"Yeah." Lou stepped off the ice, settling onto rubber matting with the ease of someone who'd done it ten thousand times. "We play well together."
The words carried weight that exceeded their surface meaning. Camille felt it in her chest, in the flutter of her pulse, in the sudden awareness of how close they were standing in the empty corridor.
"We do," she agreed quietly.
They walked to the locker room in silence, but it wasn't the awkward distance of the past few days. This felt charged in a different way—anticipation rather than avoidance, something building rather than something being suppressed.
The locker room was empty when they entered. Steam still clung to the air from earlier showers, fogging the mirrors and softening the harsh fluorescent lights. Camille moved to her locker automatically, pulling off her jersey and pads with movements made jerky by awareness of Lou doing the same across the room.
She kept her eyes averted. Mostly.
But she couldn't help glancing over as Lou stripped off her own jersey, revealing the sports bra beneath. Couldn't help noticing the muscles in her strong shoulders, the lean strength of her arms, the confident way she moved in her own skin.
The warmth in Camille's chest spread lower. Deeper.
This wasn't normal. This wasn't anything like how she'd felt about men—about Mario or any of the others who'd passed through her carefully curated life. This was urgent and unsettling and completely foreign, a desire she'd never known how to want before.
She grabbed her towel and fled to the showers.
The water was hot, almost scalding, and Camille let it pound against her shoulders while she tried to make sense of what was happening inside her. Steam billowed around her, turning the shower room into a hazy private world where nothing was quite solid or certain.
She was straight. She'd always been straight. Every relationship, every encounter, every attraction she'd ever acknowledged had involved men. The possibility of wanting something else had simply never occurred to her—not asdenial, but as complete blindness to an entire dimension of herself.
Until Lou Calder.
Until green eyes and honest words and the electric awareness that sparked between them every time they shared the same space. Until not long ago in this very locker room, when Camille had recognized something in Lou's careful distance that matched the walls she'd built around herself.
The shower room door opened. Camille turned, breath catching in her throat.
Lou stood in the entrance, Camille’s eyes drawn by her lean muscle; a study in light and shadow. Lou was completely naked, completely unself-conscious, her short dark hair slicked back from her face in a way that emphasized the sharp lines of her jaw and cheekbones.
Camille couldn't breathe.
"Sorry." Lou's voice was rough. "I didn't realize?—"
"It's fine." The words came out too fast, too eager. Camille felt heat flood her face, but she couldn't look away. Couldn't stop her gaze from tracking down Lou's body—the small breasts, the tight abdominals, the powerful thighs that spoke to years of explosive skating.
She was beautiful. Not in the polished, magazine-ready way Camille had spent her life being told to value, but in a rawer sense. Real. Present. Devastatingly attractive in ways Camille hadn't known she could be attracted.
"I can wait outside." Lou was still standing in the doorway in the steam, hot water from Camille’s shower streaming past her feet toward the drain. Her eyes were fixed on Camille's face, dark with something that made Camille's stomach clench.
"Don't."
The word escaped before Camille could think better of it. She watched Lou's expression shift—surprise, then understanding, then something deeper that matched the wanting pooling low in Camille's belly.
Lou stepped further through the steam towards Camille.
The steam wrapped around them both, turning the world into something soft and indistinct. Lou moved to the showerhead beside Camille's, reaching for the soap with movements that seemed deliberately casual. But Camille could see the tension in her shoulders, the controlled steadiness of her hands.
She was as affected as Camille was. The knowledge was intoxicating.
Camille's shampoo bottle slipped from her fingers, clattering against the tile. She bent to retrieve it at the same moment Lou did—their hands colliding, fingers brushing in the slick steam.
The contact was electric.
They both straightened slowly, too slowly, their faces suddenly inches apart. Camille could see water droplets clinging to Lou's eyelashes, could count the faded freckles across her nose. Lou's breath was warm against her lips, unsteady in a way that matched the racing of Camille's heart.
"Camille." Lou's voice was barely a whisper. "What are we doing?"
