Jaw tightens. Eyes darken. “Yeah,” he says, voice rough. “Me neither.”
Heat blooms low in my stomach. Panic tries to rise with it, all the old alarms going off at once. I press them down. Just enough to breathe.
“What were you doing?” I ask, nodding toward the ice. “Just staring at the crease?”
He glances back at the empty net like he’d forgotten it was there. Rubs the back of his neck, expression guarded.
“Trying to get my head back in the game,” he admits. “It wasn’t working.”
There’s something raw in that answer. He came here for control, and he couldn't find it.
I understand that more than I should.
“Can I sit?” I ask.
He studies me, then nods once. “Yeah. Come on.”
He turns and steps back into the players’ box. I follow, rubber flooring soft under my sneakers. The boards rise up in front of us, scratched and scarred. From here, the ice looks like a lake at midnight, smooth and empty.
He drops onto the bench. I sit beside him.
We’re not touching. There’s a few inches of space between us, but it feels microscopic. His thigh is a solid line of heat at my side.
For a while, we just breathe.
The hum of the plant fills the air. Somewhere in the distance, a compressor kicks on. The building creaks.
“I shouldn’t have…” I start, then stop. Fingers curl in my lap.
He doesn’t look at me. Eyes stay on the crease. “You shouldn’t have what?”
“Come,” I say. “Probably. This is—”Dangerous. Messy. Against the rules.“Complicated.”
His mouth twists. “Everything already is.”
His hand flexes on his knee. The tape on his knuckles creaks.
I stare at that hand. At the bruises fading yellow under white. At the same fingers that cupped coffee, braced above my head, and pressed his phone into black silence.
Heart pounds so hard it hurts.
“Declan?” I say softly.
He finally looks at me.
My breath catches. There’s a question in his eyes, but something else too—something that looks too much like the way he watches the puck. Focused. Hungry. Controlled only because he’s choosing to.
All my practiced deflections shrivel under that look.
I swallow. My voice comes out smaller than I intend. “I… wish they hadn’t interrupted us.”
The words hang there, fragile and huge. My face burns. I want to take them back and wrap them in something safer, joke them away, pretend they slipped out.
Too late.
He goes absolutely still.
For a heartbeat, he doesn’t even seem to breathe. His eyes drop to my mouth, slow and deliberate, replaying the scene in the office the same way I do. Inches. Tilt. Breath.
