Chapter 9
SLOANE
"Will you stay, Sloane? Please?”
Tucker's question hangs in the air between us, heavy with an emotion I'm not ready to face. His thumb traces my cheekbone, blue eyes searching mine with unexpected vulnerability.
Reality crashes back. What am I doing? I sit up abruptly, pulling away from his warmth. Tucker's arms fall to his sides, his face already registering the shift in my mood.
"I can’t.” I look around his apartment with suddenly clear eyes.
The place screams single guy with no responsibilities—gaming consoles stacked beneath that massive television, designer furniture that looks barely used, a kitchen with gleaming appliances that probably never see action beyond protein shakes. "I have class in the morning."
I stand, straightening my sundress and searching for my underwear. I spot them on the floor by the coffee table, the delicate fabric torn at the seam from Tucker's eager hands. Great. I grab them anyway and step into them, feeling his eyes on me the entire time.
"You don't have to go," he says, sitting up. He's still naked, his hair mussed from my fingers, looking impossibly gorgeous and entirely too dangerous for my fragile new beginning. "If you stay, we could have breakfast. I make a mean scrambled egg."
I shake my head, collecting my purse from where I'd dropped it. "This was fun, but I really need to focus on school right now. I can't... I can't do this again."
His face falls, the disappointment unmasked. "Can I call you?"
"I don't think that's a good idea." I'm being cruel, and I know it, but a clean break now is better than messier pain later. Nothing good can come of this. "I'm just starting to rebuild my life, and getting involved with anyone right now would be a mistake."
"It wouldn't have to be complicated," he argues, standing now, pulling on his jeans. "We could take it slow."
I almost laugh at that. There's nothing slow about how we combusted together, twice now. Nothing measured or careful about the way my body responds to his.
That's the problem.
"I had a really good time," I say, softening my tone. “You’re an incredible lover. But I need to focus on me right now. On school, on figuring out what I want."
"And I'm not what you want." It's not quite a question.
I don't answer directly. "I want my degree. I want to build a career. I want stability."
His eyes flick around his ostentatious apartment, and I can tell he sees it differently now, through my eyes. "Right. And this doesn't fit that goal.”
"It's not about your place, Tucker. It's about… I just... can't."
He nods, disappointment evident but accepting. "At least let me walk you down."
"No need." I'm already at the elevator, pressing the button. “Thank you for returning my necklace."
My fingers go to the pendant at my throat, and for a moment, I'm tempted to stay. To return to the warmth of his arms, the safety I felt there. But that's the trap, isn't it? Feeling safe with a man, only to discover you've lost yourself in his world.
The elevator arrives with a soft chime. Tucker stands in the middle of his living room, looking suddenly small against the dramatic city view behind him. As the doors close between us, I see him open his mouth as if to say something more, but it's too late.
Alone in the elevator, I catch my reflection in the mirrored wall. My hair is a riot of curls, my lips still swollen from his kisses, the necklace gleaming at my throat. I look well-fucked and slightly wild.
I also look like a woman about to make the same mistake twice.
"Not this time," I whisper to my reflection. "This time, you choose you."
I think of the years I spent orbiting Josh's life like a moon, reflecting his light, defined by his career. How I'd shrunk myself to fit into the spaces he left for me, until one day I realized there was almost nothing left of the woman I'd been before.
Dr. Rivera, my therapist during the divorce, had made me promise: no serious relationships for at least a year. "You need to remember who you are first," she'd said. "What you want, separate from anyone else's expectations."
I was doing well—getting back into school, building a friendship with Mel, finding my footing. I can't risk that progress, not even for the intoxicating connection I feel with Tucker. Especially not for that. The stronger the pull, the greater the danger.
As I step out into the night air, I take a deep breath. I made the right choice. I know I did.
So why does it feel so much like loss?
"He said what?" Mel's eyes widen over her pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream. We're sitting on our small balcony, the city lights twinkling around us. I'd barely made it through the door before she pounced with questions.
"He asked me to stay," I repeat, digging into my own container of cookie dough. "Like, for the night."
"And you said no." It's not a question. She knows me too well.
"Of course, I said no. He works with Josh.”
Mel gives me a look. "And that's the only reason?"
I sigh, setting down my spoon. “There’s no universe where this works out. I can't get involved with anyone right now, especially not someone like him."
"Someone like him," she echoes. "You mean gorgeous, clearly into you, and good in bed?"
