24 - Kayla
Kayla
The gym felt like a tomb, heavy with the scent of rubber and the dying echo of Michael’s workout, but the air between us was suddenly screaming.
I stood in the doorway, my lungs burning as if I’d been the one running wind sprints for an hour.
My phone was a dead weight in my hand, the screen still glowing with the missed call from Gabe’s principal and the stuttering text from a friend of Gabe’s who had finally cracked.
Michael stood by the squat rack, frozen. Sweat tracked through the chalk dust on his skin, and for a second, he just stared at me like I was a ghost.
"Kayla?" His voice was raspy, cautious.
"Don't," I snapped, the word sharp enough to draw blood. I took three predatory steps into the room, the door hissing shut behind me, sealing us in. "Don't you dare act surprised. Don't you dare ask me what’s wrong."
He reached for a towel, his movements slow, eyes never leaving mine. "Kayla, talk to me. What happened?"
"Gabe happened, Michael! Or should I say, the police report happened? The mistaken identity that he’s been feeding the school because he thought he had the captain of the Surge in his back pocket?
" I was shaking now, the fury vibrating in my bones.
"He was at that party. He was drinking. He’s been sneaking out for weeks. And you knew."
Michael’s jaw tightened. He didn't look away, but I saw the shadow fall over his face. The guilt of a man caught in a crossfire he hadn't asked for. He didn't try to lie. There wasn't time, and I think he knew I’d see right through it.
"I saw him once, Kayla," he said, his voice dropping into that low, steady register he used to calm a bench during a blowout. "The night at the bar. I saw him in the alley."
"And you didn't tell me?" I stepped into his space, my chest nearly brushing his damp shirt.
The heat coming off him was immense, a physical wall.
"You sat in my car, you slept in my room, you looked me in the eye while I told you he was my entire world and that I was terrified of failing him, and you lied to me by omission?
You let him think he could play us against each other? "
"I was trying to handle it!" Michael roared back, the sudden volume making me flinch.
He dropped the towel, his hands balling into white-knuckled fists at his sides.
"I was trying to be the guy he could trust so he wouldn't go off the deep end!
I thought if I could get through to him, if I could mentor him—"
"You’re not his father, Michael! You’re a hockey player I let into our lives because I was stupid enough to think you actually cared about the stakes!"
"You think I don't care?" He took a step toward me, forcing me to tilt my head back to look at him. His eyes were dark, turbulent, and filled with a raw desperation I’d never seen before.
"You think I’m doing this for the 'mentor' credit? I’ve been losing sleep for weeks, Kayla. I’ve been walking a goddamn tightrope between being the man you need and the guy Gabe won't shut out. "
"You betrayed me," I whispered, the anger suddenly giving way to a hollow, aching hurt. "I trusted you. I let you in. That’s my biggest fear—letting someone in only for them to help my son ruin his life."
"I am trying to save his life!" Michael grabbed my upper arms, not roughly, but with a grip that felt like an anchor. "I want him to have the career. I want him to stay in school. But more than that, Kayla... I want this."
He shook me slightly, his face inches from mine, his breath hot against my lips. All the "cagey" behavior, all the guarded silence from the bar, the motel, and the car. It all came crashing down at once.
"I don't think of you as a friend, Kayla.
I haven't for a long time. I think about you every second I’m on the ice.
I think about you every time I wake up in a hotel room in a city that isn't where you are. I want to be the person you lean on, and I thought... I thought if I could just fix Gabe, if I could keep his secrets and guide him back to the path, then maybe I’d earn a spot in your life that wasn't just 'the guy from the bar. '"
His voice broke with an edge of vulnerability tearing through the professional athlete's veneer. "I’m terrified of losing you. And I’m terrified of failing him. I’m not his father, you’re right. But God, I want to be something to you both. I care about you so much it’s suffocating me."
The air in the gym was thick, heavy with the scent of him and the weight of everything he’d just confessed.
The slow burn that had been smoldering between us for months.
Through every shared look over a beer tap, every touch in the dark, every silent prayer in a motel bed.
It suddenly exploded into a localized sun.
