4. January 17, Monday #2
Players were scattered across tables and high-tops with breakfast wraps, protein shakes, coffee mugs, and the easy body language of people who belonged here.
Laughter rolled through one corner. Someone tossed a balled-up napkin at someone else.
A trainer crossed behind the smoothie station with the resigned face of a man who had seen too much.
And just like that, the reality of this job landed in a new place.
She wasn’t just working for a random organization doing community outreach. She was involved in hockey circles again. In a building full of men who knew Mitch. Not all of them well. Maybe some only by reputation, league overlap, trades, tournaments, or old stories. But enough.
Enough to make her suddenly aware of every inch of her own skin.
Her brain made an immediate leap into its favorite hobby—catastrophe.
They know.
Everyone knows exactly who you are.
The ex. The complication. The woman-shaped cautionary tale.
Mrs. Perry was immediately waylaid by someone near the smoothie station, leaving Zoey hovering at the edge of the room with no clear instructions and a rapidly escalating pulse.
Okay.
No.
You are fine.
No one is thinking about you.
No one is laughing at you.
You are not the center of this room.
That was true.
Almost certainly true.
Then a burst of laughter from one of the tables made her flinch anyway.
She looked over.
And saw him.
Ilya.
He sat half-turned in his chair, laughing at something one of the others had said, his head tipped back just enough for the overhead lights to catch the sharp line of his jaw.
One arm was hooked around a teammate who was trying to drag him into some kind of seated wrestling maneuver.
He looked relaxed. Unguarded. So much lighter than she remembered seeing him in years.
Her chest tightened.
He had always been handsome. That part wasn’t news. But the sight of him laughing like that—easy and bright and completely unaware of her—struck somewhere unexpectedly tender.
Her stomach dipped.
Could she still even call him her friend?
They texted now and then. Careful. Sparingly. Enough to prove the line hadn’t snapped, but not enough to make it feel whole.
But she hadn’t told him she was moving here.
That realization hit fresh and sharp.
God.
What friend does that?
What if this felt like an ambush?
What if he thought she’d kept it from him on purpose?
What if Mitch already told him some version of the divorce that made Zoey sound selfish, cold, impossible, ungrateful, or any of the other things her worst brain-days occasionally whispered at three in the morning?
Her fingers tightened around the strap of her bag.
Do you go over there?
Do you pretend you haven’t seen him?
Do you fake your own death with the smoothie mixer?
Ilya looked up.
The choice vanished.
His eyes found her almost immediately, and surprise flashed across his face; real, unguarded, immediate.
Then he stood.
Zoey forgot how to breathe for a second.
He moved around the table with long, purposeful strides, not rushing exactly, but not hesitant either. There was caution in him, though. She could see it in the slight lift of his hands, the way he approached like he wasn’t sure what kind of moment this was yet.
“Zoey?” His voice came out low, disbelieving. Then, after a beat, “What are you doing here?” Because apparently the universe hated her, he followed it with, “Is everything okay?”
She gave him the kind of smile usually worn by people on the verge of either laughing or crying in public. “Surprise?” Zoey gave a tiny, terrible ta-da gesture that should have gotten her arrested.
Ilya’s brows lifted.
She rushed to fill the silence. “I got hired. Here. By the Cyclones. So now I’m…” She waved vaguely at herself. “This.”
Ilya blinked once. Then again. “You work here.”
“Yep.”
He looked down at her badge, then back up at her face, as if those two things might eventually form a sentence his brain liked better. “You moved here,” he said.
Not a question.
No accusation either.
Just surprise, still landing.
“I did.”
“And didn’t tell me.” The words were quiet enough that only she could hear them.
Heat climbed her neck. “I was going to,” she said quickly. “Then I got here, and there were boxes, and Kira was asleep in a tortilla-chip nest on my floor, and then this morning happened, and somehow my strategy became, apparently, surprise workplace reveal.”
For one long second, he only stared at her. Then his mouth twitched. A laugh escaped him, soft and stunned. “A tortilla-chip nest?”
