Heknowsthat flush is from the weather. Knows it. But his body doesn’t give a damn about logic. All he can think about is what she’d look like spread beneath him, that red hair fanned across his pillow while he makes her flush for entirely different reasons. Those perky tits in his hands, his mouth. The sounds she’d make when he—Christ. He needs to get a grip.
He drags his gaze upward, hoping for safer ground, but even her hair’s working against him. Red curls pulled loose from whatever effort she had made this morning to look composed. A littlewild now. Damp at the ends. Unruly. He knows she usually styles it to look sleek, polished. He likes it better like this.
Garrett swallows hard and looks away, fixing his eyes on a half-torn poster for a junior league game across the concourse, suddenly riveted by it like it's the most compelling thing in the building.
“I, uh…should go eat,” he mutters. “I’ve got to stay on my schedule.”
It’s true—he’s already an hour off, and his meal plan is a precise, joyless regimen he follows without complaint. He needs to cram in enough protein to meet his numbers, which, for a vegan athlete, means choking down a brick of tempeh and a protein shake the consistency of wet cement.
Garrett lifts a hand and mimes eating with a fork—stiff, awkward, completely unnecessary—and immediately wishes he could take it back. He never does this. Never explains himself. Never breaks routine.
But he’s just done both. He’s not ready to unpack what that means.
Naomi mouths a distracted “thank you” and throws him a thumbs-up. Then her shoulders pull back, spine straightening. Within seconds, she transforms into someone composed and unbothered, her face bathed in the glow of the Zoom call lighting up the tablet screen.
Garrett lingers a beat too long, still warm all over and increasingly annoyed by it.
He really does need to eat.
Because if he keeps standing there, he’s going to say something he shouldn’t.
CHAPTER 11
NAOMI
Naomi tucks her frozen fingers deeper into the sleeves of her coat and leans forward in her seat, exhaling sharply as the puck rockets across the ice. The crowd around them shifts and murmurs with the rhythm of the game—bursts of shouting, groans, scattered applause. Her butt is cold, her tea’s already lukewarm, and she’s not entirely sure what she’s watching.
Still, she’s trying.
“Okay,” she says, squinting at the players lining up for a faceoff. “Tell me again what icing is. But explain it like I’m five.”
Anthony sighs beside her, the suffering sound of a man humoring his little sister who is, for the first time in her twenty-five years on earth, showing an inexplicable interest in sports.
“You don’t need to know about icing,” he says, sipping his beer. “No one really knows icing.”
Naomi smirks. “Well, that makes no sense. What about offsides?”
He groans. “Even worse. Assume half the whistles are for some invisible crime.”
She laughs, bumping his shoulder. “Cool. So I just clap wheneveryone else claps and hope no one notices I’m googling ‘what is a power play’ under the table.”
Anthony turns to her, brow raised. “Wait, are you actually trying to learn hockey?”
Naomi lifts her chin, feigning casual. “It’s called research. I’m a professional.”
He squints at her. “You work in marketing, not journalism.”
“And yet here I am,” she says, gesturing to the arena. “Making an effort.”
Truthfully, she doesn’t know why she cares this much. Or maybe she knows, and she just doesn’t want to say it out loud.
She still isn’t sure what shocked her more this afternoon—the freezing rain or the moment Tall reappeared like a scowling delivery boy and placed an oat milk matcha latte on the table beside her.
Followed by two Whalers tickets.
No explanation. No eye contact. Just a muttered “Here,” like he was allergic to generosity. Like doing something thoughtful physically hurt him.
She’d nearly fallen out of her chair.
