I didn’t move. My legs had turned to stone. Calder’s breathing filled the space between us—rough, uneven, threaded with something like disbelief.
He turned slowly, wiping his mouth with the back of one torn knuckle. For once, he didn’t look like a coach or a father. Just a man who’d spent his whole life fighting and forgotten how to stop.
The silence stretched until it hurt to breathe.
All I could hear was my pulse and Calder’s voice, softer now, almost hoarse. “You okay?”
I wanted to answer—yes, no; I don’t know—but the words stuck somewhere between my chest and the split in my lip. So I just nodded, fingers trembling against the glass. His knuckles dripped red onto the floor. Mine did too.
Neither of us blinked.
His fingers brushed my cheek, careful, trembling. The pads of them grazed the split in my lip, tracing the sting like he could rewind the pain just by touching it. His jaw locked.
“He hit you,” he said, not a question. The words rasped, low and dangerous. “I’ll kill him.”
I caught his wrist before he could move. “Don’t.” My voice sounded small, broken glass against concrete. “Just… stay with me.”
Something in him eased. The fury shifted, turned inward. His thumb slid down to my chin, holding me there as if checking I was real.
I swallowed hard. “Are you… are you fired?”
He huffed a breath that might’ve been a laugh if it hadn’t cracked halfway through. “From Crestwood? Probably.”
A beat. My throat closed around the next words. “As a Serpent?”
His eyes met mine then, darker, softer. “Not sure,” he said. “Why?” The question sharpened. “Why did you take on everything alone? Why do that?”
The rink hummed around us, empty but alive—the sound of generators and the faint echo of our breathing. I looked up at him, the man everyone called trouble, ruin, waste. He looked like all of those things and none of them at once.
“Because I love you.” The words came out steady. No fanfare. Just truth. They hung there, heavier than the silence that followed.
He blinked like he’d been struck again. I waited for him to argue, to flinch, to remind me what loving him cost. Instead, he let out a rough breath, the kind that let everything go.
Might as well be free in every sense of the word.
Calder stepped closer until the space between us disappeared. His hand slid behind my neck, warm against the chill seeping through my jersey. He smelled like sweat, metal, adrenaline, and something fierce that would never be tamed.
He touched my face again, gentler this time, thumb smoothing over the bruise blooming under my eye.
“Come home with me,” he murmured. “Stay.”
The plea settled between us, quiet, impossible, real. My hand found his, sliding our fingers together, blood mixing with ice melt. The rink lights buzzed overhead, flickering like they couldn’t decide whether to hold on or burn out.
Neither could I. But for that moment, I stayed.
Chapter 30
Calder
The drive back to my place was a blur of streetlights and the hum of the engine, Billie’s hand gripping mine like she was afraid I’d disappear if she let go. I didn’t speak. Neither did she. The air between us was thick with everything we’d done and everything we still wanted to do.
The second we stepped inside, I had her against the door. My mouth crashed into hers, hard and hungry, like I could kiss the taste of Nate off her lips, like I could brand her with my name just by the way I touched her. She gasped, but her hands were already in my hair, pulling me closer, nails scraping my scalp. I groaned into her, my body pressing her into the wood, my hips pinning her there.
“Now that everyone knows,” I growled against her lips, “I can fuck you against this door.”
Her breath hitched, and I felt the way her body responded—arching into me, her thighs parting just enough to let me press my hardness against her. She was already wet, already ready, and the knowledge of it made my cock throb.
I ground against her, my voice rough. “I can finally touch you without hiding.”
