Chapter 22
RAFE
March is supposed to mean thawing, which is absolute bullshit. In Minneapolis, it mostly means everything looks softer while still being cold enough to hurt.
Snowbanks shrink at the edges of sidewalks. Ice turns to gray slush. The air smells faintly of meltwater and salt. It’s the kind of transition that makes you think something is easing up, even when the cold is still buried underneath.
We’re a little over a week from our anniversary.
That thought sits warm in my chest most mornings. The date used to belong only to memory. To something we guarded like contraband. Now it’s real, visible, and public knowledge.
And apparently so is she.
Vinny doesn’t dramatize things. That’s one of the reasons I trust him. When he speaks, it’s because something requires attention, not reaction.
He steps into Ollie’s kitchen just after ten in the morning while Ollie is finishing a protein shake and checking something on his tablet.
Practice is in two hours. He moves differently these days; he’s not tense or brittle.
He seems centered, more so than I’ve ever seen in person before.
His shoulders sit where they’re supposed to.
His breathing is even. I watch him more than I mean to, like I’m still calibrating this version of him.
“There’s been activity,” Vinny says calmly.
He doesn’t have to clarify who. This shit has been bubbling over the past three weeks.
Ollie looks up first. “Her?”
Vinny nods once. “She’s been attempting contact again.”
A pulse of heat starts at the base of my spine. My anger trying to surface. For now, it’s controlled. But fuck, I’m over this bullshit.
“What kind of contact?” I ask.
“Voicemails to Ollie’s foundation’s public line. Direct messages from multiple burner accounts. She attempted to tag your studio location on socials yesterday. This morning, she was seen near the outer perimeter of the practice facility.”
The air shifts.
She’s here, in Minneapolis?
Ollie sets his tablet down slowly. “Near the facility?”
“Yes.”
I step forward without thinking. “How near?”
“Across the street. She didn’t cross barricades. She was escorted away when she lingered.”
Escorted away. I barely contain my scoff. What, like it’s a minor inconvenience?
I grind my teeth. “She’s under a restraining order.”
“She is,” Vinny confirms. “We’re documenting every violation.”
Ollie’s fingers flex once against the edge of the counter before settling flat. There’s no visible panic. No flicker of that faraway look he used to get when something felt too big and he needed to outrun it. What settles over him instead is focus. Intent. The kind he wears in the fourth quarter.
“She doesn’t get to orbit us,” he says quietly.
Us.
The word still lands somewhere warm and fragile in my chest. I hate that part of me is still braced for the bottom to drop out.
Things have been steady. Better than steady.
His team is backing him publicly. The press cycle has cooled from wildfire to manageable heat.
There’s been nothing more from his parents.
My studio schedule hasn’t imploded while I’m camped out in the Midwest. We’re building something that feels deliberate instead of explosive.
And yet, I know how quickly one unstable variable can tilt everything.
I glance at Vinny. “Should we be worried?”
He doesn’t sugarcoat. “Police don’t believe she’s a credible long-term threat.
No known history of violence. No prior charges before the gala.
” Vinny’s mouth flattens slightly, the closest he gets to irritation.
“That said, she pulled a knife at a charity event.” He rolls his eyes at the implication of “no known history.”
I exhale through my nose. “So?”
“So,” he continues evenly, “we treat escalation seriously. I’m coordinating with arena security. We may add an additional body to your detail while you’re in Minneapolis.”
My eyes narrow. “What about Ollie?”
Ollie answers before Vinny can. “I’m fine.”
I turn to him. “The knife was aimed at you.”
His gaze doesn’t waver. “No.”
“It was,” I push. “She threatened you.”
“She was targeting you,” he says calmly. “I just happened to be there.”
I stare at him. “You were standing between us.”
“And I’d do it again.”
There’s no bravado in it. No attempt to be heroic. It’s simply fact.
Vinny shifts his weight slightly. “From a threat assessment standpoint, her fixation centers on you,” he says to me. “However, Ollie’s proximity makes him an adjacent risk. I’ll loop in his team’s security liaison as a courtesy.”
Ollie shakes his head. “This isn’t about me.”
“It becomes about you the second someone points a weapon in your direction,” I say, sharper than I intend.
He turns that captain stare on me—the one that shuts down arguments in locker rooms and on courts. Calm. Immovable. A line drawn in granite.
“I’m not fragile,” he says.
I know he isn’t. That’s not the point.
