Adam and Derek were on me the second I stepped into the locker room. I didn’t even make it to my stall before Adam’s voice came flying across the benches.
“So, you and James, huh?”
I froze mid-step. “We’re colleagues.”
Derek barked a laugh. “Colleagues don’t look at each other like that, man.”
I tossed my gym bag down harder than I needed to; the thud echoing off the tile. “Like what?”
Adam grinned like a kid who’d just found candy. “Like you’re in a slow-motion movie trailer, right before the kiss scene.”
Derek smirked. “You saying there was a kiss scene?”
The sound of my locker slamming shut made them both flinch, but only for a second. They lived for this kind of crap.
I grabbed a towel off the bench and hurled it straight at Adam’s head. “You two should take up stand-up comedy. You’d kill at children’s birthday parties.”
Adam caught it midair, still laughing. “Hey, I’m just saying—when a guy starts volunteering for extra foundation work and walking the PR director to her car, it’s not strictly professional anymore.”
Derek added, “Yeah, and when he nearly bites someone’s head off for saying her name, it’s definitely not professional.”
“Done,” I said flatly, already heading for the showers. “Conversation over.”
They chuckled behind me, voices fading into the background noise of running water and echoing laughter, but the damage was already done.
Under the spray, I leaned against the wall, palms flat, letting the heat bite against my shoulders. The sound drowned everything else out, but it couldn’t quiet my own thoughts.
If everyone can see it, it’s a problem.
It wasn’t supposed to show. Not on my face, not in my voice, not in the way my eyes tracked her across a room. I’d built my whole life on control—on keeping emotion and impulse in separate cages. But Ellery James had a way of slipping past the bars before I even realized she’d done it.
I closed my eyes, letting the steam cloud around me.
Distance. You need distance.
I repeated it like a mantra, over and over, until it almost sounded believable. But the truth burned under my skin, anyway. Because no matter how far I stayed, part of me was already hers.
For the next couple of days, I made myself disappear. No texts. No calls. No foundation drop-ins. No excuses to “swing by” just to check on some made-up equipment issue.
If I was good at anything, it was discipline—and I was determined to put that to use. I threw myself into training like I could sweat her out of my system. Early drills, late lifts, extra laps until my lungs burned and my legs shook. Every time the urge to text her hit, I picked up a heavier weight. Every time I thought about her laugh, I ran another mile.
But nothing hit right.
The ice baths didn’t clear my head. The guys’ jokes didn’t land. Even the adrenaline of a scrimmage—the one thing that usually shut my brain off—just fizzled out before it started.
It was ridiculous. It was one kiss and a disaster. I’d had worse nights, worse regrets. But somehow, this one stuck.
Every small thing around me was a reminder I didn’t want.
Naomi walked past during a post-practice press meeting, and I caught the faint scent of Ellery’s perfume—sharp and clean with a hint of citrus. I froze mid-answer, earning a weird look from the reporter. Later, scrolling through the team’s social media, I saw a photo from the youth clinic—Ellery in the background, clipboard in hand, talking to a kid like they were the only two people in the world.
She tucked her pen behind her ear in that photo. I’d seen her do it a hundred times in person. The image hit harder than it should have.
I shut the phone off and dropped it face-down on the counter, pacing like I could outrun the ghost of her voice in my head.
You’re ridiculous, I told myself. It was one kiss and a disaster. Move on.
But my body didn’t get the memo.
