Chapter 12
“The old piece of shit worked fine.”
I shook my head, pulling up Thursday’s schedule on my phone as we left Knox’s building. “The old laptop took five minutes to boot up and sounded like a jet engine.”
Knox shoved his hands in his jacket pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold as we walked down Newbury. “I liked that laptop.”
“You threw it across the room last week,” I said.
“It deserved it.”
I almost laughed. “You’re a professional athlete. You can learn a new operating system.”
“That’s different. Hockey takes actual skill.”
“So does this.”
“Fuck off.”
But there was no real heat in it. We’d been bickering like this all morning—me trying to show him how to use the calendar function, him acting like I’d asked him to solve differential equations.
It was almost comfortable now, after a few days of this.
I was surprised to realize that Knox was actually listening when I explained things, even if he pretended not to.
Giuseppe’s shop was four blocks away. Knox’s tux pickup was scheduled for ten o’clock, and we were running five minutes early because I’d learned that Knox moved faster when he was annoyed about something.
Today’s annoyance: cloud storage.
“I’m just saying…” I continued, checking my phone again—pickup at ten, then back to the penthouse to review his remarks for Saturday’s dinner. “The new one has better processing speed, more storage, and it won’t overheat when you have more than three tabs open—”
“Holy shit, that’s Andrew Knox!”
We both stopped.
A guy in his twenties stood on the corner, phone already out, pointed at us.
At Knox.
“Here we fucking go,” Knox muttered.
Before I could process what was happening, two more people materialized. Then five. Then more.
“Andrew! Can I get a picture?”
“Are you playing again this season?”
Phones everywhere. People closing in.
Knox’s whole body went rigid beside me.
“Mr. Knox—” I started, but the crowd was already pressing closer.
“Sign my jersey!”
“My kid loves you, can you—”
“Are you guilty?”
That one cut through the noise. From a guy in a Wardens jacket, shoving forward. “Why’d you let your team down?”
Knox’s shoulders went up and back.
“Back up,” Knox said. Low. Dangerous.
The guy didn’t back up. “We had a chance this season, and you fucked it up because you can’t control yourself.”
“You want to say that again?” Knox’s voice got louder, sharper. He stepped forward—not back, forward—using every inch of his height, his size. The guy was probably six feet. Knox made him look small.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
My brain split into two tracks: the professional panic (if he hits someone that’s it, the league will bury him, the hearing is in a few days, I’ll get fired for not managing this) and something else, something angrier (get away from him, don’t talk to him like that, he doesn’t deserve this).
“I’ll show you can’t control myself—” Knox’s hands were fisting at his sides, that coiled-spring tension radiating through his whole frame.
I stepped between them.
My hand landed on Knox’s chest—
Holy shit.
He was solid. Like hitting a wall. All muscle and heat and barely-contained fury, heart pounding against my palm so hard I could feel it through the fabric of his shirt. I’d watched this guy on the ice for years, knew objectively how big he was, but touching him—
No time. Focus.
“We’re done here,” I said to the guy, voice steadier than I felt. “Back up.”
I kept my hand pressed against Knox’s chest and looked up to meet his eyes. Blue and furious and something else—surprise, maybe. That I’d stepped in front of him. That I was touching him at all.
“Not worth it,” I said quietly, just for him. “Come on.”
For a second, I thought he’d push past me anyway. Thought I’d just made everything worse.
Then Knox let out a breath and stepped back.
I kept my hand on his arm, guiding him through the crowd. Put on my best professional voice for the people still filming: “Mr. Knox has no comment. Please respect his privacy.”
Someone tried to follow. I angled myself between them and Knox, kept moving, kept pressure on his arm until we’d turned the corner onto a quieter side street.
Knox was still radiating fury, breathing hard, running his hand through his hair, looking like he wanted to go back and finish what the guy had started.
“That fucking guy. I should’ve—”
“But you didn’t.” I kept my voice steady even though my heart was hammering.
Knox stopped pacing and looked at me. “You stopped me.”
“Yeah.”
“Why? You don’t think I could’ve taken him?”
I almost laughed. “I think you could’ve put him through a wall. That’s the problem.”
Silence. Knox stared at me.
