d built her entire life aroundwould always ask her to choose. And whether, one day, the answer wouldn’t come so easily.
Thirty-Six
Over the holiday road trip through St. Louis, Dallas and Colorado, tensions flared elsewhere. A line-brawl in St. Louis. In Dallas, Tanner Brooks took exception to a hit on Caleb Zheng and dropped the gloves. But two nights later in Denver, the temperature tipped from combustible to dangerous, and the consequences followed them home.
