Beau pushes off the wall and straightens. “Enough with the heart-to-hearts. All of this will still be here in the morning.”
“Hear that? He’s got the dad voice now.” Cole glances over with a grin.
Beau rolls his eyes. “Someone’s gotta keep you two in line.”
“Good luck with that,” I mutter, the corner of my mouth twitching.
They leave, but I don’t move. My feet feel rooted, heavy with everything I can’t say. Beau pauses by thedoor, giving me that steady look that’s half sympathy, half warning.
“Don’t make it worse, kid,” he mumbles.
The word kid shouldn’t still sting, but it does. Because that is what they see when they look at me. Cooper’s little brother. Another Hendrix with something to prove. And now I’ve proven exactly what they were worried about: that I can’t keep my emotions off the ice or out of the press room.
The door shuts behind them, leaving me alone with the hum of the fluorescent lights and the faint smell of coffee gone cold. I pull in a breath that doesn’t quite make it to my lungs. She said this is business and that it meant nothing. But the way she looked at me said something else entirely. The tremor in her voice, the fists she made at her sides. I know she is lying. Maybe not to me, but to herself. That kiss wasn’t business. The way she shakes when I am close isn’t business. It never will be.
I lean back against the wall, tilting my head up until it thuds against the drywall. My chest aches with everything I can’t fix or fight. If pretending is the only way to keep her, then fine. I’ll play along, but behind every headline and photo op, I’ll be counting down the minutes until I get to be alone with her again. Until I can prove that none of this is fake, least of all the way I feel.
She thinks this is survival, but what she doesn’t realize is that she’s the only thing keeping me from falling apart. So, fine. I’ll play the long game, because she’s worth every second.
Chapter Seventeen
Kyle
It’s been two and a half months. Of pretending I don’t feel her everywhere. Her perfume in the hallway, her name in every email subject line, and her voice in every press clip attached to mine.
Ten weeks of watching her walk past me like I’m no one.
She has buried herself in work and spun our mess into a miracle, turning a scandal into a love story so clean the internet can’t stop eating it up. Every time I see her, head down, phone in hand, eyes anywhere but on me, it feels like she is taking another step away.
I catch glimpses of her in the office, chewing her lip when she’s thinking and the faint wrinkle between her brows that only shows when she’s overworked. I want to cross the room, pull the phone out of her hand, and remind her that the last thing she said to me wasn’t a quote. It was my name, whispered like a secret. But she doesn’t look at me once, and it is driving me insane.
Every second she doesn’t speak to me is a slow punishment I can’t fight my way out of. I would takeher anger over this distance any day. A sharp word, a glare, anything that proves I still matter. Instead, I get professionalism and polite distance, and I hate it.
She’s doing exactly what she said she would: keeping it clean, keeping it safe. And all I want to do is ruin that safety. To stand too close. To make her forget the rules she’s clinging to. To remind her that beneath all this PR polish is still the woman who kissed me as if she meant it.
The first real headline dropped earlier this week:Hendrix’s Heart Timberwolves Defenseman Finds Love at Home.
By lunchtime, we were trending. By dinner, Momma was leaving me a voicemail, asking when she would get to meet “the lovely Alycia Torres.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was fake, because it isn’t, at least not for me.
Now I’m sitting in the conference room, watching Alycia present the PR rollout like she’s briefing a military operation. Her laptop glow reflects off her glasses, her voice steady and smooth. It shouldn’t hurt this much to watch her be good at her job, but it does.
She slides a color-coded packet toward Cooper. “Here’s the proposed schedule. Coffee on Saturday, the charity skate next week, and a brunch with sponsors at the end of the month. Enough visibility to sustain the narrative without overexposure.”
The narrative.Christ, I hate that word.
She keeps talking, something about media rollout and engagement metrics, but all I can focus on is thefact that she hasn’t looked at me once. It’s like I don’t exist, and the worst part is, she’s so good at pretending that a small part of me wonders if I ever did.
“Looks solid. Keep it believable, stay out of trouble, and don’t embarrass me. Understood?” Cooper grunts, flipping through the pages like they’re a scouting report.
“Yes, Coach,” I mutter.
Alycia echoes, “Understood,” at the same time. Our voices blend, and it hits me square in the chest like even the sound of us together feels too good.
“This isn’t a complicated arrangement. You two show up, smile for the cameras, and avoid creating another viral moment.” Cooper’s gaze lifts, cutting between us. “Think you can manage that, Hendrix?”
“Define manage.”
Cooper’s expression flattens. “Don’t test me.”
