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“Hey,” he said back.

Mikael grinned. Fedor looked vaguely uncomfortable. The rookie had already wandered off.

“I have a question,” I said.

Brashe’s mouth curved, though it wasn’t quite a smile. “Yeah?”

“Do all goalies have a god complex, or is it just the ones who can do splits?”

Mikael choked on his beer.

Brashe’s smile widened, all teeth and tusks and genuine amusement. “Just the ones who are really good at it.”

“So all of them, then.”

“Most of us have the humility to pretend otherwise.”

“But not you.”

“I’m working on it,” he said. “It’s a process.”

This was going well. I could feel it. I’d caught his attention. His eyes were moving over my face in a way most men never looked at me.

I sensed interest.

My pulse had started doing a hummingbird dance, but it felt good, like flying instead of falling.

Mikael said something about next season. Fedor was checking his phone. And Brashe was still looking at me, his mouth curved in that almost-smile that made my belly do interesting things.

“Maybe sometime you could tell me a little more about it,” I said.

“Oh, I…”

This was the part where I said something charming. Where I made him laugh and see me as someone worth spending time with. I had a whole doctorate. Surely I could manage another coherent sentence.

I opened my mouth.

His gaze flashed past me, and his expression changed. No, it shut down. As if someone had flipped a switch and the version of him that had been present a second ago had been replaced with one who was polite and distant.

“That’s cute,” he said.

The words came out light. Breezy. He could’ve been commenting on the weather.

“But I don’t do—” He gestured vaguely between us, his gaze slanting down my body.

My skin overheated. Prickled. And I suddenly wished I’d worn the dark blue dress, the one that made me—and my plus-sized body—fade into the background.

Brashe pivoted back to Mikael and Fedor, both appearing very interested in their phones.

I stood there for much too long, trying to process what had happened. Had there been a joke in there I’d missed?

The words took a second to land. When they did, they hit like a kick to the sternum.

Oh. He wasn’t brushing me off. He was filing me under girls who don’t get played with. Ones who were too soft. Too big. Too much of the wrong thing.

Maybe he meant something else. Maybe he didn’t date anyone from the team’s circle, some kind of rule, or superstition, or⁠—

But no. I’d seen the way his eyes had flickered down my body and back up. He’d taken a good look, and he wasn’t interested. I’d been seeing versions of that look since I was fourteen and wasn’t able to shop in the juniors section any longer.