The hurt was there, the betrayal was real, but the unabated force of his feelings crashed over me, drowning out the noise of the school’s phone calls and Gabe’s lies.
I lunged, grabbing the front of his damp t-shirt and pulling him down. My mouth slammed against his in a kiss that was less about romance and more about survival. It was desperate and hungry, a collision of two people who had spent too much time pretending they weren't starving.
Michael let out a low, guttural groan, his hands sliding from my arms to my waist, lifting me until my toes barely touched the rubber mats.
He tasted like salt and adrenaline, and the kiss deepened instantly, his tongue demanding entry, his fingers digging into my hips.
It was everything we hadn't done in that motel room.
All the supposedly gross stuff Gabe was afraid of, amplified by months of repressed electricity.
He backed me up, my heels clicking against the floor, until we hit the cool tile of the hallway leading to the locker rooms. We didn't stop. He devoured me, his hands moving under the hem of my shirt, his skin searingly hot against mine.
"Kayla," he gasped against my neck, his voice a wrecked shadow of itself. "We can't... not here. Someone could walk in."
"I don't care," I breathed, my hands tangled in his sweat-damp hair, pulling him back for more.
He groaned again, a sound of pure, tortured want. He broke the kiss just long enough to scoop me up, his muscles bunching as he carried me toward the back of the facility. He kicked open the heavy door to the recovery area, bypassing the ice baths and the trainer’s tables.
The air grew thick and humid as he reached the heavy glass door of the steam room. He pulled me inside, the hiss of the rising vapor swallowing us whole. The world outside—the Surge, the Dallas Stars, the school, and the secrets—vanished behind the thick, white mist.
There was only the heat, the roar of the steam, and Michael’s hands as he pulled me back into the dark.
The steam was a living thing, a thick, white shroud that swallowed the corners of the room until there was nothing left of the world but the two of us and the heavy, rhythmic hiss of the vents.
It turned the air into a liquid weight, pressing against my skin, mingling with the sweat that was already beginning to bead along my collarbone.
Every breath I took tasted of cedar and salt, dragging the heat deep into my lungs until my entire internal temperature seemed to spike in response to his touch.
When Michael finally broke the kiss to breathe, he didn't pull away.
He leaned his forehead against mine, his chest heaving, the damp fabric of his workout shirt clinging to him like a second skin.
The friction of his stubble against my chin was a delicious, stinging contrast to the velvet heat of the room.
I felt a low, thrumming ache coil in my belly, a physical demand that made my legs feel like water.
He reached down, his fingers hooking into the hem of his shirt. In one fluid, violent motion, he ripped it over his head and tossed it into the mist.
My breath hitched. I’d seen him in jerseys, in suits, and in the dim light of a motel room, but I hadn't seen this.
This was the raw machinery of a professional athlete, built for impact and endurance.
His torso was a map of hard-won power, the deep, carved lines of his obliques leading down into the waistband of his shorts, and the heavy, functional swell of his chest. A faint scar ran across his lower ribs, a silver reminder of a game-winning block probably, making him look less like a celebrity and more like something ancient and elemental.
I reached out, my pulse hammering in my fingertips as I touched the damp heat of his shoulder. My focus narrowed, the rest of him blurring until I was hyper-fixated on the micro-details of the man standing in the steam.
I raised my hands to the back of his head. My fingers fumbled for a moment with the elastic band that held his hair in its usual, disciplined knot. With a sharp tug, I snapped the tie free.
The transformation was instantaneous. The dark, chestnut weight of his hair didn't just fall; it spilled, heavy and wet with sweat and steam.
I watched, mesmerized, as a single damp strand clung stubbornly to the tensed slope of his trapezius muscle, tracing the powerful line where his neck met his shoulder.
The dark hair looked almost black against the flushed bronze of his skin.
He looked wilder now, the structured leader replaced by something unbridled.
A few droplets of condensation clung to the thick, dark hairs of his beard, catching the dim light like tiny diamonds before sliding slowly down into the hollow of his throat.
He looked down at me, his eyes dark with a hunger that made the steam feel cold by comparison.
I could see the minute flare of his nostrils, the way the muscle in his jaw ticked as he fought for a shred of the control I had just systematically dismantled.