His hand moved—slow, deliberate—but not fast enough.
“Too late.” I grinned, flopping dramatically onto the couch like I’d just claimed a throne. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law. It’s mine now. Long live the queen.”
He just shook his head with that tired, amused look like I was equal parts chaos and exhaustion.
Honestly? Fair.
“I’m going to stick handle,” he announced, already heading toward the corner of the living room where he’d casually left a hockey stick and one of those off-ice training balls like it was totally normal furniture.
“Okay,” I said, way too absorbed in flipping through his streaming apps. “You do that. I need to see who gets eliminated from Love & Lip Gloss: Season Six. Priorities.”
I settled back into the couch, hoodie tucked around my knees, and found the episode I’d left off on. Trash TV excellence. High-stakes mascara drama. Zero regrets.
From the corner of my eye, I saw him start—smooth and focused, his hands gliding over the stick like it was muscle memory. Because it was. He barely made a sound as he moved, just the soft tap-tap of the ball against the floor.
Every now and then, I caught him glancing toward the screen.
“You’re watching,” I teased once, not looking away.
“I’m not,” he replied flatly—right before adding, “Why is that guy wearing a sequin suit in a hot tub?”
I snorted. “That’s Troy. He’s the villain. We hate him.”
“Mm.” Tap, tap, tap.
Two minutes later: “Is that the same guy from the rooftop wine fight?”
“You are watching.”
“No.”
But then he asked if Jade was the one who got proposed to by accident last season, and at that point, I just raised an eyebrow and shifted over slightly to make room.
And without fanfare, somewhere between a dramatic rose toss and a confessional meltdown, he sat beside me.
Still holding the stick. Still balancing the ball between his feet.
But not moving anymore.
Just watching. With me.
And if I noticed our arms brushing—or the way he didn’t pull away—I didn’t say anything.
Because maybe this was stick-handling too. Just a different kind of control. A softer kind of game.
Chapter 10
Nikolai
The reality show flickered to an end, the screen dimming into black as the credits rolled in silence. I didn’t move.
Mina’s head rested on my shoulder, light and warm. Her breathing had fallen into a steady rhythm sometime during the second meltdown of the episode. I wasn’t sure which dramatic breakup finally lulled her to sleep, but I wasn’t about to wake her now.
Her body was soft against mine, her presence a strange kind of gravity that pulled everything in me closer to stillness. The way her fingers curled tightly around a throw pillow made me smirk—like she needed a shield, even in dreams. She looked peaceful. Not defeated. Not fragile. Just… still.
I let my gaze drift over her features—the slight crease between her brows, the curve of her cheek, her lips parted just slightly as she exhaled. It should’ve felt invasive. It didn’t. It felt inevitable.
A girl in a stolen hoodie, sprawled across my couch like she belonged there, had managed to rearrange the furniture in my head without ever lifting a finger.