The heat in my chest isn’t fear for myself. It’s memory. I can still see the flash of silver. The way his body shifted without thinking. The way it could have gone differently.
“You don’t get to minimize that,” I say quietly.
“And you don’t get to take ownership of it,” he counters, just as quiet.
Vinny clears his throat lightly, the professional reminder that we’re not alone. “I’m increasing vigilance regardless,” he says. “You don’t have to agree with the assessment. You just have to cooperate.”
Ollie nods once. “Fine.”
I’m still looking at him. He doesn’t blink. There’s something undeniably attractive about this version of him. Not reckless. Not stubborn for ego’s sake. But a grounded, protective, “refusing to let fear define the frame” Ollie is new.
It’s also hot as hell.
I drag a hand through my hair. “You good?” I ask him again, softer this time.
His expression eases just a fraction. “Yeah. I am.”
He searches my face in return. “You?”
I hold his gaze. I take stock of my breathing, of the steadiness in my hands. I’m not spiraling. I’m not reaching for escape. I’m not looking for an exit.
“I’m good,” I say.
Vinny watches us both for another beat, then nods. “All right. Practice in ninety minutes. I’ll handle the rest.”
He steps out of the kitchen, leaving the air a little quieter.
Ollie’s hand slides to my waist, grounding and deliberate. “She doesn’t get to shake this,” he says.
I study him—the set of his shoulders, the certainty in his eyes. “No,” I agree.
And this time, I believe it.
We’re leaving the practice facility late morning.
I insisted on coming today. If I’m honest, I’ve been insistent about a lot of things since Vinny mentioned she’d been spotted near the perimeter earlier in the week.
I don’t frame it as anxiety. I frame it as presence.
As being involved. As not letting anything catch me off guard again.
Ollie hasn’t commented on it, though I know he’s aware.
He doesn’t love when I linger around his workplace, especially now that the press treats any shared oxygen between us as content.
But he hasn’t asked me to back off either.
There’s something steadying about walking beside him through the mundane—him finishing drills, me sitting in the stands pretending to answer emails.
It feels normal. And right now, normal is currency.
Vinny pulls the SUV around to the curb. There’s a modest press cluster near the barricade—two local sports reporters, a couple of freelance photographers, maybe five fans bundled in team hoodies and knit caps.
It’s nothing we haven’t seen before. Cameras rise out of habit when Ollie steps into view.
And then I see her.
Across the street.
She isn’t animated. She isn’t screaming or waving her arms. She’s just standing there, hands inside the pockets of a long dark coat, jeans tucked into boots, hair pulled back in a harsh ponytail.
If you didn’t know the backstory, if you hadn’t seen the footage from the gala or the headlines that followed, you’d think she was just another person hoping to catch a glimpse of a player.
Tammy Deacon.
The name has been repeated often enough in news alerts and legal briefs that it should feel familiar.
It doesn’t. I don’t like saying it. I don’t like thinking it.
Names give weight. Names grant legitimacy.
In my head, she remains her. The woman. The incident.
A shadow I refuse to invite further into our orbit.
Security notices her at the same time I do. Two arena guards straighten and begin crossing the street with the practiced calm of men who don’t want to escalate something unless they have to.
She doesn’t run. She doesn’t even shift her stance. Her eyes lock onto mine, steady and unblinking. “I just want to talk,” she calls.
Her voice isn’t shrill or desperate. It’s measured, almost conversational, and that unsettles me more than hysteria would have. There’s conviction there. A belief in the legitimacy of her presence.
Ollie’s hand slides automatically to the small of my back.
The touch is subtle—no dramatic gesture, no tug to move me behind him—but it’s firm and protective. Possessive in a way that sends a pulse low through my body despite the circumstances. It isn’t insecurity. It’s claim.
“You need to leave,” Ollie says, his tone even but carrying easily across the distance.
She gives a short laugh, not loud enough to draw the crowd’s attention yet, but sharp enough that I hear it. “You think you can just erase me?”
Heat climbs behind my ribs. “I don’t know you,” I snap back before I can filter it.
Her gaze flicks fully to me. There’s no embarrassment there. No doubt. “You did.”
The implication hangs in the air, deliberately vague and therefore infinitely more dangerous. It suggests history without specifics. Promises without proof. It’s narrative bait, and she knows it.
The guards reach her then. One positions himself at her side, the other a half step behind. She doesn’t fight them. She doesn’t pull away.