“She stayed the weekend to help me unpack.”
“I have it on good authority that you shouldn’t feed strays.”
Some of the panic in Zoey’s chest loosened. She grinned up at him, “I feel like now’s the time where I call you a hypocrite.”
He smiled and glanced down at her badge again. “Community partnerships coordinator.”
“And outreach programming,” she added. “Youth events, local initiatives, clinics, coordination, charity events, some content support. I’ll help marketing when needed, and I may do photo work for certain programs, but mostly I’m here to build and manage community stuff.”
This time, when he looked at her, his expression settled into something warmer. More certain. “That sounds perfect for you.”
Her shoulders eased half an inch. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” His mouth curved. “You’ve always been good at making people show up. And making rooms less terrible.”
She huffed a laugh. “High praise.”
“It is from me.”
There was something familiar in that—his dry tone, the steadiness under it—and the knot in her stomach shifted again, less pain now than pressure.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you first,” she said more quietly. “I should have.”
He studied her for a moment. “I’m glad you’re here.”
The words landed harder than they should have. Her throat tightened.
He must have seen something crack across her face, because his expression changed immediately; softened, sharpened, both somehow at once.
“Zo.” Just her name. Low. Steady. A hand held out without actually touching her.
She tried for breezy and missed by several exits. “I’m fine. It’s just first-day overload and a lot of names and not enough coffee and…”
“Zo.”
That did it. Not because it was dramatic. Because he said her name like he meant stop performing for one second.
She looked at him.
And there it was.
No judgment.
No awkwardness.
No visible calculation about whether she was still worth the social complication.
Just him. Looking at her like she was still herself.
“Yeah,” she whispered, mortifyingly close to tears.
His arms came around her before she could overthink it. The hug was solid and devastatingly familiar.
Ilya had always given excellent hugs. The kind that didn’t ask anything of you. The kind that made your nervous system unclench before your brain had time to object. Warm, strong, steady, no flourish, no performance.
Zoey folded into him with humiliating speed. Just for a second, she told herself. Then a second became several.
He smelled like cedar, clean cotton, and that same damn Old Spice deodorant he had apparently remained stubbornly loyal to while the rest of the world invented trendier options. Some absolutely unhelpful part of her found that deeply endearing.
Her eyes burned.
Nope.
Not doing this in the team café.
She pressed her face briefly against his shoulder, breathed in once, and swiped one sneaky tear into the fabric of his shirt where hopefully no one would notice.
His hand moved once between her shoulder blades.
Not rubbing. Not fussing.
Just there.
By the time she stepped back, the worst of the sting had passed.
“Sorry,” she muttered, keeping her eyes on his collarbone instead of his face.
“Apparently I’m becoming one of those people who cries at the first sign of sympathy.”
“Could be worse,” he said. She glanced up. He was watching her with that same steady focus. “You could be doing it naked. Then everyone would be watching.”
A laugh escaped her before she could stop it.
There he was.
Her friend.
Still weird. Still dry. Still him.
The relief of it made her chest ache.
He exhaled and tilted his head a little. “You know,” he said quietly, “I can’t pretend I understand what happened between you and Mitch. I don’t. But I’m not going to make you explain it standing in a room full of strangers, so you can take a real breath now and settle.”
Zoey exhaled and felt her shoulders drop a little more.
“Getting there,” he encouraged, watching her like a hawk.
She took another steadying breath and this time, she finally stopped feeling like she would shatter if someone bumped into her.
“There,” he said, clearly pleased with her efforts. His forehead wrinkled like he was wrestling with a decision. “Regardless, I want you to know, you were my friend before any of that. Before the marriage, before the mess, before everyone started acting strange and calling it maturity.”
The words hit.
“Mitch is Mitch,” Ilya said. “He’s my brother. That doesn’t change. But neither does the fact that you matter to me.”
Zoey’s breath caught.
No flourish.
No grand declaration.
Just that.
Simple enough to hurt.