My mouth burned. My hand remembered the shape of his neck. My body still demanded the door, the hallway, him.
I did not move until the sounds of his skates faded back toward the ice.
Then I braced both hands on the nearest shelf and lowered my head.
I had spent weeks telling myself I was managing a difficult player. Then a complicated attraction. Then a line I could still choose not to cross.
The line was behind me now.
On the other side of the door, Jace returned to practice.
In my pocket, my phone buzzed once.
I did not have to look to know it might be Olivia, or work, or some ordinary piece of the life I had just fractured.
I looked anyway.
A message from my wife lit the screen.
Flight changed. Home Thursday night. Miss you.
I stood there until the screen went dark.
Then I wiped one hand over my mouth, opened the door, and walked back toward the ice like a man who still had a job to do.
We had finally taken what the room had been demanding from us.
Now we had to live with it.
Chapter 13
Chapter 13
JACE
I made it through practice the way people survived bad weather. Head down. Teeth together. One instruction at a time.
The second I stepped back onto the ice, I knew every person in the building existed too loudly.
Skates cutting. Pucks hitting boards. Milo laughing at something Brooks said. Lowell asking for a reset. Roman’s blocker tapping the post. The hum of the lights overhead. My own breath inside my helmet, too hot, too fast, trapped against my face.
And Declan.
Not close. Not doing anything obvious. He stood near the boards with a whistle in his hand and a tablet tucked under one arm, looking exactly like he had looked before he put his hand on my neck and kissed me in the equipment room.
That was the problem.
Nothing had changed.
Everything had changed.
“Holloway,” he called. “Second group. Run it from the half wall.”
My stick slipped against my glove.
Not fully. Not enough to look like anything. Enough that Roman turned his mask toward me.
I skated into position and tried not to think about Declan’s mouth. I lasted half a second. Maybe less.
