And he closes the gap.
It’s soft. Brief. His lips against mine for just a moment, careful and questioning, and I kiss him back because I can’t not. Standing here in the cold with his hand on my face it turns out I have no defenses left.
Then I find them.
I step back.
“We can’t.” My voice is mostly steady. “It’s unprofessional.”
His hand drops.
He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t argue or push or make it worse. He stands there and looks at me and whatever’s in his expression, I can’t read it clearly enough in the dark to know what to do with it.
“I’m going back inside.” I leave him standing there.
Tara is where I left her. I slide back into my seat and pick up my drink.
My heart is hammering for no good reason.
Outside the window, after a moment, I see him come back in through the door. He finds Chen at the bar and Chen hands him a drink without being asked, and that’s it, totally normal.
Except that I can still feel his hand on my face.
I take a long sip of my drink and remind myself of every single reason why I was right to step back from him.
There are a lot of them.
It’s just that none of them are working very well right now.
8
Chapter 8
ELIDA
Saturday morning is the women’s team, which is exactly what I need - different energy and nothing that requires me to think about last night. I’m on the rink by eight and the girls are already there, lacing up and talking over each other.
I love this session. I’ve loved it since the first one. The main women’s coach, Ava, is easy to work with and has welcomed the additional skating input gratefully.
This is what I came here for - these girls who before this year didn’t have the chance to be on a women’s hockey team. I run them through some skating drills and they complain and laugh. One of them - a freshman called Dani who has no business being this good this early - runs the sequence back to me so cleanly that I make her do it again so the others can watch.
I don’t think about Mateo.
Tara runs the off-ice conditioning at the end while I make notes, and afterward we sit in her office with terrible coffee - it’s a cultural problem, the coffee in this country, I’ve accepted it - and she talks about the team’s progress. I listen and contribute, all the time picturing Russo in the back of my mind.
“You seem chirpy this morning,” Tara says at some point.
“The win last night. Good for team morale.”
“Mm,” she says. Exactly like Iris would.
“The girls had a good session.”
“They did.” She takes a sip. “Shame we weren’t playing Northern State again. It would have been nice to have a reason to see that very nice assistant coach again. Or maybe you don’t need a reason?”
She’s fishing. But I’d almost forgotten we had plans to go out tonight.
Tara catches my guilty look and raises her eyebrow. I sigh. “Well… he suggested meeting. Tonight, actually.”
