The orcling stepped back.
The case was full of pastries arranged in neat rows, everything golden and perfect. It was a good Sunday.
I ordered and took my coffee and pastry to the small table by the window I always used.
I’d just sat down when he walked in.
Tolrek was not easy to miss in any setting, but he was especially incongruous in a small bakery on a Sunday morning, despite wearing civilian clothes instead of hockey gear.
He passed by me and stopped in front of the case, scanning the offerings with the same focus he gave everything.
I wondered if he’d seen me yet.
I had only a short time to decide what to say if he did.
Megha greeted him warmly, and he ordered. She bagged it and handed it over the counter to him with a smile.
He turned and walked through the center of the room again, taking a few steps past where I sat before coming to a stop.
I didn’t look away.
He turned and met my gaze. Then he walked over and sat down, placing the bag on the table between us, opening it to reveal two raspberry pastries.
He lifted one out and took a bite, gazing out the window.
I tugged the other one out of the bag. I’d already eaten my first, but indulgence was good for the soul, right?
Outside, a couple walked past with a dog wearing a bright yellow jacket. Tolrek watched them with no expression. The dog was small and fluffy and overdressed for weather that wasn’t even cold yet.
I took a bite of pastry. The dough shattered the way it always did, and the raspberry filling was both sweet and tart. Megha made these better than anyone else. I swallowed and ate some more, watching Tolrek while he looked at everyone but me.
A thing in my chest had been growing for days. I’d started calling it awareness, then interest, then something I didn’t want to identify.
I was running out of neutral names for it.
Tolrek drank his coffee. Finished his pastry. And watched the street without saying a thing.
Neither did I.
It was the best conversation we’d had since the welcome dinner.
CHAPTER FOUR
TOLREK
My evenings belonged to Beau.
The rest of the day revolved around practice schedules, team meetings, and conditioning sessions that left my legs feeling heavy. During that time, my head remained somewhere between sequences I needed to memorize and the awareness that I was still learning this team’s patterns. Evenings were different. After I left the rink, went home, and changed into regular clothes, I took Beau to the park.
It was nonnegotiable. Beau needed the routine. The structure of it. Dogs behave better when they knew what to expect, and this one had been through enough disruption without me adding to it.
That I needed the routine too was something I wasn’t examining.
On Tuesday, like always, we left my apartment and walked the few blocks to the park, him straining on the leash, pulling me toward a vendor with a cart near the path’s entrance. Four pounds of Yorkie who moved through the world like he weighed two hundred. People noticed the size contrast between us. I’d caught the looks and double takes at a seven-foot orc with a dog small enough to fit in his pocket.
A few laughed, though kindly.
I didn’t care.
