Hotel gyms all looked the same. Flickering fluorescent lights overhead. Functional. Each held equipment designed for business travelers, not athletes who needed it to hold their weight.
This one had mirrors on two walls. I’d been avoiding looking at myself clearly since the game ended, but the mirrors were built into the space.
The weights were too light. The bench was too narrow. But none of it mattered. Stillness was worse than inadequate equipment.
I did curls. Presses. Rows. Movements I could execute without thinking. This wasn’t cathartic. It wouldn’t fix what had happened on the ice. But it gave my body something to do while my brain ran through it all again.
I picked up something heavier, beginning another repetition.
The door opened behind me and footsteps rang out. I would know the sound of her anywhere. Haley crossed the gym and sat on the bench along the far wall, like the park bench that first evening with Beau.
In fourteen years I’d had teammates who’d clapped my shoulder after a loss and coaches who’d given me notes, and agents who’d told me the right numbers would fix everything.
I’d meant nothing to any of them.
She wasn’t here to fix me. She was just here.
I kept working. Three more sets. Then two. The effort wasn’t helping, but being watched made continuing impossible.
I set the weights down and straightened. I grabbed a towel and wiped my face. My chest. And draped it around my neck.
The mirrors reflected both of us. Her small frame on the bench. Me standing in the center of the room, still breathing hard from the exertion.
Quiet filled the room.
“I knew what you showed me. I worked through it.” The words came out flat. “I went into that game believing knowing would be enough.” I paused. “It wasn’t.”
I didn’t look at her when I said it, and I didn’t explain further.
The gym’s fluorescent hum filled the space between us.
I waited, though I wasn’t sure what I was waiting for.
She stood.
I tracked the movement in my peripheral vision but didn’t turn my head, not until she was close enough that turning became necessary.
When I did, she was right there, small in the mirrored gym. She looked up at me with the same certainty she’d had outside her apartment, as if whatever was growing between us was inevitable.
I didn’t move toward her, but I didn’t step back.
“Haley.”
She closed the remaining distance and put her hand on my chest, right over my heart.
The answer I’d been waiting for.
The door had a lock. I walked over and engaged the mechanism. The click echoed in the small space.
When I turned back, she was still waiting.
I strode back to her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HALEY
The lock clicked.
