Page 64 of The Grumpy Defenseman

I touched his jaw again.

“Evan.”

“Yeah.”

“Kiss me.”

He did.

Not like Paramour. That kiss had been a surprise, a door opening in a wall neither of us had expected. This was different. This was a man who had told the truth and was standing in the cost of it.

His hand found my waist, not grabbing, just arriving there, his palm spreading heat through the fabric of my shirt. When I leaned into him, he pulled me closer, one slow inch at a time, giving me every chance to change my mind.

I did not.

His mouth moved against mine with an intensity that was controlled and consuming at the same time: the way he skated, the way he played, the way he did everything when he stopped pretending he was not all in.

I kissed him back with everything I had been holding. Every frame I had almost taken and stopped myself. Every night I had spent editing photos of him and pretending the tightness in my chest was professional interest. Every second of wanting that had survived the hurt because wanting did not always have the decency to leave when pain entered the room.

His hand slid to the small of my back. Mine found his hair. We fit together in the narrow space between iron and light, between what he had broken and what he was finally trying to repair.

He pulled back just enough to rest his forehead against mine.

We were both breathing hard. His hand was still on my back, warm and steady, and mine was still in his hair, and neither of us showed any interest in moving.

“This is going to complicate everything,” he said.

His voice was wrecked.

I loved it.

“Good,” I said.

He laughed.

A real laugh. Low and startled, like the sound had escaped before he could file the paperwork to deny it.

I leaned into him. He held me.

The weight room hummed around us, dim and quiet and ours for as long as the cameras allowed us to pretend it was.

We stood there holding each other in a building that smelled like rubber mats, iron, and the faint ghost of ice, and I felt, for the first time in longer than I could calculate, like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

Not at the edge of the frame.

In it.

And for once in my life, I did not reach for the camera.

Chapter twenty-six

Samantha

The kiss changed shape.

One moment, we were standing in the weight room with the hum of the HVAC, the smell of rubber mats, and his forehead resting against mine. The next, his mouth was on my neck, my back was against the wall, and the very professional, very controlled version of Samantha Cole was being dismantled by a man whose hands shook when they touched her.

That was the part I could not stop noticing.