"Lou." Camille raised her voice, not caring if the neighbors heard. Not caring about anything except the woman on the other side of this door. "I know you're in there. I'm not leaving until you talk to me."
More silence. The seconds stretched, each one an eternity. Camille pressed her palm flat against the door, as if she could reach through the wood and pull Lou toward her by force of will alone. Then footsteps, heavy and reluctant, crossing toward the door.
The lock clicked. The door opened.
And Lou stood there, looking worse than Camille had ever seen her—hair unwashed, dark circles under her green eyes, wearing the same worn Valkyries t-shirt she'd probably been sleeping in for days. Her face was a mask of exhaustion and something that might have been grief.
"You shouldn't be here," Lou said, her voice rough.
"Probably not." Camille leaned on her crutches, meeting Lou's eyes without flinching. "But I am. And I'm not going anywhere until we talk."
Lou stared at her for a long moment—weighing, calculating, probably searching for an excuse to close the door. But something in her expression shifted, cracked, gave way.
She stepped back.
And Camille stepped inside.
22
The inside of Lou's house was dim and quiet, the blinds drawn against the Phoenix Ridge sun. The living room smelled like coffee gone cold and the particular staleness of spaces that hadn't been aired out in days. Magazines lay scattered on the coffee table, unopened mail piled on the kitchen counter, a blanket tangled on the couch where Lou had clearly been sleeping instead of using her bedroom.
Camille took it all in with a glance—the evidence of Lou's self-imposed isolation, the physical manifestation of the walls she'd built around herself. Her heart ached at the sight. This brilliant, fierce woman, reduced to hiding in her own home because she was too afraid to face what was growing between them.
"You shouldn't have come." Lou's voice was rough, scraped raw by days of silence or crying or both. She stood with her back to the living room, her arms wrapped around herself like armor. "I told you it was over."
"You told me via text." Camille leaned her crutches against the wall and lowered herself carefully onto the armof the couch, taking the weight off her injured knee. "Twelve words. After everything we shared, you gave me twelve words and then disappeared."
Lou flinched, her shoulders drawing up toward her ears. "I didn't know what else to say."
"Then let me say something." Camille's voice was steady, the words she'd rehearsed all night finally finding their shape. "I just came from Mara's office. I told her and Astoria about us. About how I feel about you."
Lou turned then, her green eyes wide with shock. "You did what?"
"I told them the truth. That I'm in love with you. That I'm done hiding, done pretending, done being afraid of what people might think or say or write about me." Camille met Lou's gaze without flinching. "They already knew. They've known for weeks. And they support us—both of us."
"That's—" Lou shook her head, her unwashed hair falling across her face. "That doesn't change anything. I played terrible and we lost the LA game. I let the team down. I’m still a disaster. I quit the captaincy. I can't even?—"
"You quit because you were scared. Because you thought pushing everyone away would somehow make things better." Camille pushed herself up from the couch arm, ignoring the protest of her knee, and crossed the distance between them. "But all you did was break your own heart and mine. And the team's. We're all falling apart without you."
Lou's eyes glistened with unshed tears. "I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to be what you need and what the team needs and still be myself."
"Then let me help you figure it out." Camille reached out, her fingers brushing Lou's cheek, and Lou's breathcaught at the contact. "Let me be your partner. In everything. On the ice and off it."
"Camille—"
"I'm going to come out publicly. I'm going to tell everyone about us, about who I really am." The words tumbled out, urgent and true. "Not because I have to, but because I want to. Because loving you is the most honest thing I've ever done, and I'm tired of treating honesty like a liability."
Lou's hand came up to cover Camille's where it rested against her cheek. Her palm was warm, her fingers trembling slightly. "You'd do that? Risk everything you've built?"
"I'd do more than that." Camille stepped closer, close enough to feel the heat of Lou's body, to smell the traces of sleep and coffee that clung to her skin. "I'd burn it all down if that's what it took to be with you. Because none of it matters—the endorsements, the image, the careful calculations—none of it means anything if I don't have you."
The first tear spilled down Lou's cheek, catching the dim light from the window. "I've been so scared. So convinced that loving you would ruin everything. That I'd destroy your career, or the team's chances, or?—"
"You're not destroying anything." Camille wiped the tear away with her thumb, gentle as a whisper. "You're the best thing that's ever happened to me. The most real thing I've ever had."
Lou's composure cracked then—fully and completely, the walls she'd spent days building crumbling like paper in the rain. She surged forward and captured Camille's mouth in a kiss that tasted like salt and desperation and the particular sweetness of reunion.
Camille kissed her back with everything she had—all the fear and longing and hope that had been building sincethat first text message, since that first night on the couch, since the moment she'd looked across the locker room and seen something in Lou Calder's steady gaze that changed everything.
