But she won’t quite meet my eyes.
I study her face, seeing something I can’t name. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No. God, no.” She kisses me again, softer this time. “That was... that was perfect. I just—” She stops, struggling for words. “Can we just... not tonight?”
Every instinct says to push, to ask what’s wrong, to figure out why she’s pulling away when five minutes ago she had her mouth on me.
But there’s something fragile in her expression that makes me back off.
“Okay,” I say finally. “Not tonight.”
Relief flashes across her face, followed immediately by something that might be guilt.
She climbs off my lap and I let her, even though everything in me wants to pull her back.
She stays another hour.
We talk logistics about the upcoming road trip, about schedules and travel rosters. Professional distance reasserting itself even though we’re both still flushed, still breathinghard.
When she leaves, kissing me at the door like nothing happened, I’m left standing in my apartment trying to figure out what the fuck just went wrong.
She wanted me. I know she did. Felt it in how she touched me, heard it in the sounds she made.
But the second I tried to reciprocate, she shut down completely.
I grab my phone, thumb hovering over her contact. Almost text her. Then stop.
Whatever just happened, pushing won’t fix it.
She’ll tell me when she’s ready.
Or she won’t, and I’ll have to figure out how to to deal with wanting her more than she wants me. I head to my room, shoulder aching from the game, body still humming from her touch.
The satisfaction is there. But underneath it sits something sharper.
Frustration. Confusion.
The growing awareness that this thing between us is more complicated than I thought.
I lie in bed, replaying the moment she caught my wrist. The relief when I didn’t push. The guilt that followed.
She’s protecting herself from something.
And that’s the problem—I’m good at reading plays on ice, at anticipating where the puck will go, at knowing what my teammates need before they ask.
But Marnie? She’s a puzzle I can’t solve yet.
Though lying here, remembering the weight of her in my lap, the taste of her mouth, the way she’d looked at me before taking me in her mouth, I know one thing for certain.
I’m not giving up on figuring her out.
Even if it kills me.
17
MARNIE
I drive homewith shaking hands.
