His jaw is set, his eyes are focused with a predatory intensity that makes my breath hitch, and his posture is rigid.
He doesn't look like my "Hercules" anymore. He looks like a Captain.
He walks toward me, his movements precise, and stops a few feet away. He doesn't sit. He just stands there, looking down at me with an expression that is purely transactional.
"Okay," he says, his voice flat and devoid of the warmth it had when he was patting my foot dry. "We have a problem. And we need to fix it."
“Jake, I swear, I didn’t know,” I say quickly. “I don’t follow the team. I stay away from all of it. I didn’t know what you looked like.”
He holds up a hand, silencing me.
"It doesn't matter what we knew yesterday. What matters is what we do now. This is a nightmare, a professional suicide, and a personal disaster all rolled into one."
I wince. "So... what now?"
He begins to pace the length of the room, his mind clearly working through a set of plays. "Logistics. We need logistics. Where do you live?"
The question feels oddly intimate and it throws me.
Because explaining my life to him feels suddenly too personal.
Too vulnerable.
“I’m still looking for an apartment,” I say, hating how small my voice sounds. “Well. Technically I live with my dad. In the house in Westchester. I’m still looking for a job. Until I have one, I can’t move out.”
I hear myself rambling and I hate it.
Jake stops pacing and looks at me, a flicker of something—disbelief? Irritation?—crossing his face. "You live in the house. The same house where he hosts the leadership dinners? The house I’ve been to three times for 'strategy meetings'?"
“I stay in my room!” I defend myself immediately, heat flooding my face. “I have my own entrance. I don’t sit in on ‘leadership dinners.’ I don’t listen to game plans. I don’t even know half your roster. I told you—I stay out of the hockey world.”
He lets out a short laugh.
Not amused.
Sharp. Disbelieving.
“Well,” he says flatly, “you’re in it now.”
There’s no sympathy in his voice. No softness. Just frustration.
“Deep in it,” he adds, rubbing his temples like I’m the source of a splitting headache.
He exhales slowly, recalibrating.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he says.
“I’m calling my lawyer the second I get on my flight back. He handles all the team’s sensitive matters. We’ll file for an annulment immediately. Grounds of intoxication. It’ll be like it never happened.”
My stomach twists.
“We go our separate ways,” he continues, his eyes not quite meeting mine, “and we never speak of this again. Understood?”
I look up at him, and for the first time since I woke up, the "Sunshine" in me feels a cold, sharp prick of resistance.
I look at the gumball ring on my finger.
Then I look at him—the man who, less than eight hours ago, treated me with a possessive, breathtaking tenderness that I’ve never experienced in my life.
