Chapter fourteen
~DOMINIC~
The coffee machine is too loud in the morning. Or maybe it’s just my head that won’t shut the fuck up.
I stand in my kitchen barefoot, sweatpants low on my hips, hands braced on the counter. Dawn barely exists outside. Pale light bleeds through the windows, touching the floor.
It took two melatonin pills to force me to sleep last night. Jessica passed out soon after, her body exhausted from what I put her through. I was far from tired. I had to talk myself out of going in for round two.
The machine finishes and I pour coffee into two mugs. I keep mine black but add milk and twoteaspoons of sugar to the other one. That’s how she drinks it.
I drag a hand down my face with a slow exhale.
I fought so hard to convince myself this was strategy. PR. A transaction with good optics and a clean exit. I don’t mix want with responsibility because that’s how men get sloppy.
Turns out I’m not immune. I’m just arrogant enough to think I was.
She was so responsive last night. Her body responded to mine instead of bracing. She stopped trying to be clever and just let herself react.
Fuck.
My grip tightens around the mug.
I’ve been with women who knew exactly how to perform—walked in already half naked, gave me what they thought I wanted, took what they could get.
Jessica didn’t perform. She trusted I wouldn’t drop her once she stepped into it. She chose me to be the first to fuck her.
My ego eats that shit alive.
She chose my hands, my mouth, my cock. Trusted me with something most men don’t deserve. My cockstirs at the thought, remembering. I swallow a mouthful of bitter coffee. I can still taste her if I let myself.
So much for discipline. So much for distance.
I lean back against the counter, my eyes drifting to the stairs. She’s still sleeping and the house feels different. My space feels occupied in a way that doesn’t irritate me, and that alone should set off alarms.
But here I am, already wanting more of her. Wanting to see if she still looks at me the same way now that the line’s been crossed. I don’t want to come back from it, but does she?
I take another sip and my mind drifts, uninvited, to the last three meetings with Tinnie and the board: long tables, clean suits, PowerPoint slides. Men who like numbers more than people and optics more than truth. Every single one smiling at me like a dog that finally learned how to sit, because the numbers don’t lie.
Attendance is up, engagement is through the roof, our social reach tripled in a month. Merchandise sales spike in demographics we’ve never touched before. Women, younger fans, people who didn’t give ashit about hockey suddenly arguing about lines and penalties in comments.
Because of her.
Jessica posting selfies of us, clips from the house, locker-room-adjacent but never crossing the line. Enough access to feel intimate.
She makes it look effortless.
But she doesn’t sit in those meetings. She doesn’t hear the bullshit. She doesn’t argue budgets or fight sponsors or bleed over spreadsheets at midnight like I do for the academy.
She doesn’t have a finger in it. And yet somehow… she’s making a difference.
I wanted to resent that the thing I’ve been grinding toward for years—my legacy, the academy—is being fast-tracked because a girl with a phone and a smile stands next to me.
I tried to be pissed. I paced my office after the first meeting where Tinnie pulled up the analytics and said, “She’s a goldmine, Dom. You don’t even understand what she’s doing for you.”
For me.
For us.
