5. Terms and Conditions
Chapter five
Terms and Conditions
Atticus POV
She's scared.
She's hiding it well. Better than most. But I've spent fifteen years reading people across ice and in locker rooms and in rooms where everyone's pretending, and Sienna Hart is scared.
She doesn't shake. Doesn't go pale. She sets her phone face-down on the counter like it's a normal thing to do, picks up her coffee, and looks at me with those dark eyes that say try me.
But her left hand.
She's pressing her thumbnail into the pad of her index finger. Small. Rhythmic. She doesn't know she's doing it.
I give her the thirty seconds she asked for and I don't say a word.
"Okay." She sets the mug down. "Talk."
She lets me pitch it without interrupting, which I appreciate and also don't trust. Sienna Hart is a bartender. She knows how to let people run their mouths until they say the thing they didn't plan to.
I lay it out clean.
The league wants a reformed-captain narrative.
Community service, sponsor appearances, a face beside me that reads warm and credible instead of combustible.
Delia wants her specifically. I explain why, watching Sienna go still when I get to the part about wholesome presence and brand-softening asset.
"She said that."
"She has a deck."
"Of course she does."
I keep going. The fake relationship gives her something too: visibility, team security access, a reason to have my number and use it at any hour. A shield that doesn't require explaining.
She listens to all of it. Doesn't move much. Just that thumbnail, pressing.
"What's the threat?" I ask. "From your father."
Her eyes cut to mine. Sharp.
"I didn't say it was from my father."
"You didn't have to."
She looks at me for a long moment. Then she looks at the window. Outside, the morning is gray and unhurried and completely indifferent to both of us.
"He has something," she says finally. "From a long time ago. Something I'd rather stay buried."
"How bad?"
"Bad enough that he thinks it's leverage." A pause. "Bad enough that he might be right."
I don't push for the rest. She gave me the shape of it. The edges. That's enough for now. Enough to tell me the threat is real and the fear is earned and she's been carrying it alone for a while.
Her hands are still.
She's made a decision.
"What are the rules?" she asks.
So I give them to her.
"No sleeping together." I hold her gaze when I say it. Clean. Straight. No room for negotiation. "We're not doing that."
She doesn't flinch. Doesn't smirk. Just listens.
"No kissing unless the cameras require it. And if they do, it's quick. Controlled. Done." I pause. "No lying to Mason without a plan to come clean after. He finds out eventually. We control when."
She tilts her head. Slight, careful. The way she does when she's filing something away.
"That's your list," she says.
"Those are the terms."
"Your terms."
"The terms." No flex in it.
She's quiet for a moment. Then she uncrosses her arms and moves to the counter. The island between us. Leans both hands flat on the surface and closes the distance by half.
Close enough that I can smell the coffee on her breath and the faint clean scent underneath it. Something warm and entirely her.
"Fine," she says. "But I set the terms on my end. Not you. Not Delia." Her eyes hold mine. "Me."
"Define your end."
"I keep my schedule. My bar. My voice. Nobody tells me how to dress, what to say, or how to smile for a camera." She lifts one finger off the counter. "I have final approval on anything that involves my name or my face."
"Delia won't like that."
"Delia doesn't have to like it. You want my cooperation, you sell it to her." Another finger. "If I say stop, we stop. No argument, no negotiating, no but the cameras are still rolling. Stop means stop."
"Agreed."
"And Mason." Her voice shifts. Just slightly. "We tell him together. Not after it's already public. Before." She meets my eyes. "He deserves that."
I think about my brother's face. The way it goes flat when he feels blindsided. The way he goes quiet and surgical when he's actually hurt.
"Agreed," I say again.
She holds my gaze like she's checking the math. Looking for the clause I buried.
There isn't one. I mean every word.
"Okay." She straightens up off the counter. "One more."
"What."
She steps around the island.
Not fast. Not aggressive. Just moves. Closes the last few feet between us the way she probably crosses a crowded bar: like she's done it a thousand times and owns every inch.
She stops close enough that I'd have to make an effort not to touch her.
"You don't get to decide what I can handle." Her voice is low and even and entirely serious. "Not with my father, not with the PR circus, not with any of it. You tell me things. You don't manage me." A pause. "That's non-negotiable."
The words land somewhere I wasn't expecting.
I look at her. Really look at her. Standing in her kitchen in yesterday's oversized shirt, coffee on her breath and steel in her spine. She's been managed before. Badly. By someone who told himself it was for her own good.
She's not going to let it happen again.
Smart woman.
"Agreed," I say. For the third time. And I mean it the most.
She's close. Close enough that if either of us moved wrong, or right, there'd be no taking it back. The kitchen is warm and quiet and there's nothing between us but three inches of air and a very clean set of rules I just laid out and intend to keep.
Her eyes stay on mine.
She's not doing this on purpose. Or maybe she is. Maybe she wants to see if I'll break in the first five minutes.
I don't move.
I stand exactly where I am and keep my hands at my sides and I do not close the distance and I do not let my eyes drop to her mouth.
I make the decision actively. Consciously. The way you decide not to throw a punch even when every instinct is screaming.
"We should call Delia," I say.
My voice comes out level.
I'll take it.
Sienna watches me for one more second. Something flickers across her face. Not disappointment, not relief. Just a quick, unreadable assessment.
Then she steps back.
"Yeah," she says. "We probably should."
She picks up her phone and I let out a slow breath through my nose and think about how this is going to be the longest arrangement of my life.
And how I'd sign the agreement again without hesitating.