16. Nova
Chapter sixteen
Nova
Same dress.
Still dangerous.
It fits a little differently than it did the first time, which I am choosing not to examine.
Jax is in the same suit he wore the night I learned he could make eye contact feel like a bad decision.
We have gotten disturbingly comfortable doing this in public.
That’s the problem I’ve been trying not to think about. That and the other thing. He knows Nova Shaw. He doesn’t know the name on the piece that hurt him.
And he’s sitting across from me in a suit, looking at me like he’s already decided.
And he doesn’t know.
I think about that more than I should.
I’m thinking about it right now.
The sponsor dinner is for a hockey equipment brand.
New blocker design — lighter, engineered specifically for goalies with hand injury history. Better wrist protection. The rep is enthusiastic and detailed and genuinely loves what he builds and I’m writing everything down in my professional notebook because that’s what I’m here for.
When he mentions the wrist protection I watch Jax’s face.
Something crosses it.
Quick. Controlled. Gone before anyone else at the table catches it.
The same thing he did in the physio suite. The same thing he does every time something gets close to the hand. Takes it in, processes it, puts it somewhere, keeps going.
I wrote about that injury as a character flaw.
I think about that every time I see him swallow the reaction and keep going. Every time I think about what I wrote and what it actually was and the distance between those two things.
He deserved better than what I gave him.
Nova Shaw is trying.
I write it all down and say nothing about any of it.
Across the room, Carson Webb is working the same crowd I am.
I clock him the way you clock weather coming in. Webb runs the outlet that prints what everyone else is too careful to touch — the byline that turns a rumor into a headline and lets the lawyers sort it out after. He’s been angling for embedded access to this team all season and didn’t get it.
I did.
He hasn’t forgotten that, and he doesn’t bother pretending otherwise.
He catches me looking. Lifts his glass an inch. Smiles like he knows something.
I look away first. File it under deal with later.
Ryan sits next to me forty minutes in. Sports agent. Handles three Cyclones players — not Jax. He’s hot and he knows it. Genuinely funny with actual material.
He asks my opinion on my latest feature about Jax.
I give it.
He listens. Asks a smart follow-up. Then, because the universe has apparently decided subtlety is beneath it, he mentions the old V. North piece.
“Brutal article,” he says, lowering his voice like that makes it less of a knife. “People still remember that one.”
My pen stills for half a second.
Not long enough for anyone else to notice.
Long enough for me to feel it.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
I don’t look at it.
I already know.
Griffin.
I keep my face completely neutral and keep talking to Ryan and think — this is fine, this is manageable, I have been managing harder things than this since I was eight years old — and from across the table Jax’s expression is completely neutral.
His jaw is doing something.
Brody sees it. His eyes go wide and find the ceiling immediately. Liam does one slow look — Ryan to Jax, back — and says nothing because Liam never says anything and means everything. Aiden examines his bread roll with great interest.
Ryan puts his hand briefly on my arm, making a point.
Across the table Jax goes very still.
Not obvious still. The crease still. The kind of stillness that means he’s tracking everything: Ryan’s hand, my face, the phone buzzing in my pocket, the lie sitting behind my teeth.
Nothing gets past him unless he lets it. And right now, he is letting too much past. I know what it would cost him if he did.
I know exactly what it would cost him and the fact that he’s sitting there holding it together while I’m managing Griffin buzzing in my pocket and Ryan’s hand on my arm and the secret that’s been sitting in my chest since day one —
I reach for my water glass. Take a sip. Keep going.
Ryan asks for my card on the way out.
Professional. Perfectly reasonable. I give it to him.
Jax is three feet away.
He doesn’t look at us.
He doesn’t have to.
Outside.
Florida night. The dinner crowd thinning. Jax beside me, jacket on, keys in his hand, jaw set in a way I’ve learned to read.
“He was just being friendly,” I say.
“I know.”
“Ryan Holt is a sports agent. He talks to journalists. That’s literally—”
“I know, Nova.”
“You look like you want to hit someone.”
He doesn’t say anything.
My phone buzzes again.
He clocks it. Doesn’t look at my pocket. Looks at my face.
“Griffin,” he says.
I don’t answer. That’s an answer. Something moves through his expression. Everything going inward. Quiet and cold and certain. He walks to the edge of the parking lot. Stands there.
I watch his shoulders. The way they drop slightly when he’s processing. His right hand flexing — the ghost hand, the hand that carries everything.
The hand I called a disciplinary issue.
The hand I now know is a two-season ghost he’s been managing alone.
