Across the room, someone laughs - Barrett, I think, loud and unrestrained. I try not to even glance at the team table.
I eat a piece of fruit I don’t taste.
Eventually I can’t help it. My eyes move across the room without my permission, seeking him out the way they’ve been seeking him out since I first arrived, and I find him at the end of the team table. Coffee in hand. Talking to Chen.
He looks normal. There’s nothing in his posture or expression to suggest that a few hours ago he was inside me, that I know what he sounds like when he comes.
He looks up and our eyes meet.
His expression doesn’t change - he doesn’t smile or do anything that anyone watching would clock as anything other than a player glancing across a room.
But I feel it.
The memory of his hands. His mouth.
I pull my eyes back to my plate.
My face is hot. I can feel it - the blush climbing up my neck, impossible to hide, completely incriminating. I pick up my coffee and take a long sip and hope the mug covers most of my face.
“You’re flushed,” Tara says.
“It’s hot in here.”
“It’s freezing.”
“The coffee. Hot coffee.”
Across the room, Barrett says something that makes Mercer snort. I push my eggs around the plate without eating and calculate exactly how long I need to stay here before it’s reasonable to leave.
“You okay?” Tara asks.
“Fine. Just tired.”
She nods. She doesn’t push. But her eyes flick toward the team table, and then back to me.
I feel caught.
But she can’t know. No one knows. We were careful. No-one saw him arriving or leaving. There’s no evidence, no witness, nothing but my flushed face.
But Tara has been my closest friend since I arrived. She’s seen me walk into rinks and boardrooms and bars. She’s never seen me like this - distracted and off-balance, stealing glances at a table full of hockey players like a teenager with a crush.
I am a professional, I remind myself. I am a coach. I am twenty-three years old and I have competed in front of thousands of people and I can survive a breakfast buffet.
“More coffee?” Tara asks.
“Yes,” I say. “Please.”
She goes to the coffee station.
Mateo is standing now, plate in hand, heading toward the buffet line. He moves through the room with that unconscious physical confidence - the same way he moves on the ice, like his body knows what to do without being told. He reaches the chafing dishes and starts loading his plate.
He’s being so careful not to look at me that the carefulness itself feels conspicuous. He’s focused on his food with the intensity of a man defusing a bomb. Eggs. Bacon. Toast. Not a single glance in my direction.
It would be convincing if I didn’t know him.
If I didn’t know that normally - before last night - he would have caught my eye and given me a small nod at least.
This feels louder than any glance.
