Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Maddox
Connor’s hand is small, light as paper, resting against mine.
He’s still grinning from the story, pale cheeks flushed like he’s already halfway to the rink I just promised him existed.
Eight years old, hooked up to tubes and monitors, and he’s got more fight in him than most rookies I’ve ever seen.
“Do you really play goalie?” he asks, eyes wide. “Like, stop the pucks and everything?”
“Every night,” I say, voice low, a little rougher than I mean it to be.
His laugh is soft but real, chest shaking under his hospital gown. Then he flips open a sketchbook from his tray table, pencil lines crisscrossing the page.
Superheroes, all blocky shoulders and capes, battling across city skylines.
“Did you draw these?” I ask, leaning closer before I think better of it.
He nods, a little shy this time. “I’m making my own comic. I wanna be like Stan Lee. Or—” His eyes flicker up. “Or maybe make a hockey one. You could be in it.”
Something shifts in my chest, hard and sharp.
I haven’t told anyone about the stacks of comics shoved in boxes in my storage unit, the sketchbook I used to carry on buses between games in high school and college.
That part of me has been buried, dust on dust.
“Not sure I’m much of a hero,” I mutter, but the words snag on my tongue when his grin grows wider.
“Yeah, you are. You just saved the city.” He points at the goalie sketched into his page—a hulking figure in pads, stick like a weapon, net glowing behind him.
My throat tightens.
I reach for the pencil he’s holding, careful not to crowd him. “Mind if I add something?”
He nods fast, shoving the notebook closer. My fingers feel too big, clumsy, but I draw anyway. A comic bubble over the goalie’s head: Not today.
Connor bursts out laughing, and I can’t help it—I laugh too. It rips out of me raw and unexpected.
For a second, it feels like I’m not sitting in a hospital ward, cameras watching, and handlers waiting.
For a second, I’m just a man sharing comics with a kid who believes I’m something more than I am.
And then I feel her.
Sloane’s eyes on me, heavier than the press lights, hotter than the cameras.
I don’t have to look to know she’s watching. It coils in my gut, warning me of danger.
The board will call this “optics.” She’ll probably spin it that way too.
But the way her gaze crawls over me, the way my body tightens under it—it’s not professional. Not PR.
It’s something else.
I turn another page in the sketchbook, steadying my voice. “You’re good, kid. Better than I was at your age.”
He beams, pencil scratching as he adds another cape. And I don’t dare look up at her, because if I do, I’ll forget the cameras and the crowd and the fact that she’s my boss.
And I’ll give away too much.
I double down my focus on Connor, as he works on the stick-figure goalie we’ve made up together. He laughs when I give the hero a scar. “So he looks tough, like you.”
His words sink deeper than I want to admit.
Then I hear it—soft laughter from across the room.
I glance over before I can stop myself.
Sloane crouches beside a little girl, same pale skin, same sharp cheekbones as the boy beside me. Twins, no doubt.
The girl has a ballet book clutched in her lap, edges frayed, corners bent from love. The cover’s worn thin like she’s read it a hundred times.
Sloane leans in, dark blonde hair sliding forward, eyes warm in a way I’ve never seen in a boardroom. “You want to skate?” she asks, voice gentler than I thought she could be.
The girl nods, shy smile flickering. “Like the girls in the Olympics.”
Sloane’s smile curves slow and soft, and it sucker punches me. “Then you can. Next time I’ll bring my skates. You’ll try it with me.”
The girl’s eyes go wide, the kind of wide that swallows light. She believes her.
Just like that.
My chest pulls tight, a deep ache I can’t shift.
Because that’s not the Sloane Carrington the board sees, or the one who slices me down with clipped words.
That’s the woman who wrapped my shoulder with her own two hands just the other night.
And damn if I don’t feel it again now. That ghost pressure of her palm pressing ice against me, her scent cutting through sweat and disinfectant.
The brush of her wrist against my chest, the scent of her hair cutting through the stink of the locker room. She taped me like she’d done it a hundred times before, and for a second I wasn’t the broken goalie or the PR liability.
I was just a man letting a woman touch the part of me that hurt.
The same way her hand now smooths over the little girl’s hair, tucking a stray strand behind her ear. Gentle. Steady.
Like she was born knowing how to ease hurt.
Now I watch her do the same thing with that little girl. No hesitation. No armor. Just giving a piece of herself away like it’s nothing.
Connor tugs my sleeve, pencil waving. “Draw another one, with fire powers this time!”
I chuckle, rough, dragging the pencil across the page. The lead smudges on my fingers, grounding me, but my gaze slides up again, traitorous, to where Sloane kneels on the linoleum next to the girl.
Her hand skims over the small of the little girl’s back, tender in a way that twists me up inside.
And then, her eyes lift.
They find mine across the room and hold. Heat arcs across the space, hot and fast, like a live wire stripped bare.
I shouldn’t be staring. She shouldn’t either. But neither of us moves.
For one dangerous heartbeat, I let it stand. The connection. The reminder of how her touch felt on me.
Then I rip my gaze back down to the crooked lines I’m sketching and, force my voice rough to keep the boy laughing.
But my grip is tight on the pencil, knuckles white.
