Chapter Eighteen
LUKE
I’d never wanted anything as badly as I wanted Mila. Not a goal. Not a championship. Not even my dad’s approval. Just her.
Coach ran us through down-backs until my legs shook.
He favored Mondays—the reset, the grind, the way a roomful of guys came in with weekend leftovers they needed to skate out.
My calves still shook from edge work. Pucks zipped off sticks with that sharp, satisfying crack.
The cold bit at my lungs, and I let it, took it as penance for things I couldn’t fix yet.
After, the locker room smelled of sweat, tape, and that metallic tang that never fully left your nose.
I showered fast, letting the hot water pound my shoulders until the muscles in my neck loosened.
Then I pulled on a shirt from my bag, along with my jeans and boots.
I didn’t linger, didn’t joke with the guys, and didn’t even check the mirror.
After tossing my gear into the trunk, I slid behind the wheel and gripped it at ten and two, watching my breath fog the cab for a beat before it faded.
Mila had texted earlier in school when I’d asked if she’d wanted company—Not tonight.
But maybe tomorrow. It should’ve been enough.
But those boundaries were meant to protect her, not trap her.
And truth was, I couldn’t shake the picture of her from Friday—head tipped back, fierce, mouth against mine, as though she’d already decided.
I couldn’t forget what I’d told her, low and certain.
I’m here. All in. Even if no one else could see it.
I drove. The coast road was washed clean by the afternoon wind, eucalyptus bending over the shoulder and brushing the sky.
The ocean flared blue between gaps, flashes of steel and white that hit me behind the ribs and settled there.
My SUV ate up the cracks in the pavement, impatient, the way I was too.
I didn’t text ahead, didn’t ask for permission. I just pulled onto her street and parked where I could see her front step and the slice of the living room window beyond the hedges.
No invite. No pressure. I typed with my thumb. No pressure, but I’m outside if you want company.
I could’ve left it at that—sent the text, driven off, given her space.
But I didn’t move. My hands stayed locked on the wheel, my heart punching the same spot against my sternum.
The porch light was still off. The window only threw back the sky and the tall shapes of the cypress at the end of the yard.
No movement. Then the light flickered on, and the door opened.
She stepped into the rectangle of light, bare feet, nails painted a color I couldn’t name in this distance.
A soft sweater skimmed her shoulders, her hair wound up into a messy knot on top of her head that exposed the long line of her neck.
The star charm glinted, catching what the porch light could find.
She looked toward the street, spotted my SUV, then lifted a hand in a small gesture—come in.
By the time I walked up the path, the smell of lemon cleaner floated out into the evening. Her hand wrapped around the edge of the door. A dark smudge marked her thumb—graphite, probably.
“My mom’ll be home soon,” she said, voice low as though her mom would materialize if she talked too loud. “But come on in.”
“Thanks.” I kept it even, hands loose at my sides, when every part of me wanted to reach for her.
The living room was all soft edges and old furniture, the kind that sagged more from years of use than from any real comfort.
A couch with a throw blanket in a knit that begged for a hand to drag across it.
A sketchbook on the coffee table, spiral bent as if someone had worried it through a rough week.
The window was cracked, letting in the salt and the last of the day’s warmth.
Somewhere in the kitchen, the fridge hummed steadily in the background.
She folded herself into the corner of the couch, legs tucked beneath her, the blanket pulled across her lap and up to her waist like a shield or a habit. She looked small. Breakable—but not fragile. Mila was forged in fire.
I didn’t sit right away. I stood opposite the couch and took her in. The way she held my eyes and didn’t. The way her mouth pressed and eased and pressed again.
“You okay?” I asked.
She looked at my chest, then my face, then the window, then back. A slow nod then a head shake. “No. But I will be.”
I didn’t push. I set my hand, palm up, on the cushion. I’d let her choose. That was the only pressure that worked.
She stared for a second as if it was a question she was answering for herself. Then she put her hand in mine.
Small. Warm. Callus along the side of her middle finger from a pencil that lived there too often. I folded my fingers around hers and felt something settle that hadn’t since Friday.
