“Miss you too, Sage.”
I had such a clear image of him in my head. Sitting in his truck in that parking lot, shadows creeping over the window as he tightened his hand around his cock to stroke out the last drops of his tension. I pulled out my wet fingers to rub over my sensitive clit again, shuddering at the thought of him thinking of me while he jerked off.
“Home tomorrow,” I whispered, then yawned despite my desperation to stay with him.
“Tomorrow.”
I must’ve drifted off, because my eyes flew open when Aiden’s alarmed voice shot through the phone.
“Shit.”
“What? What happened?”
My mind raced. Had someone seen him there in his truck with his dick out? I felt heat creep into my face that had nothing to do with desire.
“Check your phone,” he said then.
I pulled it away from my ear, trembling again for no real reason, and saw a message from him. A screenshot. I skipped over the headline automatically, eyes zeroing in on the picture.
It was us—Aiden and me, slipping out of Purple Rose late at night. Caught laughing, shoulder to shoulder, the kind of candid that made my stomach drop in delight and terror at once.
“Shit,” I whispered. Then I read the headline:
Surge’s new glory boy in love?
Notifications exploded across my screen as if my contacts had sensed the realization as it happened. Ramona, Melvin, people I hadn’t spoken to since elementary school…
A weird feeling churned in my gut, and something very close to panic took over.
I’d gone viral, and there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do about it.
23
Aiden
The hallway leading to the press room closed in on me as I hustled to keep up with Holly’s long strides. Her confident, purposeful energy did little to calm my nerves, although she’d been trying her best for the past half hour. I gripped the laminated notes as though her tips would seep into my brain by osmosis. Possible questions. Acceptable answers. Bullet points. She promised I’d be fine if I just said exactly what she told me, word for word.
“I’m not like the others,” I said as we turned the corner. The gaping doors from the press room took on the air of a horror movie, beckoning me into its bowels. “Mason and Landon, even Grayson is a natural.”
“Deep breath,” she said, patting my back. Although I realized soon after that it was her way of rushing me along, not a sign of reassurance. “There’s no such thing as a natural. Mason was a bumbling fool before I got hold of him. You’ve got this.”
I wanted to believe her, but it was hard to think of a time when Mason couldn’t charm a room full of cameras without breaking a sweat. Me? I was already imagining all the ways I was going to trip over my tongue and fumble the whole presser.
My phone pinged in my pocket, and I grabbed it out of my pocket, heart in my throat. But it wasn’t Sage surprising me with a text from an airport saying she caught an earlier flight home.
“Eyes on me, Santos,” Holly said. “You stall now, and the press will smell fear. They live for it. Also, put that thing on silent.”
I nodded and promptly did as I was told. Glancing over the first line of my notes sent my anxiety into overdrive.“I’m happy with the win, grateful to my teammates for having my back, and focusing on the next game.”
Idiotic, in its simplicity, but I couldn’t seem to make it stick.
Holly shoved the door open before I could think of a single excuse, and my feet froze at the threshold. Cameras, flashes, reporters leaning forward with pens poised, microphones stretching like tentacles toward me. The energy of it all pressed in without filter, and I felt like I was standing on the edge of the ice during a penalty shot, except the puck was replaced by every journalist in the city staring straight at me.
Sage should’ve been here. Her dry, biting commentary would’ve cut through my panic. Her perspective would have hurtled me right back down to earth. Instead, she was a thousand miles away, wrapped in hotel room silence and convention chaos, probably scrolling through gossip rags on her phone, hating all of this in a way that made my gut twist tighter than a playoff OT.
Holly nudged me forward. “Keep it moving. You’re up.”
The press room door swallowed me, and the weight of all those lenses and expectant faces slammed into my chest. This was a different kind of game. Not the ice, not the roar of the crowd. This was the behind-the-scenes beast of professional hockey. And right now, it had me pinned.
