Instead, she glanced at my empty cup and said, “You want a refill?”
“Yeah, why not?” I said, sliding my phone out of my pocket.
I wasn’t scrolling for anything in particular, just the habit of it, but the notification from Mason’s account caught my eye immediately. Cass grinned from a sunlit balcony, Mason holding her like she was the Stanley Cup.
“Figures,” I muttered under my breath. Not at the photo, really, but at the surge of… I don’t know, jealousy? Something sharper than that.
“What?”
“Look at this,” I said, flipping my phone around so Holly could see. Mason’s post announcing he and Cass had officially moved in together had plastered every feed I followed. “Guess the world’s officially rooting for the happy couple.”
She leaned over, glancing at the screen without comment. I thought maybe she’d say something sarcastic, but she stayed quiet, just tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Some people have it easy,” I muttered, half to myself. “Other people,” I gestured vaguely between us, “are stuck in the trenches doing the real work.”
Her eyes flicked up to mine, sharp and measuring, and she tilted her head in that way that always made me feel like I’d just walked into a chess game. “Yeah,” she said, voice calm but carrying a note Icouldn’t place, “some people do have it easy.”
I shrugged, tossing my phone on the table. “I don’t think I could ever date out in the public eye like this.”
Her head snapped up, expression hardening for a split second, then softening into something I couldn’t place. “Or date someone like me, right? Isn’t that what you said?”
I blinked, a little off-balance, and laughed, thinking she was mocking me. “What?”
Her gaze didn’t waver, didn’t flicker, and suddenly the joke hit me. She had taken my dumb comment seriously. My chest tightened a little.
“Wait, no. I didn’t mean… I mean, I wasn’t— uh,” I waved, uselessly, “I wasn’t saying that. I meant you’d never be interested in someone like me. You’re… too… too…”
She sighed, leaning back just enough to put a little space between us, though not enough to completely diffuse the tension.
“Too what?” Her tone wasn’t teasing. It wasn’t flirty. It was careful. Calculated. But there was something honest in it.
My shoulders sagged. Me and my big, stupid mouth. “What would you want with me anyway? I’m messy, impulsive, a disaster in front of a camera. And I don’t–”
“You don’t what?” she urged softly, but with that little force that always made me lean in.
“I don’t make things easy,” I said finally, eyes down, staring at the swirls in my latte.
“You think I don’t know that?” she said. “You have no idea how hard it is sometimes, juggling a personal life with my kind of work. Balancing what people expect, what I want, and what I’m actually capable of.”
“Someone like you? Come on,” I chuckled softly. “I imagine you’ll have a spreadsheet for it. Perfectly planned and scheduled to a T.”
She gave a short, humorless laugh. “Dating? Forget it. Personal life? Forget that even more. I’ve sacrificed more than anyone realizes, just to be the best at my job, to keep myself relevant, to keep people like you from screwing everything up.”
Her words hit me square in the face. I leaned back, letting a moment of silence stretch between us. The weight of what she was saying settled in. I had known she was driven, had always been professional to the point of being intimidating. But I hadn’t realized the cost.
“No shame in it,” I said eventually. “You know what it takes to be good at something that matters. I’ve spent my life trying not to let people down, not to be like the fuck-ups of my past. I get it. I do.”
Her eyes softened in that brief, unguarded way, and I noticed how the light caught the small curve of her jaw, the slight crease between her brows. “You do?” she asked, almost a whisper.
I nodded, a little embarrassed. “Yeah. I get it.”
I wanted to reach across the table, but I didn’t.
“Most people don’t see that side of you,” she admitted. “They just see the player. The guy in front of the camera. The headline.”
“And you make sure of it,” I said, leaning a fraction closer without meaning to. “But you see both sides. Which is different, to say the least.”
There was a pause, a long one, where everything slowed down around us. The hum of the coffee grinder, the distant chatter, the clink of cups. It all faded to the background. We were just two people, tired, off the ice, walls down, talking about things we never talked about before.