Silence stretched long enough to count. Her breath evened. “Before we do anything else,” I said, keeping my voice low, “I need to ask—are you having second thoughts about Friday night?”
The corner of her mouth ticked upward. Barely there. “No second thoughts.”
My chest tightened, breath catching. I let my thumb trace her knuckles. “Good.”
Her head found my shoulder like it had been meant to be there all along. The weight of it—the trust—hit me harder than any check on the ice. I leaned a fraction into her, careful. Her hair smelled of apples and ocean air, a mix that grounded me more than it should.
She shifted against me, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I was quiet today because I was still trying to process. Friday… it changed things. Being with you that way.” Her breath caught, soft against my shoulder.
“And then today, pretending at school—acting as if we’re nothing more than acquaintances—it was more difficult than I thought it would be.
Harder because when we’re here…” Her fingers tightened around mine.
“It’s all still there. Intense, but different too. ”
My throat burned, rough with how much I wanted to fix it. “Friday changed everything.”
Her lips curved, faint but certain. “Yeah. It did. Even if it’s messy.”
“It is,” I breathed. “We agree on that. The thing that sucks?” I exhaled through my nose, jaw tight because it wanted to clench.
“I can’t claim you publicly. Not yet. Not if it puts you in danger.
” If Elise caught even a whiff of this, she would twist it until it poisoned everything.
And if Dunn wanted leverage? All he would have to do was pull the right string and watch us unravel.
Her head lifted. Eyes on mine. There was a softness there that didn’t take anything away from the steel. “It sucks for me too.”
“I know.” The words burned, but I forced them out anyway. “It’s killing me. Not being able to tell people you’re mine. I want it out there.”
Her breath hitched. The star charm rested against the collar of her sweater, a promise for a future I hoped was still within our grasp.
The world I grew up in measured everything in leverage.
I learned that early—money shifted from one account to another, promises that sounded clean but always left a film, adults smiling while they lied.
I watched, learned, and adapted. I grew up doing mental math, figuring out who would use what, and when.
It hadn’t hit me when I first met her. But now I knew—people would try to use Mila against me, against herself. Elise already had. And my dad had the kind of power that could be a problem.
“We can wait if you want. If Friday was too much, or if it feels like moving too fast with everything else going on. But I won’t pretend you aren’t—” I stopped. The word wasn’t ready for the air yet. I felt it under my sternum, stubborn and permanent. “Important.”
Her mouth trembled as if she might contradict me, or laugh, or lean in. She did the last one. She rose on her knees and kissed me. Slow. Then not slow.
Her fingers slid along my jaw, found the line of stubble I’d missed with a blade this morning.
She traced it as though she was learning a map she hadn’t been allowed to study until now.
My hand went to her waist and found the edge of her sweater and the heat of her skin where it had ridden up.
I didn’t pull. I set. I anchored. She made a sound in the back of her throat that took the rest of my patience and turned it to glass.
The kiss turned frantic. Then deep. Then something entirely ours.
A rhythm we hadn’t invented so much as uncovered, as though it had been under everything since the first time she’d shouldered past me in a hallway a lifetime ago.
She tasted of mint and whatever sweet she’d had earlier.
Sugar on the seam of her mouth. Confidence in the way she slid closer, one knee bracketing my thigh, the throw blanket tangling between us until I pushed it aside.
The star charm swung and tapped my throat, cold, a tiny meteor hitting the same spot until I sucked in a breath and laughed into her mouth. She smiled against me like she knew exactly what she was doing.
And as much as I wanted to follow through with where this was going, we couldn’t. Not tonight anyway. Her mom already wouldn’t approve of me sitting here, let alone what we were doing. I didn’t need another roadblock between me and Mila—not one I couldn’t fight my way past.
Wanting her lived under my skin—every brush of her mouth flared it, heat racing through me, a fuse I kept trying to pinch out with both hands.
“Your mom,” I managed, because it mattered, because it had to matter, because lines made us safer right now. “What time?”
“Soon.” Her voice was air and heat and hard edges filed down. “Not yet.”
I grinned without meaning to. “Not yet,” I repeated, a promise and a plan wrapped in two words.