Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Forrest
By Wednesday afternoon, I have moved fourteen tables, thirty-six chairs, eight crates of wine, one antique sideboard Eleanor Thorn described as “not that bad if you lift from the left,” and a wooden welcome sign large enough to qualify as architecture.
I still haven’t found the thing I’m supposed to want.
The coaching job.
That’s the reason I’m here.
That’s the reason this whole fake relationship started, if anyone wants the clean version.
Daisy needed to walk into Winterberry Cove looking like a woman who had moved on.
I needed to walk into a donor dinner looking like a man parents could trust around their kids, their checks, and their small-town opinions.
Simple.
Mutually beneficial.
Contained.
Which is hilarious now, considering I spent last night in Daisy’s bed at the vineyard guest house, with Puck snoring outside the door and Daisy’s mouth against my throat while she whispered that if I made her late for vendor calls, she’d invoice me for emotional disruption.
I told her to send the bill.
She bit me.
So, contained.
The barrel room smells like oak, wine, damp wool from coats hanging near the door, and whatever candle Marlene insisted made the space feel “harvest-adjacent.” Daisy told her harvest-adjacent was not a scent category.
Marlene said she’d consider alternatives.
Then she moved the candle six inches to the left and called it collaboration.
Now the room is quiet.
Mostly.
Outside, rain taps lightly against the high windows. Somewhere near the tasting room, a delivery truck beeps as it backs up. Puck is sprawled beneath the registration table like a retired king, one eye open in case someone drops cheese.
The long tables are covered in linens, votives, small arrangements from Helena’s farm, and cards Daisy made that say things like Equipment Access Fund and Anonymous Family Support Request without turning need into a spectacle.
That was her phrase.
She said it in Boston while standing in the back room of The Turning Page, gripping her notebook like someone might take the idea from her if she let go.
I haven’t stopped thinking about it.
Daisy stands near the donor display table now, wearing jeans, boots, a sweater, and a focused expression that should probably require a warning label.
Her hair is pinned up with a pencil. Three curls have escaped.
She keeps blowing one away from her cheek and getting annoyed when it returns, as if her hair has chosen rebellion during business hours.
In front of her, the table has become something more than a display.
It is not big. It’s practical.
A way for someone to say, I need help, without making the whole room watch.
I’m standing in the barrel room looking at a donor table she built between wedding calls, family tension, and Carla’s mother asking whether candlelight could be more “emotionally flattering.”
“This is better than the dinner,” I say again.
Daisy sets down the stack of cards. “The dinner is the assignment.”
“No.”
Her eyes narrow. “That sounded like a full-sentence no. Historically dangerous.”
“The dinner is their assignment.”
“And yours?”
Mine.
For months, I thought the answer was becoming a coach.
The right to stand on ice again without people asking if I belonged there. I thought if a school board, parents, donors, and one small-town principal could look at me and decide I was acceptable, then maybe I could stop carrying every version of the man I used to be.
This job might let me coach.
But only if I keep proving I deserve the room.
The kids still need more than that.
Evan still needs gear. Someone else needs a ride. Someone else needs food before practice. Someone else needs a place to sit at a table and finish math homework before putting on skates.
None of them should have to wait for adults to decide if I’m polished enough to help.
“I don’t think I want the coaching job anymore,” I say.
Daisy goes still.
“Before the dinner?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Because of the dinner?”
“No.” I look at the table again. “Because I thought I needed them to let me coach, so I could prove I wasn’t the worst things they’d heard about me.”
Her face changes.
It’s not pity. Daisy doesn’t do pity well. She turns it into action before it can make anyone uncomfortable.
This is worse.
She waits.
And because she waits, I have to keep going.
“The public version is easy,” I say. “I was aggressive. Bad temper. Bad reputation. League loved the bad-boy shit until it got expensive. Then they needed someone to point at.”
Daisy doesn’t move.
“I did plenty,” I add. “I’m not pretending I didn’t. I fought. I mouthed off. I made it easy for people to believe the worst version. But the video everyone talks about? The tunnel one?”
Her hand lowers slowly from the stack of cards.
“I didn’t snap over a game,” I say. “Or a cheap shot. Or pride.”
Daisy’s voice is softer now. “What happened?”
I look toward the registration table where Puck sleeps, safe and stupid and unaware that people can ruin each other with a phone in ten seconds.
“One of the assistant coaches had a daughter,” I say. “She worked around the team. Media stuff. She was young. Smart. Kind to everyone, even the guys who didn’t deserve it.”
