Finally, he set the mug down on the railing. “I can’t pretend I’m okay with this.” He sighs. “But I can respect that you didn’t sneak. That you told me. That you looked me in the eye.”
“I don’t want to disappear.” I spit. “Not from you.”
He exhales through his nose, then reaches up to rest his hand briefly on my cheek, rough and careful. “Then don’t. That’s all I ask.”
Later, in my room, I sit cross-legged on the bed with my phone in my lap. The morning light is brighter now, cutting across my blankets. A message lit the screen:
We’re not done. Tonight. Your choice how.
My pulse jumps, but the fear that usually follows doesn’t come. Instead, there is a steady kind of clarity. This isn’t the shadows anymore. This was a step into the open, messy daylight.
And even though my hands shake, I whisper to myself,I can handle the light.
Chapter Nine
One Week Later
Triston
The locker room is buzzing, but I can’t hear half of it. Sticks clattering, skates carving against rubber mats, the usual trash talk and jokes bouncing from one wall to the other, but it’s all static. My teammates are locked in their rituals, pumping each other up before game time. Me? I’m lacing my skates like it’s the only thing tethering me to the ground.
Because tonight isn’t about the scoreboard. It’s about Sammie.
I told myself not to expect her. That she may not come. That maybe Wayne would keep her under his eye, hidden away. That maybe she’d be too scared to show up after the looks her father’sbeen throwing my way. But I know Sammie better than that. She craves danger almost as much as I crave her.
By the time I hit the ice, adrenaline’s already burning through me. The crowd roars, faces blur into one chaotic smear of noise and color. I skate fast, harder than usual, body running on instinct. But my eyes, they’re hunting. Row by row, section by section, until..
The whole damn world stops.
She’s in the crowd. Standing out like a flare in the dark. And she’s wearing it. My jersey. Number forty-eight stretched across her back, my name clear for everyone to see.
It’s like a punch straight to the chest.
Every muscle in my body tightens. Pride surges, raw and possessive. I don’t care who sees me staring. Teammates, fans, Wayne himself, it doesn’t matter. She’s wearing me. She’s claiming me without a single word.
The puck drops, and I play like a man possessed. Every hit is harder, every shot sharper, every stride carrying the weight of what I saw in the stands. Sammie, wrapped in my number, giving me the kind of fire no coach, no crowd, no championship could ever spark.
When I slam an opponent into the boards, I’m not just fighting for the game, I’m fighting for the right to her. To keep her, to hold her, to prove that no one else has a claim on her but me.
And when I score, I don’t hear the horn, I don’t hear the fans. All I hear is the soundless echo of what it must have felt like for her to pull that jersey over her head tonight. The decision she made. The risk she took.
She belongs to me. And now everyone knows it.
The horn still rings in my ears, but the game’s already gone. The crowd, the teammates, the celebration, it’s nothing but static. My veins are burning with a different kind of adrenaline. The kind that doesn’t drain with sweat or end with the buzzer.
Sammie.
She was there. Wearing me. And now, as the team files back toward the locker room and the crowd thins, I know where she’ll go. She’ll try to disappear, slipping through the back hall like she doesn’t belong here. But she does. More than anyone else in this building.
I strip out of my gear fast, barely hearing the guys jawing at each other about the win. I’m already moving, cutting through the noise and down the back hallway that leads to the back exit. My boots echo on the concrete, each step syncing with the pulse in my throat.
And then I see her.
Sammie, walking fast, head down, her hair spilling over the jersey, my jersey. She looks like she’s trying not to be noticed, but every inch of her screams that she belongs to me.
I don’t think so. I act.
One second she steps from the door, the next she’s in my arms. I sweep her off her feet, her gasp muffles against my chest. She grips at my shoulders instinctively, her eyes wide and shining in the dim light.
