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"Stratton!" Coach Dave's voice cuts across the tables. "Big Mike wants the captains for the sponsor toast. Now, apparently. I don't make the rules, I just resent them."

Miles hesitates, torn down the middle, and I do the gracious thing because it's the only thing available.

"Go," I say. "Toast and by the sounds of it, you should… go to the suite."

He studies me for a moment, before he swears under his breath and heads for the stage.

A few minutes later, after the Captain's Toast, across the glittering ballroom, I watch Miles Stratton shake Robert Callahan's hand. He looks devastating, professional and entirely at home, like he is finally stepping into the future he has chased for eleven years.

This is it, isn't it?

Ottawa isn't a vague someday anymore. It's a real NHL organization with a suite upstairs and numbers on paper, sitting on the other side of the country from a Christmas tree farm and a market hut and a woman in a borrowed green dress.

Hours ago, Miles pulled me into a team photograph like I belonged beside him.

Now I stand alone with my champagne, wondering if I've simply walked into another man's life again…

Without asking myself where I want to stand.

Chapter 16

Miles

Ileave the ballroom with that look on Audrey's face burned into my eyes.

I'm walking away from the woman I want and toward the future I have wanted for eleven years.

But it shouldn't feel like this.

It shouldn't feel like choosing between them.

Audrey and I made no promises beyond Christmas, and a private meeting with Ottawa does not automatically change either of those things.

So why does leaving her alone in that ballroom feel like the first bad decision I have made since finding her standing in a wedding dress on the side of a mountain?

The elevator carries me toward the private suites upstairs while Christmas music plays overhead and her lipstick remains stamped across my collar. I should wipe it away before meeting the men who may decide the rest of my career, but for now, that doesn't seem so important.

When the doors open, Robert Callahan steps into a suite guarded by two men in Ottawa jackets. They usher me inside, and the suite on the top floor doesn't look like it's preparing to host a hockey meeting. It looks like a place where goddamn fortunes change hands.

A fire burns low behind glass, snow tumbles past the enormous windows, and Robert Callahan sets up at a polished table beside a man introduced as Ottawa's assistant general manager—a guy named Pearce with a handshake like a bank vault closing.

Between them, on the table, sits a navy folder with Ottawa's logo embossed in the corner, sitting proudly like it knows exactly how fucking important it is.

"Miles," Callahan says. "Sit down before you fall down. Trust me, you're going to want to see what we've got lined up for you."

I sit down and Pearce slides the folder across the table. He studies me while opening it with two fingers.

"We're going to cut to the chase here," Pearce says, his deep voice husky and gruff. "We want you for the remainder of the season. NHL roster spot with guaranteed money, performance incentives, and a club option for next year that becomes very interesting if you play the way you've played here."

I look at the number on the bottom of the paperwork.

Then I look at it again, because the first look didn't make sense.

It's not superstar money. It's not even first-line money.

But it's real money, more than I've had before.

It would clear the farm's debts in one stroke, replace the baler, fix a tractor or two. Hell, maybe even turn the developer's offer into scrap paper on my parents' kitchen table if we're smart about things.