I needed to know if he was falling too. The thought scared me more than anything else. Even more than the risk to my job or my relationship with my father or the invisibility that had kept me safe for years.
I worried I’d tell Tolrek how I felt and he’d look at me with his dark, direct eyes and tell me this was physical. Something that happened. Nothing more complicated than two people who lived across the street from each other and worked in the same building and couldn’t stop wanting each other.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.
I tried not to think about Thursday at four o’clock, when we’d have to face exactly what we’d been avoiding.
Or the container of cookies sitting on my counter, meant for someone I’d almost gone to but couldn’t quite reach.
Or how badly I wanted to pick up my phone and send a message that said exactly what I was feeling.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
TOLREK
The hallway outside the equipment room smelled like rubber and disinfectant, familiar enough that I’d stopped noticing it weeks ago. I was heading to my locker when Haley came around the corner from the opposite direction.
We both stopped.
She was close enough I could see the shadows under her eyes, the way her hair had been pulled back in a hurry, and the coffee cup in her hand that she was gripping too tightly.
She looked like she hadn’t slept.
I probably looked the same.
Last night around one-thirty, Beau had started yipping at the door. I’d gone to check, half asleep, expecting a neighbor coming home late or someone’s door closing too loudly.
When I’d opened my door, the hallway had been empty.
But Beau had been insistent, his nose pressed to the gap at the bottom of the door, his tail going in circles. Someone had been there, a person he’d recognized by sound or scent.
I’d known immediately who it was.
Haley had come to my door at one-thirty in the morning and hadn’t knocked.
The knowledge had sat in my chest all night. She’d been close enough to touch but hadn’t reached for me. Whatever had brought her to my building had also stopped her from crossing the last few feet.
Now she stood in front of me in a corridor that was too public for anything I wanted to say.
Her lips parted like she was going to speak.
Behind her, voices echoed from around the corner. Staff heading to the morning meeting.
She looked away first, adjusting her grip on her coffee, and walking past me without saying anything.
The scent of her shampoo lingered after she’d gone.
I stood there until the voices around the corner faded. Long enough to understand that I was done waiting for a better moment. There wasn’t going to be one.
This ended today. Not us, but the pretending. All of it was going to stop at four o’clock when we sat down in her office and actually talked about what we were doing.
I was done pretending to the world that this wasn’t anything.
I changed up and joined the crew for morning practice. The team moved through drills with a heightened awareness that the season started next week.
Jim ran us through defensive zone coverage, calling out adjustments between sequences. When my line came off the ice, he leaned close to me where I sat on the bench.
“That gap control in the neutral zone was perfect,” he said, loud enough that half the team could hear. “Exactly what we need from our first line.”
