It slammed into him with the weight of a cannonball, thick in his throat, choking him. He swallowed against the burn, his pulse hammering.
Nettie wasn’t just his sister’s childhood best friend anymore. She wasn’t just the girl he’d grown up half-aware of in the background. The pest he’d pushed away so many times because she was off limits, too young for him, too annoying, too different. He’d shot her down once already, and she never made a move again toward him.
She was nothing.
She was… Nettie.
And she… was wearing his jersey.
His number stretched across her chest, the bold digits right over her heart. It shouldn’t have meant anything. But in that moment, it slammed home with an awareness that was staggering.
The laughter around him, the families celebrating, the glow of unity—it all carved into Tate like a blade. He’d always kept himself separate, safer on the outside. Hockey. His house. His cat – a cat he really didn’t even want to begin with, but now couldn’t imagine life without Mulligan. Or so he’d convinced himself.
But now? Looking at them, at her? They were happier than he was, and he saw it. Fuller. Brighter. And it stung like truth always did. There was no way he could allow himself to indulge in stupid emotional distractions – because he couldn’t be like Thierry.
Molly’s laugh rang out, breaking through his thoughts. She clung to Thierry as if the rest of the world didn’t exist, the two of them lost in each other. His captain touched her stomach again, tender and reverent, his grin splitting his face wide. The man was soft, mushy, didn’t have thecojonesto do what it took to be the captain… and…
Tate’s eyes snapped back to Nettie, as if he couldn’t stop himself.
She turned. Slowly. Like she felt his stare tugging at her.
Her gaze caught his.
The noise. The chaos. The deafening roar of fans chanting his name and the scrape of blades on ice—none of it existed in that moment.
It was just her.
Tate’s chest constricted so tightly it felt like someone had sucker-punched him. The world, the arena, the game—it all tunneled down to a single point: Nettie.
Her gaze had locked with his, and he couldn’t look away if his life depended on it. Her hands curled white-knuckled around the railing, her lips parted in something that wasn’t quite a smile, wasn’t quite a frown. Fear flickered there—raw and exposed. Fear, and worry, and hesitation.
But there was something else, too.
Recognition.
Like she saw the confused storm raging inside him, and it mirrored her own that she kept buried away from the world, but he saw it. The weight of that awareness stole the air from his lungs.
She drew the air from the room like a vacuum.
Hockey had never done that. Not championships, not rivalries, not even the bone-crunching hit that had once sidelined him for three months. Nothing had ever rooted him so completely. Nothing had ever made him feel like maybe he wasn’t as untouchable as he pretended to be, and he saw how vulnerable she was in those moments.
He wanted to move toward her, to raise his hand, to give her some kind of sign that he wasn’t as unshakable as everyone thought. That he saw her. That he still?—
No.
The spell shattered with a voice so loud and obnoxious it could’ve rattled the rafters.
“C’mon, Fat Clairol, I missed you, bro! Let’s skate…”
The sound ricocheted through the arena like a gunshot.
Tate jerked his head toward the source of the noise, tearing himself from Nettie’s gaze. His soul screamed in protest at the sudden loss.
Lifting a brow, he found exactly what he expected—the blond menace himself, skating across the ice with a cocky swagger that only Barrett Coeur could pull off. The man’s ridiculous topknot bounced with every push of his skates, like some kind of golden antenna designed to annoy Tate personally. His helmet was in his hand, his smile wide and confident like he’d come up with the best crack at Thierry ever.
Ha.
“I call him ‘Fluffy’…” Tate muttered, his tone dry enough to scrape sandpaper.
