Chapter 25
LEONORA
I don’t manage to get to sleep at all. By the time pale light starts creeping under the curtains I’ve accepted that. I sit up, pull my knees to my chest, and start mentally preparing for what it’s going to feel like to skate beside him today knowing everything is broken.
Then there’s a knock on the door.
“Come in,” I call. Tara, probably. Checking the bandage before the game.
But it’s Zane.
He looks tired and frustrated and he’s looking at me like he doesn’t know whether to kiss me or kill me.
I know which one I’d choose.
He’s still in last night’s clothes. There are shadows under his eyes. He obviously didn’t sleep, which means he’s been stewing about this all night, and he’s made a decision at some point in the dark.
“Why are you here? We have a game in a few hours.”
“Yes. And I can’t play with you like this.”
So that’s it. It’s over. Still, I have to try to convince him.
“But the team…”
“Fuck the team.”
He never talks like that. Not about hockey. Not about something that matters this much.
I stand up. I don’t know why. Maybe because sitting feels like waiting for something to happen, and I’m done waiting for things to happen to me.
He watches me cross the room. His eyes track every movement. When I stop in front of him, close enough to touch, he doesn’t step back.
“You’re angry.”
“I’m furious.”
“You should be.”
“Believe me, I am.”
He doesn’t move. Neither do I. But I can feel the heat coming off him, the tension in every line of his body, the way his breathing has gone shallow.
“How long were you going to let me keep looking for her?” His voice is rough.
“I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“You didn’t try.”
“No,” I admit. “I didn’t.”
Something breaks behind his eyes. Not the anger - that’s still there, burning hot and bright. It’s something underneath it that looks like it’s been bleeding for weeks.
“I looked for you,” he says. “Everywhere. I looked for you.”
I hold his gaze. “I know.”
“Do you?” There’s an edge to his voice. “Because from where I’m standing, it seems like you knew exactly what you were doing. Every single day.”
“I did.” There’s no point pretending otherwise. “I knew it was wrong. I told myself it would end before it mattered.”
“Before I mattered.”
“That’s not-” I stop. Because maybe it’s a little true, and he deserves better than a defence. “I didn’t think you’d-” I try again. “You’re Zane Blake. You don’t look for girls. Girls find you. I thought after Halloween you’d move on in a week.”
Something crosses his face. Not anger this time.
“Is that what you think of me.”
It’s not a question.
“It’s what I told myself,” I say quietly. “Because it was easier than the alternative.”
“Which was what?”
I look at him. He’s pale and there are shadows under his eyes. He’s standing like he’s bracing for impact. Like he’s been bracing all night.
“That it mattered,” I say. “That you mattered. And that I was going to lose you the second you found out the truth.”
The silence stretches.
“You almost did,” he says.
“I know.”
“I sat in that corridor for twenty minutes trying to decide if I was coming back.”
I hadn’t known that.
“What made you come back?”
He looks at me for a long moment.
“I kept thinking about the Eagles game,” he says finally. “First period. You drew the defender and slipped the puck across and I scored before I even had to think. And I remember skating back to center ice thinking — who is this guy?” A short, humorless laugh. “Turns out I was right to wonder.”
“Zane-”
“I’m not done.” He runs a hand through his hair. “You made us better, Leonora. You made me better. And you could have told me. At some point - any point - you could have trusted me with it. That’s the part I can’t quite get past.”
“You’re right,” I say. “I should have. I was a coward.”
“You’re the least cowardly person I’ve ever met.”
“About hockey,” I say. “Not about this. Not about you.” I look at him steadily. “I was terrified of you. Of what you’d do with it. Of what I’d lose.”
He’s watching me. That way he has - like he’s tracking a play, waiting for the right moment.
“And now?” he asks.
“Now you know everything,” I say. “And I’m still here.”
I reach for him. I don’t plan it. My hands just move, finding his face, pulling him down to me. He stands there, his hands still at his sides.
I kiss him.
For a second, nothing. Then his hands come up, not gentle, not tentative, grabbing my waist and slamming me back against the door. The impact drives the breath out of me and he’s there, his mouth on mine, angry and hungry and nothing like the first time.
His teeth catch my lower lip and I gasp.
His hands are everywhere - my waist, my hips, my thighs, gripping hard enough to bruise, pulling my leg up around his hip.
I feel the evidence of how much he wants this pressing against me through his sweatpants, and something desperate and needy curls low in my stomach.
“You want to know the truth?” I pull his shirt over his head. “You want to know what I was thinking when you passed me the puck? When you smiled at me on the bench? When you stepped in front of that hit for me?”
“Yes.”
His hands find my waistband, yanking at the button of my jeans. I help him - shove them down, kick them off, leave myself in just the thin cotton of my underwear and my shirt.
“I was thinking about this.”
I push him back toward the bed. He stumbles, catching himself on the edge of the mattress, looking up at me with something wild in his eyes.
“This,” I repeat, climbing onto his lap, straddling him. “You. Me. The way you look at me like you’re trying to figure out a puzzle.”
“I got there.” His hands slide up my thighs. “Eventually.”