He comes back.
Stands in front of me.
“This isn’t even real,” I say.
I don’t know why I say it. Defense mechanism. The thing I say when something is getting too real and I need to put distance between me and it before I do something I can’t take back.
Like tell him the truth.
He looks at me for a long moment.
“Isn’t it.”
Not a question.
The parking lot goes quiet around us.
I don’t have anything to say to that.
I don’t have a single thing.
“Nova.” His voice low. “I sat at that table for two hours watching that man talk to you and I didn’t say a word because it’s not my place and I know it’s not my place and I sat there anyway because I couldn’t make myself leave.”
I look at him.
“And Griffin Novak has been texting you from Tampa and I’m done being reasonable about it.”
“Jax—”
“I turned my car around three blocks from your building,” he says. “I came back for you. Not because of anything else. Because I couldn’t make myself drive home.”
The night air is warm.
Everything is very still.
He still doesn’t know.
He’s standing in front of me choosing me, the guilt floods in
“Jax, there’s something—”
He looks at me.
Open.
That’s what does it. Not angry. Not guarded. Not the version of him I know how to handle. Just open, like he trusts me with whatever comes next.
And I lose my nerve.
I look at the tape on his hand. The set of his shoulders. The whole city leaning toward him like he’s the thing holding it up.
I tell myself I’m protecting his focus.
Maybe part of me is.
The uglier truth is that I’m protecting the way he looks at me. Like I’m not already part of the thing that hurt him. Like I can stay if he never knows what name I used before Nova Shaw.
“Come in,” I say.
He looks at me for half a second longer than he needs to, like he already knows there’s something I’m not saying.
And that’s worse.
I take a step toward the door. Then another.
He follows.
No more talking. Nothing left to say that wouldn’t change this.
I unlock the door and step inside. He comes in behind me.
The door clicks shut, and the silence of my apartment changes shape.
Not empty. Not lonely.
Expectant.
This isn’t Pittsburgh.
That was urgency. A collision in the dark after weeks of denial.
And this isn’t the other night either.
That night, I could call it a bad decision if I needed to. A late-night lapse in judgment. A body-over-brain situation with a hockey player who brought his cat to my apartment and looked at me like he already knew where the night was going.
Hot.
Reckless.
Survivable.
This feels different.
There’s no rush now. No accident. No easy label I can slap over it afterward so I don’t have to look too closely at what he’s doing here.
Jax’s jacket is off. His keys are down. He’s looking at me like this isn’t a question anymore.
Like he came here for me.
Not for one night.
Not for a mistake.
Me.
Which is a deeply inconvenient thing to realize when I am standing in my own living room with no idea what to do with my hands.
It should feel simple.
It does not.
It feels bigger than a hookup. Bigger than a bad idea. Bigger than the thing I told myself I could survive as long as nobody named it.
He steps closer.
I don’t move.
That’s the first mistake.
His hand slides up my arm. Not grabbing. Not rushing. Just settling there, warm and certain, like he’s already decided I’m not going anywhere unless I choose to.
My whole body reacts before I can dress it up as something smarter.
“You’re shaking.”
Not a question.
“Cold,” I say automatically.
His mouth shifts.
“That’s not what it is.”
He steps forward until my back hits the wall. Not fast. Not aggressive. Just—inevitable.
“You going to pretend you don’t want this too?” he murmurs against my ear.
There’s no edge to it. That’s worse.
The truth flickers—sharp, insistent. Then his hand slides to my jaw, tilting my face up, and want drowns it out. I turn my head and catch his mouth with mine before I answer.
Second mistake.
The kiss is immediate—hungry, reckless. My hands fist in his shirt, pulling him closer. He doesn’t resist. That’s worse.
“That’s better,” he mutters against my mouth. Like I just confirmed something for him.
He lifts me before I decide to move. I go with it. My legs wrap around him automatically.
“You do that every time,” he says, voice rough.
“What.”
“Try to make a joke when your body’s already answered me.”
I let out a breath that might be a laugh. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Not flattery.” His grip tightens slightly on my thigh. “Observation.”
That hits low. Annoying. Accurate.
He drops me onto the bed—controlled. Certain. He looks down at me, taking his time in a way that feels deliberate enough to undo me completely.
“You still thinking this is a bad idea?”
“Yes,” I say.
He leans down slowly this time. “Good.” His mouth brushes mine, not quite a kiss yet. “Wouldn’t want you getting comfortable.”
That should irritate me.
It doesn’t.