Chapter 2

His eyes flashed. “Don’t.”

“Tell me.”

“Solene.” The full name was a warning and a plea at once. “I’m asking you—stop. Please.”

“Or what?” I held his gaze even as something inside me trembled. My breathing had gone shallow. “You’ll walk out again? You’ve been walking away from this for years. I’m done waiting for you to stop.”

He moved then—not toward me, but to the side, putting the counter between us like it could save him. His voice came out low, rough, almost shaking with restraint. I watched his knuckles whiten against the edge of the counter.

“You think this is a game? You walk out here like that, push me, and expect me to stay polite? To keep pretending I don’t notice every inch of you?”

“I expect you to stop pretending you don’t want the same thing I do.” The confession left me exposed. I felt the weight of it in my throat, raw and irreversible. Heat flushed across my collarbones.

“Want has nothing to do with it.” His knuckles whitened further. “I promised Caleb. I looked him in the eye and said I’d protect you. That includes from me. Especially from me!”

“Then protect me from the way you’re looking at me right now.” My voice cracked on the last word. A shiver ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the cool air. “Because it’s worse than if you touched me.”

Silence slammed into the room. His chest rose and fell once, hard. I could see the effort it took him to stay still. When he spoke again, every word was measured and dangerous, stripped of everything soft.

“If I touch you—even once—I won’t stop. Do you understand that? I won’t be careful. I won’t be gentle. I won’t remember that you’re his sister or that I made a promise. I will take everything. Is that what you want? Because that’s what’s waiting on the other side of this conversation. No going back!”

My mouth went dry. Under the heat of his warning lived the thing I had carried for so long, the reckless, terrifying hope that he might finally choose me. My heart slammed so violently I felt light-headed for a second. “Maybe it is.”

He closed his eyes for half a second, as if the admission physically hurt him. Then he opened them, colder, harder, like he had locked something away. I saw the exact moment his control reasserted itself.

“Get dressed. Lock the door. And do not open it again tonight. Not for anyone. Especially not for me!”

He walked past me without another glance. The front door shut hard enough to rattle the frame. The lock clicked like a final verdict.

I stood there in the quiet apartment, towel still wrapped around me, heart slamming against my ribs so hard it almost hurt. The boldness drained away, leaving only the raw, restless ache beneath it. My legs felt unsteady. Slowly, I crossed the hall, walked out of my apartment, and rested my forehead against his door. The wood was cool against my skin.

“You can run, Thad,” I whispered. “But I’m already here. And we both know that line you keep talking about is already cracking under your feet.”

I stayed with my forehead against his door longer than I should have, the thin towel still wrapped around me, the wood cool against overheated skin. My heart refused to slow, each beat felt too large for my chest. Eventually I pushed off, walked back into my apartment, and locked the door. Sleep came late and shallow, the ache low in my belly refusing to settle.

Morning arrived too bright. I dressed carefully—a short white skirt that sat high on my thighs, a cropped top that left a strip of bare skin above the waistband—and headed to the hockey rink. The stands were still mostly empty when I reached the sideline. I wasn’t officially on the cheer squad yet, but tryouts were open and I intended to be seen.

Thad was already on the ice.

Number 7. Dark hair damp with sweat, jersey clinging to the hard lines of his chest and shoulders as he skated through drills. Every time the whistle blew and the team reset, his eyes found me. A third time that dragged slowly down the length of my legs before returning to my face. Heat flooded my stomach and settled between my thighs. I didn’t look away. My fingers curled tight around the edge of the boards until the plastic bit into my skin.

When practice ended he skated toward me, pulling off his helmet. I walked over with a water bottle, pulse already uneven, the insides of my thighs brushing with every step.

“For the captain,” I said, holding it out.

He took it. Our fingers brushed. The contact was brief, but I felt the exact second he registered it—the slight freeze in his hand, the way his throat moved when he swallowed. He pulled back too quickly. A fine tremor ran through my own fingers. I watched the muscles in his forearm flex as he gripped the bottle harder than necessary.

“You shouldn’t be here this early,” he said.

“I’m trying out for cheer. The sideline is public.”

“Soso.”

“Thad.” I kept my tone light even as my pulse kicked harder against my collarbone. “You looked good out there. Focused. Almost like you weren’t watching me the entire time.”

His jaw flexed. He uncapped the bottle and drank, eyes fixed somewhere past my shoulder. When he lowered it, a drop of water slid down the side of his neck and disappeared under the collar of his jersey. I tracked it without meaning to. My mouth went dry. Lowering my gaze, I noticed the way the damp fabric of his workout shorts clung to the thick muscles of his thighs—and the unmistakable outline pressing against the front.

Heat rushed between my legs so fast it made me light-headed.

“Go home,” he said. “Or go to class. Anywhere that isn’t here.”

“Why? Am I distracting you?”

He stepped closer, close enough that I caught the clean scent of ice and sweat and something warmer underneath. The air between us tightened. His voice dropped further. “You know exactly what you’re doing.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.” The word was clipped. “And it’s not going to work.”

I tilted my head, letting my gaze drop deliberately this time—lingering on the clear shape of him through the thin shorts—before returning to his face. My own body answered with a slow, heavy pulse.

“It already is,” I said softly. “You’re hard just from looking at me.”

Something dark moved through his eyes. He exhaled once, sharp, and turned away like the movement cost him. “Practice is over. Leave!”

I watched him walk toward the tunnel with the rest of the team. My fingers still tingled where his had touched them. The boldness I’d worn like armor felt thinner now, stretched over the familiar, restless ache that never quite left. Every step home made me aware of how wet I already was.

That night I sat cross-legged on my couch in an oversized T-shirt that barely covered the tops of my thighs, phone in hand, heart already beating too fast for what I was about to do. I typed the message before I could talk myself out of it.

Me: Caleb said to look after me.

Me: So look after me all the way to bed.

The three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. Then nothing. A minute later my message showed as undelivered. He had blocked me.

I stared at the screen. A short, quiet laugh escaped, but it sounded unsteady even to me. The rejection should have stung cleanly. Instead it left me restless, skin too warm, nipples tightening against the soft fabric of the shirt. I set the phone face-down and tried to sleep. It took a long time. Every time I closed my eyes I still felt the brush of his fingers and the heavy outline I’d seen in his shorts.

I woke to the sound of a key in the lock.

Morning light filtered through the curtains. I was still on the couch, having fallen asleep there sometime after midnight. At some point I had pulled on the hockey jersey I’d found in the laundry basket he had left for me—his, number 7, soft and worn from years of use. It hung loose on me, the hem reaching mid-thigh. Nothing underneath. The cool air raised a faint shiver along my bare legs and higher, across the sensitive skin of my stomach and the undersides of my breasts.

The door opened.

Thad stood in the doorway, keys still in hand, frozen. His eyes moved from my face down the length of the jersey, lingering on the bare stretch of my thighs where the fabric had ridden up while I slept, then higher, where the neckline had slipped off one shoulder. The air left the room so completely I forgot how to breathe for a second.

I didn’t move. My heart slammed so hard I felt it in my throat, in my wrists, between my legs. Heat flooded my face and chest at the same time. I watched his gaze catch on the hard points of my nipples pressing clearly against the thin fabric, then drop again to the shadowed place where my thighs met.