For a while, neither of us moved.
The room returned slowly. The lamp. The hum of the heater. My heart trying to relearn a normal rhythm.
Declan lifted his head first.
His face was flushed. Beard damp at the corner of his mouth. Eyes clear but unguarded in a way I had never seen.
“You okay?” he asked.
I nodded, then realized that was not enough. “Green. Very green. Embarrassingly green.”
A quiet laugh left him, and the sound did something soft to my chest that sex hadn’t touched.
He kissed me once, gentle this time, then got up to get a towel from the bathroom. The loss of his weight made me feel exposed. My brain started moving again, slower than usual but still dangerous.
Vanessa.
Olivia.
Roman’s face.
Home.
Declan returned and cleaned me with a care that made my throat ache. He cleaned himself after, then handed me my briefs and pants without making it weird. We dressed halfway in silence, not distant, just careful.
I sat on the edge of the bed, shirt still off, and watched him pull his sweatpants back into place.
“When we get back to Denver,” he said, “we need rules that don’t bend because we want them to.”
The calm after sex thinned.
I nodded. “Okay.”
“Nothing at work.”
I looked down at my hands. My fingers were still sticky at the edges despite the towel. “Define work.”
“The arena. Practice facility. Team hotel on game days. Planes. Buses. Anywhere I am actively your coach and other people can reasonably expect access to us.”
“That’s a lot of places.”
“Yes.”
I hated the answer because it was true.
He came to stand in front of me. “I’m not saying nothing happens.”
I looked up.
“I’m saying not there. Not in my office with players outside. Not in a hallway where you came to me overloaded and I confuse care with wanting. Not anywhere the dynamic can get tangled with your job.”
My chest felt tight. Not panic. Not rejection. Something more complicated.
“So what happens?”
“We plan. We talk before. You tell me colors honestly, even if the honest answer means no. I do the same.”
“You have colors too?”
