The words slice clean, but her voice cracks halfway through betraying her. And that’s what breaks me because she doesn’t mean it. I hear the truth in the fracture of her voice, the way the last syllable trembles like it’s bleeding out between us. It’s not anger; it’sheartbreak. It’s her trying to convince herself that walking away will hurt less than staying.
But I see the flicker in her eyes when she saysforget,the way her fingers tighten around her arms like she needs something solid to hold on to before she falls apart. She’s trying so hard to make this neat, to fold it into something she can control. But her voice and eyes give her away. If I reached out and touched her right now, I know she’d crumble. And maybe that’s why I don’t, because I don’t want her broken; I just want her to be mine.
I swallow the ache that rises in my throat and take a slow step closer, quiet enough that the floor doesn’t even creak. “I can’t just turn it off, and I don’t think you can either.”
Her shoulders shake once, almost imperceptibly, before she forces them still again.
God, she’s beautiful in a way that ruins you, like she’s holding herself together with sheer willpower. I don't want to be the mistake she tries to erase. All I want is to make this easier for her, to prove that it doesn’t have to cost her everything. But she can’t hear that when she’s built her entire life on being unshakable.
So, I stand there, helpless, while she rebuilds her walls, brick by brick.
Even as she looks me dead in the eye and says, “I can do anything I put my mind to. And so can you. Forget anything that happened before we met today inmy office.” I can still hear the truth echoing underneath it.
For a second, neither of us moves. It’s like the air itself knows that we crossed into something invisible and can’t go back. Her chest rises and falls, and her eyes shine like she’s fighting a war no one else can see, then she blinks and buries every trace of feeling under that sharp, polished calm she wears like armor.
“You’ll get your schedule in an email, Mr. Hendrix,” she says, and the sound of my last name feels like a door slamming shut between us. “Try not to make my job harder than it already is.”
The words are professional and controlled, exactly what she’s supposed to say. I want to tell her she doesn’t have to do this. That she doesn’t have to pretend none of it mattered, but I don’t. She needs this moment of control more than she needs my comfort. And if I care about her even a little, I’ll let her have it.
Alycia shifts in her chair, pretending to review the notes in front of her. Her eyes don’t lift, but I can see the pulse fluttering at her throat.
“You don’t have to pretend with me.”
Her breath catches, sharp but silent, and then she exhales through her nose. Her eyes remain fixed on the paper she hasn’t actually read for the last five minutes.
“I’m not pretending.”
She flips to a blank page and says, still not looking at me, “You’ll report to Janine for media training since you missed the rookie training. That’s the protocol.”
There’s a beat where I wait for her to take it back. She doesn’t.
“Janine,” I repeat, quietly. “Not you?”
Her jaw tightens. “It’s better this way.”
Better for who?The words burn the back of my throat, but I swallow them because she looks like she’s holding herself together by threads.
I want to touch her, to tilt her chin until she looks at me again. But I don’t because she’s trying so hard to stay composed, and I know what it costs her to do it. So, I just stand there, staring at the back of her head like an idiot, memorizing the way her breathing stutters when the silence stretches too long, before taking a slow step back. The sound of my shoes against the floor breaks the spell.
Her hand freezes mid-note, but she doesn’t look up as I whisper, “I’ll see you around, Torres.”
She nods once, and I walk to the door before I change my mind. My reflection ghosts across the glass as I turn back one last time and find her still sitting at her desk, pretending to work and not feeling anything. But I see the truth in the way her shoulders hunch just slightly when she thinks I’m gone. The way her hands cover her face for half a heartbeat before she drags them away again, forcing herself upright. That one motion undoes me because I know she is breaking, too, and I can’t do a damn thing about it. I press a palm to the glass before I leave, and the imprint fogs with the heat of my skin.
“Yeah,” I whisper, voice low and wrecked. “We’ll just pretend.”
But pretending doesn’t stop the ache that’s already burrowed under my skin. And I know, even as I walk away, I’ll feel her there in every breath I take that doesn’t have her in it.
Chapter Twelve
Kyle
The sharp cold of the rink hits first, the chill biting through my lungs and reminding me I’m still alive. It’s been almost a month since I walked out of her office, and the season starts next week, but somehow none of that distance has done a damn thing to dull the burn she left behind. I tell myself that being back on the ice will clear my head, scrape the ache out of my chest, and freeze over the parts of me that are still burning from what she said. But it doesn’t.
The second my blades hit the rink, the noise floods in—sticks clattering, skates cutting grooves into the surface, and Beau shouting something about my “rookie glow-up.” The air smells of sweat and home. It’s chaos, but I still feel off balance. It’s like my body showed up and my mind stayed back in that damn office, watching Alycia hold herself together while I came undone.
I circle the rink twice, pushing harder with each stride. The ice sings under my skates, slicing through the noise in my head.Focus, Hendrix. Eyes up. Handssteady. You have a job to do.My body knows the rhythm after years of training, moving automatically and giving me something that I can rely on. The ice doesn’t care that my chest feels like it’s caving in. It doesn’t ask questions. It just takes what I give it.
So, I skate harder and try to pour everything into the pattern. If I can get the timing right, if I can make it look easy, maybe I will forget the way she looked at me when she shut down any chance of there being something real between us. But forgetting her feels like trying to unlearn how to breathe.