“Also a fighting brute, party boy with countless women tossing underpants at him.” I gesture vaguely in the direction of downtown, where Tucker's penthouse kisses the skyline. "The fancy apartment, the expensive everything, the...superficiality of it all."
Mel studies me for a moment. "Is that really what bothers you? Or are you scared that you might actually like him?"
"I'm not scared," I protest automatically. "I'm being smart. I spent years of my life being Josh Grentley's wife, and you know what I got out of it? A huge betrayal, a pile of divorce papers, and the need for therapy."
"Tucker isn't Josh," she points out gently.
"No, but he's cut from the same cloth." I stab at my ice cream. "I need to focus on my future."
Mel nods, accepting this. "Fair enough. For what it's worth, though, I’m having constant flashbacks to how that man looked at you.”
I ignore the flutter in my chest at her words. "Ice cream's melting," I say instead, and she lets me change the subject.
The entire week passes in a blur of classes, study sessions, and determined efforts to forget Tucker Stag. I throw myself into schoolwork with renewed vigor, as if acing statistics could somehow erase the memory of his hands on my skin, his voice in my ear.
It almost works. By Saturday, I can go several hours without thinking of him. Progress.
I spread my notes across the kitchen table, highlighters lined up like soldiers ready for battle. The statistics exam on Monday looms large, and despite Mel's patient tutoring, I'm still struggling with confidence intervals and hypothesis testing.
"You can do this," I mutter to myself, flipping through my textbook. "You used to be good at school. You can be good at it again."
My phone buzzes with a notification, a welcome distraction from the sea of numbers. I unlock it to find a news alert.
**FURY GOALTENDER GRENTLEY GRINS AND BARES ALL AT TEAMMATE'S WEDDING**
My first instinct is to ignore it. Josh's life isn't my concern anymore. But curiosity—that terrible, persistent human flaw—gets the better of me, and I tap the link.
The article is a fluffy buzz piece. A casual backyard wedding with Gunnar Stag—Josh’s nemesis, turned goalie partner. The caption refers to an “intimate ceremony with family and teammates.”
Family indeed. There’s Tucker and his brothers. Their father—I remember him from the photos in Tucker’s apartment. God, I should not know any of this.
I scroll through the images, telling myself I'm just procrastinating on statistics.
There's Josh, and the sight of him is less painful than I expected.
He's dressed casually in khakis and a blue button-down, actually smiling in a way I rarely saw during our marriage. He looks lighter somehow, more at ease than I remember. But he’s still separated from the group, isolating himself even here.
I continue scrolling, past photos of the happy couple, of teammates I vaguely recognize. If things had been different, I would have been there, too.
My brain stutters, snagging on what might have been. Would I have been pregnant by now if Josh hadn’t unilaterally stolen that option from us? The room lurches, images flashing through my mind. Tucker above me on his couch, saying all the right things.
Tucker behind me at the ski house, making me feel incredible.
Tucker’s hands—rough-textured but so, so gentle.
But then, I see Josh screaming at me in our kitchen, me ripping up documents as I scream right back.
"No," I whisper, scrolling frantically through more photos.
There's another—Josh shaking hands with Tucker, both tight-lipped. My ex-husband and the man I've been sleeping with, together in the same frame. I notice that Tucker seems tense, and I hate that I’m able to observe that. I can’t be thinking about Tucker at all, let alone reading his moods.
I tried to disconnect from the hockey world during our separation and divorce, precisely because of this kind of thing.
Dr. Rivera had encouraged it—a clean break from the environment that had consumed me.
I became so resentful, so angry that I allowed myself to be absorbed by that world so profoundly, I lost touch with every friend I’d made.
And forget about ties to the Black community in that white world of hockey and hockey fans.
The second I left my marriage, I unsubscribed from Partners and Wives group chats, unfollowed social media accounts, donated or destroyed every piece of Fury merchandise I owned.
Yet I can’t seem to quit these news alerts. Even now, my finger hesitates above the checkbox to unsubscribe.
Reading more of the article, I see that Tucker and his brothers joined the team right when Josh and I separated.
I had already stopped attending games by then, stopped paying attention to roster changes or team news.
I'd been so focused on surviving the shocking news that my husband lied to me, on reclaiming my identity, that I'd effectively erased hockey from my consciousness.
But that doesn’t change who Tucker is. Where he works. The fact that he is off limits. It felt delicious at the party.
It feels destructive now.
I nod, determined, and block Tucker's number with shaking fingers. Then I turn back to my statistics textbook, focusing on the one thing I can control—my future.