Because if I let myself keep looking at her, I’ll forget the cameras.
Forget the kids.
Forget the job.
I’ll remember only her touch.
And I’ll want more than I can ever have.
A few minutes later, the handlers start wrapping things up, gathering cameras and clipboards, thanking staff.
Kids wave, clutching autographs like they’re treasure.
I hang back, watching the people work around me, trying to keep my focus off Sloane.
Dean and Jace chat with the doctors, while PR prince Logan charms a couple of reporters by the doorway.
Riley and Finn are flirting with a couple of the young nurses, and Eli’s standing with Cal like he’s coaching the kid even now.
It doesn’t take long, though, for my focus to be pulled back to the woman across the room.
And while everyone else appears occupied, I let my attention stay on her.
Sloane lingers with the girl, touching her little cheek before she stands, promising again about the skates.
The girl beams like she’s just been handed the world.
Something deep inside me shifts, a slow grind I don’t like.
I felt it when her palm pressed ice against my shoulder.
And now I’ve seen her give it to a child who believed her without hesitation.
The worst part?
I wanted to believe her too.
Soon, we say our goodbyes to the staff and make our way to the front of the hospital.
I keep my distance from everyone while we wait for the valet to bring up our vehicles.
Thankfully, Sloane’s is the last to be pulled to the front, so there’s no questions from anyone.
By the time we get into her SUV, the air feels heavier. There’s too much silence stuffed into the cab as she pulls out of the hospital lot.
The radio’s off, but I hear everything—the hum of the engine and, the faint sound of her breath change when the light turns red.
I sit angled toward the window, shoulder throbbing under my jacket, and try not to think about the fact that she smells like the little girl’s shampoo and her own expensive perfume tangled together.
Warm and soft and not something I should even be thinking about at all.
My reflection stares back at me from the glass. Hair rumpled, collar tugged open. Old dog.
End of the line.
And yet, unbidden, a thought worms its way in—
What if there was a kid in the back seat? A boy with her dark green eyes and my jaw. A girl with her stubborn mouth and my sharp chin.
The image comes so fast, so clear, it punches the breath out of me. A family that never existed. Would never exist.
A life I never let myself want.
Jesus.
I clamp my jaw and, force it down. I can’t go there.
She’s too young. Too polished. Too…out of my league to be honest.
Not to mention she’s my boss, for fuck’s sake. The woman who signs my checks, who holds my career in her manicured hands.
Dragging a palm down my thigh, I ground myself in the coarse drag of fabric of my slacks.
I need to think about the crease, the ice, the saves I still have to prove I can make.
Anything but the way my chest pulled tight when I saw her hand on that girl’s cheek.
The stoplight flips green. She doesn’t look at me. Neither of us speaks.
By the time we get back to the parking garage of our condos, the silence is thick, suffocating, and alive with every thought I shouldn’t be having.
I’m terrified that if I let myself break it, I’ll say something I can’t take back.
We continue to stay silent as we walk together to the garage elevator and step inside, her heels sharp against the marble, my loafers heavier than they should sound.
The doors close, sealing us in steel and silence.
I jam my thumb against seven. She presses nine a beat later, the penthouse button glowing like it mocks me.
She shifts beside me, posture perfect, spine steel. But I feel the crackle of nerves in her air. She clears her throat, and the sound is soft enough to slide under my skin.
“Well,” she says finally, voice cool, and professional, too even. “Today went better than expected.”
I almost laugh. The sound comes out low, rough, and nothing like amusement. “That your way of saying I didn’t fuck it up?”
Her head snaps toward me. Her eyes—God, her eyes—flash sharp as cut glass. “You didn’t. The kids loved you.” A pause, softer. “More than you think.”
My chest tightens. I should let it go, let the words hang.
Instead, I take a step closer, because I’m already at my wits’ end. Her perfume threads the air—clean, sharp, expensive—and I’m drowning in it.
“Careful,” I murmur. My voice is gravel dragged over stone. “Sounded almost like a compliment.”
She doesn’t back up. Doesn’t flinch. Her chin lifts, lips curved in that dangerous line between smile and blade. “Maybe it was.”
The floor hums under us, car sliding higher, too damn slow and too fast all at once. My pulse pounds hard enough that I can feel it in my throat.
I take another step, close enough now that the heat of her body radiates against mine. My hand braces against the wall beside her head before I think better of it.
Her breath stutters. Just enough that I catch it.
Fuck.
I lean in, the space between us collapsing until her scent—like roses and amber—is all I can breathe, until her mouth is a whisper away from mine.
Her eyes partially close and her lips part, just slightly. “Maddox…”
The sight of her like this and my name on her lips wrecks me.
Everything inside me snarls to take, to taste, to finally break the leash we’ve both been yanking on since the day we met.
Then the elevator dings, and the doors whisk open.
Seventh floor.
My floor.
Sanity slams back, and I curse under my breath, pushing away from her and all her heat.
Her eyes are wide, chest rising quick against the silk of her blouse.
For one heartbeat, I want to say fuck it and close the gap anyway.
Instead, I step out, but turn to take one last look until the doors slide shut between us.
I’m left in the hall, pulse thundering, mouth dry, hating myself for walking away and hating worse that I wanted to stay.