Daisy’s face goes still in a way I don’t like.
I keep my voice even because if I don’t, I won’t get through it.
“After a road game, I heard two guys talking in the tunnel. One was a teammate. One was on staff. They were bragging about her. What they’d done. What they’d recorded. They thought it was funny.”
Daisy’s breath catches.
Barely.
Enough.
“They said she’d tried to report it. Said no one would believe her if the video got out first. Said her father would make it disappear because it would embarrass the team.”
I feel my hand curl at my side.
I force it open.
“I told them to shut the fuck up.”
Daisy whispers my name.
I keep going.
“They didn’t. One of them laughed. Said her name. Said things no one should say about anyone, let alone a woman who was about to have her whole life turned into locker-room currency.”
The rain hits the windows harder now.
“I hit him first,” I say. “Then the other one came at me. Then the assistant coach tried to pull me off. By the time someone started filming, all anyone saw was me putting two men on the floor and shoving a coach into the wall.”
Daisy’s eyes shine.
I hate that too.
“I could’ve explained it,” I say. “Would have, if she wanted me to. I told the league I’d testify. Told her father. Told my agent. If she pressed charges, I’d say exactly what I heard. Names. Words. Everything.”
“But she didn’t want to be part of it,” Daisy says.
No judgment.
Just understanding.
“No.”
Daisy closes her eyes.
I stare at the donor table because it’s easier than looking at her when she’s seeing me like this.
“She had already had enough taken from her,” I say. “So I shut up. Took the suspension. Took the headlines. Took the anger-management tour and the interviews and the think pieces about whether men like me should be allowed back near the sport.”
I swallow.
It does nothing.
“They called me violent. Unstable. Dangerous. Maybe they weren’t completely wrong. I used my fists because that’s what I had. That’s what I knew. I’m not proud of that.”
Daisy opens her eyes.
“But I’m not sorry I stopped them from laughing—or from posting the video.”
Silence.
That’s the whole room now.
Rain. Puck breathing. Daisy watching me.
I expect her to look at me differently.
She does.
But not the way other people do.
Not careful. Not afraid.
Like something in the room has finally been named, and she hates that I had to carry it alone.
“You protected her,” Daisy says.
“I hit two guys.”
“You protected her,” she insists.
“That doesn’t make me a hero.”
“No,” she says, and her voice is calm enough to ruin me. “It makes you someone who did the wrong thing for the right reason, then paid for it so, she wouldn’t have to.”
I don’t answer.
Daisy steps closer, not touching me. Giving me the choice. I recognize that because I’ve done it for her.
“Does Principal Whitcomb know?”
“No.”
“Your mother?”
“Not all of it.”
“Mark?”
“Enough.”
“Wolfe.”
I look at her.
“You don’t have to bleed forever to keep her safe,” she says.
The sentence hits somewhere I thought I’d sealed off.
I almost tell her she’s wrong.
That the world doesn’t work that way.
That the minute I speak, people will go looking for the woman again. Her name. Her face. The video. The story. They’ll say they want truth, but what they’ll really want is access.
Instead, I say, “I’d never use her to fix my reputation.”
Daisy nods once.
“I know.”
“I thought if they gave me the job,” I continue, “then I’d have a reason to be here. A reason to go back to hockey. A reason to be useful that didn’t look like an apology tour.”
“And now?”
I look at the donor table.
At her cards.
At the clean little way she made help feel like dignity.
“Now I think the job is too small.”
Her brows lift.
“I don’t want to spend the whole dinner asking them to trust me with a whistle,” I say. “I don’t need them. I want them to trust us with the program.”
“Us?”
“Yeah.”
Daisy’s mouth parts, then closes. For once, no joke saves either of us.
“I don’t know what that means yet,” I say. “Building a rink. Maybe buying a lot or two to create a center in Boston—maybe here too.”
“Damn it,” she whispers.
“What?”
“That was very attractive.”
“Occupational damage?” I ask.
I look at her.
She looks at me.
The barrel room is quiet again, but different now. Less like a room waiting for guests. More like something has started without asking either of us if we’re ready.
“You know,” she says, too casually, which means nothing about this is casual, “if we do this, we can’t do it halfway.”
She taps her chin, which makes me want to kiss it because she’s adorable.
“I’m not saying I’m quitting my job tomorrow and becoming the patron saint of hockey snacks,” she says. “To be clear. I have rent, a troubling relationship with dental invoices, and enough unresolved family drama to keep a therapist in luxury footwear.”