I made myself say it: “The league is watching you. Archibald’s camp is watching you. If you’d hit that guy, they’d use it at the hearing. They’d say you’re unstable, violent, can’t control yourself. And I. . .”
I stopped. Started again.
“I’m supposed to prevent that. It’s part of my job.”
Knox stared at me for a second longer than necessary. Then his mouth twisted, like he’d bitten down on something sour.
“You thought you’d get fired.”
“Yeah.”
“So you stepped in front of me to save your job.”
I met his eyes. “I stepped in front of you because he was an asshole, and you didn’t deserve that.”
Knox kept staring. Like he was seeing me differently. Recalculating.
Then he slumped back against the brick wall, and despite his size—six-three of solid muscle and stubborn attitude—he suddenly looked tired.
“It’s worse now,” he said. “Used to be just ‘Can I get a picture?’ Now it’s ‘Are you guilty?’ everywhere I fucking go.”
There was still aggression in his voice, but underneath it—exhaustion. The weight of constant scrutiny, constant judgment.
I surprised myself: “I’ve been to your games. A lot of them actually. It’s different seeing it from this side.”
Knox looked up. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. On TV you’re... larger than life. Untouchable. This. . .” I gestured vaguely at the street, the direction we’d come from. “This is different.”
“Better or worse?”
I considered. “More real.”
Something in his face softened. Just slightly.
We stood there for a moment. Then Knox pushed off the wall. “Come on. Giuseppe’s waiting.”
“Mr. Knox, perfect timing.” Giuseppe unzipped the bag with reverent care. “I think you’ll be very pleased.”
Knox took the tux into the changing room. I stayed in the main area, scrolling through my phone, trying not to think about the fact that my hand had been on Knox’s chest twenty minutes ago.
Professional. This was professional.
Then Knox stepped out, and every professional thought evaporated on impact.
Jesus Christ.
The tux fit like it had been designed specifically to make me forget how to breathe.
Black, perfectly tailored to his shoulders—and Knox had the kind of shoulders that deserved their own zip code.
The jacket emphasized his build, the crisp white shirt underneath making his tan stand out, his blond hair almost gold under the shop’s lighting.
This was Andrew Knox. The Andrew Knox. The guy I’d watched dominate the ice for years from cheap seats and secondhand streams.
Now he was ten feet away, standing on a platform, looking like a magazine cover that had wandered into my life by mistake.
I stared. Couldn’t help it.
Knox turned slightly, checking the fit in the three-way mirror. His eyes found mine in the reflection.
“What do you think, Quinn? Does it fit?”
I had to give a professional opinion. It was my job to sound normal and detached and not like I was currently having a crisis about my boss in formalwear.
I cleared my throat. “Shoulders are good. The length is right.”
Knox was still watching me in the mirror. There was something calculating in his expression.
“Come check the lapels,” Giuseppe said, gesturing me forward. “I want to make sure they sit correctly.”
No. Absolutely not. Bad idea.
But Giuseppe was waiting, and Knox was waiting, and I couldn’t exactly refuse without making it weird.
I stepped up onto the platform.
Close. Too close. I could smell Knox’s cologne, could see the exact blue of his eyes, the way his hair fell slightly over his forehead.
My hands weren’t quite steady as I reached up to adjust the jacket’s shoulder seam, checking how it sat against his collarbone.
Broad. The word kept echoing in my head. He was so fucking broad.
Knox watched me the entire time. I could feel his gaze even when I wasn’t meeting it.
“Does that pull?” Knox asked.
I swallowed. “Turn a little.”
He did, immediately.
The lapel shifted. Just enough.
“There,” I said before I could stop myself. “When you breathe in, it tugs. Not much. Just—” I nudged the seam. “Like that.”
Knox inhaled.
The tux settled.
Giuseppe exhaled in satisfaction. “Yes. That’s it.”
Knox didn’t look away from the mirror. Didn’t look away from me.
“You two work well together,” Giuseppe observed, oblivious or not. It was hard to tell.
Knox was still looking at me in the mirror. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “We do.”
Wait—what was that? What just happened?
I retreated off the platform, phone already in my hand, pretending to check the schedule like my pulse hadn’t just spiked for reasons I didn’t want to examine.
Because something had shifted.
And I had the unsettling sense that Knox knew it.