"Got it." Lou's voice was rough as she handed back the phone, her fingers lingering against Camille's palm.
"Thanks." Camille straightened, pulse racing. The phone's screen showed a message from her publicist—some question about an interview request—but she couldn't focus on it. All she could focus on was the heat still tingling where Lou had touched her.
"I should go." Lou stood, pulling on her jacket with movements that seemed reluctant. "Practice tomorrow. Early."
"Right." Camille stood too, suddenly aware of how visible they were, even in this quiet corner. "Lou?—"
"Yeah?"
"I'm glad we talked." Camille met her eyes, letting Lou see everything she was feeling—the want, the hope, the terrifying certainty that this was already more than she'd bargained for. "I'm glad you said yes."
Lou's smile was soft, genuine in ways her careful expressions rarely allowed. "Me too."
She left first, disappearing through the coffee shop door into the bright afternoon outside. Camille watched her go, tracking the lines of her shoulders and the easy confidence of her stride until she disappeared around a corner. The space Lou left behind felt colder somehow, as if she'd taken some essential warmth with her.
Camille stayed at the table for a few more minutes, finishing her latte and letting the reality of what they'd agreed to settle into her bones. She was entering a secret relationship. With a woman. With a teammate.
Every rule she'd ever learned about managing her public life said this was dangerous. Every instinct shaped by years of careful image curation screamed that she was making a mistake.
But when she closed her eyes and remembered the feel of Lou's hand on hers, the spark that had shot through her when their fingers brushed—none of those warnings seemed to matter.
A secret relationship. Containment. Control. Safety.
It had seemed like the right answer when she'd scripted this conversation in her head. But standing here now, herskin still tingling from Lou's touch and her heart still racing from the electricity between them, Camille wondered how long any secret could survive what they were building.
And whether containment was even possible for a fire that already felt like it could consume her whole.
11
The knock on Lou's hotel door the night before the game against New York came at eleven-fifteen.
She'd been expecting it—had been lying in the dark staring at the ceiling, too wired from the day's travel to sleep and too aware of whose room was three doors down to think about anything else. New York had that effect on her: too bright, too loud, too full of the kind of energy that made her skin feel tight.
Or maybe that was just Camille's proximity. Hard to tell anymore.
Lou opened the door, and there she was. Camille wore silk pajamas in a deep blue that matched her eyes, her hair loose around her shoulders, her feet bare against the hotel carpet. She looked soft in ways Lou had rarely seen—no makeup, no armor, just the woman beneath all the polish.
Lou's pulse kicked hard against her ribs. Three doors down had felt like nothing and everything at once—close enough to imagine, far enough to ache. And now here Camille was, standing in the dim hallway with the icemachine humming somewhere distant and the whole city breathing outside.
"Hi." Camille's voice was quiet, uncertain. "I couldn't sleep."
"Me neither." Lou stepped back, making room. "Come in."
The hotel room was standard business-class: king bed, desk, window overlooking a Manhattan street that glittered with late-night traffic. Lou had left the curtains open, preferring the city's ambient glow to total darkness. Maybe that was a mistake—the light made everything too visible, too real.
Camille crossed to the window, looking out at the city that had been her home until recently. Her reflection in the glass was shadowed, contemplative.
"I used to love this view," she said softly. "When I first moved here, I'd stand at my apartment window and watch the lights and feel like I'd made it. Like all the sacrifice and work had led to exactly where I was supposed to be."
"And now?"
"Now it feels like a cage I didn't know I was building." Camille turned to face her, and Lou's breath caught at the vulnerability in her expression. "Everything I was, everything I thought I wanted, it's all tied up in this city. Mario. The media. The version of myself I performed for years because I thought that was what success looked like."
Lou didn't have words for that. She'd never had the kind of visibility Camille described—had never wanted it. Her own invisibility had felt like protection, not prison.
But she understood cages. She understood the walls you built around yourself without realizing you were also trapping yourself inside.
"You're not in New York anymore," Lou said finally. "You're in Phoenix Ridge. With me."