“Eventually.” I press closer. Feel him hard beneath me. “What took you so long?”
He flips us so I’m on my back, the cheap hotel blankets scratchy beneath my shoulders, and he’s above me, bracketing me in, his weight pressing me into the mattress.
“You were good,” he says. “Too good. I didn’t want to see it.”
He pulls my shirt up and off over my head. The bandage is exposed now, white against my skin, marking the place where I bled on the ice. He stares at it for a long moment. Then he leans down and presses his mouth to the edge of it.
I gasp. His lips are soft against the tender skin, the bruising fresh beneath the tape. He kisses the edge of the wound, then the center, then lower, down my sternum, between my breasts, his hands sliding behind me to unhook my bra.
“Zane-”
“Don’t.” His voice is muffled against my skin. “Don’t tell me to stop.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
He looks down at me. His eyes are dark, his hair falling across his forehead, and he looks like something out of a dream I’ve been having for weeks. “Good.”
He strips the rest of my clothes off - underwear gone, socks gone, everything gone - until I’m naked beneath him and he’s still wearing his sweatpants, still looking at me like he’s deciding exactly how to take me apart.
He pulls his pants off. Then his boxers. And then he’s above me again, skin to skin, nothing between us, and I can’t breathe.
He kisses me again. Slower this time - and deeper. His tongue slides against mine and I feel the anger still there, underneath, but there’s something else now too. Something that feels like surrender.
“You should have told me.” His mouth moves down my throat. “At the Halloween party. At practice. Any of the hundred times I looked at you.”
“I was scared.”
He bites down on my collarbone - just hard enough to make me gasp.
“I’ve always seen you. I just didn’t know your name.”
His hand slides down my stomach, between my legs, finding me wet and ready. I arch into his touch. My fingers dig into his shoulders.
“Say my name,” I breathe.
“Leonora.”
He pushes inside me. Slow. So slow I feel every inch until I can’t tell where I end and he begins.
“Zane-”
His forehead presses against mine. His breath is ragged. His hands are shaking.
“I’m so angry,” he whispers. “I’m so angry at you. But I can’t stop wanting you.”
“You have me.”
He moves and the bed hits the wall, a rhythm that matches my heartbeat, and I wrap my legs around his waist and pull him deeper, harder, closer.
“I want-” He breaks off, gasping. “I want-”
“What?”
His hand finds my face. Cups my jaw. Forces me to look at him.
“I want you to stay this time.”
The words hit me somewhere soft. Somewhere I didn’t know was still vulnerable after everything.
“Zane-”
“Stay.” He drives into me harder. “When this is over. When we go back. Don’t disappear again.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
He kisses me. There’s just him. Just this. He says my name when he comes, ragged and broken and perfect, and the way I follow him over the edge, holding on like he’s the only thing keeping me from flying apart.
Afterward, we don’t move.
His weight is still pressed against me, his face buried in my neck, his breath slowly evening out. My legs are still wrapped around him. My fingers are still tangled in his hair.
I wait for him to pull away. To remember that he’s angry. To put the distance back between us.
He doesn’t.
He kisses me. Soft this time. Gentle. The kind of kiss that says more than words can.
When he pulls back, his face is different. Lighter. Like something that was wound too tight has finally loosened.
“You know what I kept thinking about?” he says.
“What?”
“When you were on the ice. When you went down and didn’t get up right away. You scared the hell out of me.” He says it simply. Like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
I pull him down to me. Kiss him. Feel the words he can’t say vibrating through his skin.
He settles beside me, pulling me against his chest, his arm wrapped around my waist, his face pressed into my hair.
ZANE
She wakes up next to me the next morning and my heart contracts. She looks tired but also beautiful.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said. About nowhere to play.”
“It’s true,” she says sleepily.
“I looked it up. The women’s team had all their funding cut. I didn’t even know. I’ve been here three years and I never once thought about it.”
“Most people don’t.”
“Yeah, well.” I shake my head. “That’s fucked up.”
“Well, you earned that spot. And you earned every goal you scored or set up.”
She’s looking at me like she’s not sure where this is going.
Neither am I.
“The scout is here for me,” I say. “That’s what Calloway said. But the truth is he’s here for all of us. For what we’ve been doing together.”
“Zane-”
“I need you out there today.” The words come out rough. Hard to admit. “I’ve been playing the best hockey of my life with you on my line. I need that. Today. For this.”
“You want my help.”
“I want us to win. And I can’t do that without you.”
“But what happens then? When Grant comes back?”
“Right now, we go play a hockey game. We win. We both impress the scout. And then-” I shrug. “Then we figure out the rest.”
I stand up and pull on my clothes.
She stands too.
For a moment we just look at each other - this girl who’s been my teammate for weeks, who I’ve been searching for and who I still don’t fully understand.
I move toward the door. Stop with my hand on the handle.
“Leonora.”
She looks up.
“I’m still kind of angry. That’s not gone away overnight.”
“I know.”
“But I’m also really fucking impressed. Just so you know.”
I open the door.
“See you on the ice, Shaw.”