That should not be this attractive.
I laugh shakily, trying to catch my breath. “You realize you’re setting the bar catastrophically high for the rest of the male population, right?”
A startled laugh breaks out of him. The sound warms my chest instantly.
Then his expression shifts again. Softer this time. Almost vulnerable. “Good,” he says quietly.
My pulse stumbles. That look right there? That’s the dangerous thing. It’s the way Owen looks at me afterward.
He kisses me slowly while his hand slides up my back in a lingering stroke that feels almost absentmindedly affectionate. The sweetness of it catches me completely off guard.
I melt against him before I can stop myself. And the second I do, Owen exhales softly against my mouth like that surrender matters to him, too.
That’s when the terrifying realization finally lands fully.
I don’t just want him.
I feel safe with him.
And that might be the most dangerous thing of all.
Chapter Seventeen
Owen
The second I step onto Seattle’s ice for warmups, I know tonight is different. Not emotionally different. More quiet than anything else in a way I haven’t felt since before everything with Remy started detonating my nervous system.
My head feels clear for the first time in days, every thought narrowing into the familiar rhythm of the game. The cold air burns clean in my lungs while I skate lazy circles through the crease, tapping each post with the edge of my blocker before settling into position.
Puck. Shooter. Angle. Movement.
That’s it. That’s all there is.
A shot whistles toward me during warmups, and I snag it clean out of the air with my glove without breaking stride.
“Attaboy,” Viktor calls from center ice.
Another puck rockets toward the top corner. Easy glove save. The boys notice immediately. Hockey teams are weirdly animalistic about energy. Goalies especially. If we’re off, everybody feels it. If we’re locked in, the bench settles like a nervous system regulating itself in real time.
Tonight, the entire team starts feeding off me before the anthem even finishes. As we line up for puck drop, Viktor skates past the crease and taps his stick lightly against my pads.
“It’s your night,” he says simply. “You got this.”
Something fierce and steady settles low in my gut. “Then let’s make it count.”
The puck drops, and the first period hits fast and ugly. Seattle comes hard right away, trying to establish pressure withaggressive forechecking and nonstop traffic in front of my net. Bodies crash against the boards. Sticks clash. Somebody loses a helmet thirty seconds in.
I settle deeper into the crease and let instinct take over as the puck cycles high through the zone. A slapshot screams through traffic from the point, and I kick the rebound hard into the corner before another shot comes flying toward my blocker side. The crowd groans when I knock that one away, too.
Good.
My body still remembers how to do this even when my head forgets who the hell I’m supposed to be.
A winger cuts hard across the slot five minutes in and tries to tuck one glove side. I track it cleanly and snag it out of the air with enough force to sting my palm through the glove.
The whistle blows.
Suddenly, Tristan is there, shoving the winger away from my crease. Bowen joins him a second later because Bowen joins every altercation like an emotionally unstable golden retriever spotting a tennis ball.
