“Too late. Already decided.”
“You’re hopeless.”
“And yet you keep coming back.”
I was still smiling when the elevator doors closed.
I was still smiling when I reached my car.
I was still smiling when I pulled onto the highway, windows down with January sun warm on my armand the whole world looking different than it had twenty-four hours ago.
Not because anything had changed.
Because everything had.
Chapter 28
Skyler
I’d been smiling since I’d closed the door behind Jacks, smiling through my shower, smiling while I brushed my teeth, smiling during the entire drive to the practice facility while some terrible pop song played on the radio that I would normally have changed but instead found myself singing along to because apparently I was the kind of person who sang pop songs now.
Jacks had done that to me.
Jacks and his coconut hair and his terrible jokes and the way he’d curled into me last night like I was built to hold him.
This is what it’s supposed to feel like.
I’d said those words in the dark. They’d been barely a whisper. They’d also felt like the truest thing I’d ever spoken.
And now I was carrying that truth into the Lightning practice facility at 9:42 a.m., wearing it on myface like a neon sign I couldn’t switch off.
Get it together, Shaw. You’re a professional. Act like one.
I pulled into my usual spot, killed the engine, and spent thirty seconds trying to rearrange my face into something that didn’t scream, “I had the most transformative night of my life and I’m still processing it.”
Then I practiced my neutral expression in the rearview mirror.
It looked unhinged.
Like a serial killer trying to blend in at a PTA meeting.
I tried serious.
God, that was worse. I looked constipated.
I settled on what I hoped was “pleasantly rested” and headed inside.
The locker room was already half full when I walked in, with guys in various stages of suiting up, and the usual pre-practice chatter bouncing off tile and metal. Murph was holding court near his stall, recounting some story that involved hand gestures forceful enough to qualify as a contact sport, and Kowalski was taping his stick with the meditative focus of a monk. The equipment guys moved through the space with quiet efficiency, laying out gear, adjusting skates, and keeping the machine running.
It was a normal morning.
I could do this.
“Morning, Cap!” Murph called out. “You look—” He stopped, squinted, then tilted his head like a dog hearing a strange noise. “Different. You look different. Did you get a haircut?”
“No.”
“New skincare routine?”
