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“You’re inventing medical conditions.”
“I am captain,” Max declared.
“That doesn’t make you a doctor.”
“No, but it makes Cinder answer my calls.”
I reached for the phone, but Max held it out of reach with the kind of smug expression only a man with several inches on me could get away with.
“Give it back.”
“You are supposed to rest.”
“I’m going to climb you if you don’t.”
His eyebrows rose, and I rolled my eyes. “To get the phone.”
“Which is a disappointing clarification.”
I stared at him until he finally laughed and handed it over.
The photograph was still open beneath the messages, and this time I looked at it properly. There was no hiding what it showed because my face was completely visible, as was Max’s, and there was no angle from which anyone could reasonably claim Colorado’s captain had been doing anything other than kissing one of his teammates in the middle of the ice after we’d won Game Seven.
Once upon a time, the thought of a photograph like that spreading across the internet would have made it difficult to breathe. I would have imagined strangers studying it, judging me, and searching for whatever else might be hidden beneath the surface until somebody eventually found the video my father had spent years threatening to release.
Now I enlarged the photograph.
Max came to stand beside me, his hip pressing against mine as he looked over my shoulder. “Do you hate it?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“You are certain?”
I glanced sideways at him. “Max, I scored the winning goal in sudden-death overtime on a penalty shot, and somehow, you’re the headline.”
His mouth twitched. “Je suis très beau.”
I laughed. “Asshole.”
“But beautiful.”
“Debatable.”
He slipped an arm around my waist while I looked at the picture again.
My father had spent eight years teaching me that a camera could destroy my life because he’d taken one terrible moment, one misleading angle, and turned it into a weapon powerful enough to control almost everything I did. Last night there had been cameras everywhere, catching the goal, the celebration, Max finding me in the middle of the chaos, and me kissing him back without once wondering who might see.
My life hadn’t ended because people saw me. If anything, it felt as though it had finally begun.
Max was still looking at the photograph when something in his expression changed. It was subtle enough that I might not have noticed a few months ago, but I knew him too well now to miss the faint tension gathering around his eyes.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s my line, and apparently neither of us believes it.”
His thumb moved slowly across my hip while his gaze stayed on the screen. “Do you ever wonder about the lifebound?”