“Noted.”
“But I know programs. I know donors. I know how to build something people can trust before they know why they trust it.” Her fingers tap once against the notebook. “And you know the sport. The players. The former players. The ugly parts no one puts in alumni brochures.”
“Also noted.”
She exhales, and this time the sound is less panic than decision.
“So, yes,” she says. “I’ll help you build it. The program. The center. Whatever it becomes.”
She is offering belief, and I love her for that.
Fuck.
Did I just say love?
Probably.
Probably more than I’m ready to admit.
The worst part is, the word doesn’t scare me as much as it should.
“You sure?” I ask, trying not to fixate on the part that I’m in love with Daisy Thorn. That’s something to deal with a little later, right?
Her eyes soften. “No. I’m not sure.”
I almost smile.
“There’s our brand.”
“No, I mean it.” She lifts one hand. “I am terrified. Professionally intrigued, emotionally overcommitted, and at least thirty percent worried this becomes another thing I pour myself into until I’m yelling about grant compliance in a grocery store parking lot.”
“Thirty percent?”
“Fine. Forty-five. I was trying to seem breezy.”
“Failed.”
“Rude, but fair.” She looks down at the table again, at the cards that give need a private door instead of a public stage.
“But I want this. For Evan. For the kids who keep learning they have to be exceptional before adults notice they need help. For the ones who aren’t charming enough, loud enough, talented enough, easy enough. ”
She swallows, then looks back at me. “And for you.”
I go still.
“Daisy.”
“Don’t make that face.”
“What face?”
“The one where you’re about to reject something kind because accepting it makes you feel like a Victorian widow with unresolved shoulder tension.”
I stare at her.
She shrugs. “I panicked. That one got away from me.”
“It was specific.”
“I contain multitudes and questionable metaphors.”
“You don’t have to do this for me,” I say.
“I know.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I.” Her eyes hold mine. “I’m not doing it because you need saving, Wolfe. You don’t. You need partners. A structure. A place to put all that deeply inconvenient integrity before it starts rearranging furniture again.”
“That sideboard was wrong.”
“That sideboard was emotionally disruptive.”
“It was blocking the flow.”
“Look at you. Already fluent in event trauma.”
A rough laugh slips out before I can stop it.
Daisy smiles, small and pleased, then ruins me by going serious again.
“I’m doing this because it matters,” she says. “Because you matter. Because I think maybe the thing we both needed wasn’t a town approving of us. Maybe it was building something good enough that their approval stops being the point.”
For a second, I can’t answer.
“I also reserve the right to make colorless spreadsheets and complain about liability waivers,” she adds. “That’s love language adjacent. Do not make it weird.”
I step closer.
Her breath catches, but she doesn’t step back.
“Day.”
“No,” she whispers, eyes narrowing. “Don’t say my name like that in a room with votive candles and a philanthropic awakening.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m vulnerable to competence, and you’re standing there looking like a man who might fund snacks and kiss me senseless. It’s a very leathal combination.”
I lift a hand to her jaw.
Slow.
Giving her time.
She leans into it before she can stop herself.
That is the end of whatever restraint I had left.
I kiss her.
I angle her closer.
She rises onto her toes, and the notebook slips from her fingers to the table with a soft slap.
Neither of us reaches for it.
For once, Daisy lets the plan wait.
The kiss deepens by degrees. Her fingers curl into my sweater. Mine slides to the back of her neck. I can feel the pulse at her throat, fast and alive and too honest for a room full of tables and donor cards.
She pulls back first.
Barely.
Her forehead rests against mine.
“You realize,” she whispers, “this is a terrible time to make me like you more.”
My thumb moves once along her jaw.
“Yeah.”
“And I was already having a very difficult time being emotionally moderate.”
“I noticed.”
“Of course you did.” Her eyes open. “You notice everything. It’s one of your most irritating qualities.”
“One of?”
“I have a list.”
“I’d like to see it.”
“You are not emotionally prepared for my notes.”
“Probably not.”
Puck huffs from beneath the registration table, and Daisy laughs under her breath.
“We have to finish setting up,” she says.
“I know.”
“And after that, we may have to figure out what exactly we’re doing.”
I look at her.
The fake relationship.
The real sex.
The way she said “we.”
“Yeah,” I say. “We will.”
“At the end, I know we’ll build the thing, won’t we?”
And that is when I know.
I didn’t come here for the job.
I came here for the reason.
She’s my reason.