Chapter 1 #2
But I was a Sterling. And Sterlings didn't beg. We negotiated. Even when we were drowning.
I squared my shoulders, trying to summon the ghost of the bitchy socialite I pretended to be. "Technically," I said, my voice trembling only slightly, "my father owns this unit. So I’m not breaking and entering. I’m visiting family property."
Toby tilted his head. The movement was avian, predatory. "Your father sublet this unit to me six months ago, Princess. It’s in my name. My lease. My lock you just picked."
His eyes dropped to the bobby pin still clutched in my hand. One corner of his mouth ticked up. Not a smile. A smirk. A dark, impressed, mocking smirk.
"You picked a Kaba Gemini lock with a hair clip," he stated. It wasn't a question.
"I have hidden talents," I snapped.
"Clearly." He set the glass down on the chrome side table. The sound was a sharp clink in the silence. "Get out."
The command was soft, but it cracked like a whip.
"I can't," I said.
"Not my problem."
"It's raining freezing slush out there!"
"Also not my problem." He stood up.
Oh. My. God.
Sitting down, he was big. Standing up, he was a geological event. He unfolded to his full height—six-foot-four of dense, checking-line muscle. He took a step toward me, and the air in the room seemed to get thinner. He moved with the eerie silence of a big cat, despite his size.
I instinctively stepped back, my heel hitting one of my trunks. I stumbled, flailing, and managed to catch myself against the wall.
He stopped three feet away from me. Close enough that I could smell him.
The scent hit me like a physical blow—clean sweat, expensive sandalwood soap, and the sharp bite of whiskey.
He smelled like danger. He smelled like the kind of trouble my mother warned me about, the kind that ruins you for everyone else.
He looked down at me, his gaze dragging over my wet hair, my shivering shoulders, and settling on the way the wet silk of my dress clung to my breasts.
I felt my nipples harden, betraying me instantly. I crossed my arms over my chest, my face burning.
"My eyes are up here, Kincaid," I hissed.
"I've seen tits before, Georgia," he said, his voice bored. "Yours aren't special enough to keep you from getting evicted."
The insult stung more than the cold. "You are a pig."
"I'm a pig who pays his rent," he countered, his voice dropping an octave, turning into that gravelly whisper that rumor said he used to terrify opposing goalies. "You are a spoiled brat who thinks the world owes her a safety net. Get. Out."
"I have nowhere to go!" The confession burst out of me, high and desperate. The facade crumbled. I felt the tears welling up again, hot and humiliating. "My father cut me off. My cards are declined. My sorority kicked me out. If I walk out that door, I am sleeping on a park bench in a sleet storm. Is that what you want? You want to read the headline tomorrow? GM’s Daughter Freezes to Death Outside Star Player’s Penthouse? "
I saw a muscle feather in his jaw. It was the first sign of emotion he’d shown.
He stared at me, his gray eyes searching my face, looking for the lie. He was analyzing me like game tape, breaking down my defenses, looking for the angle.
"Stop crying," he ordered.
"I'm not crying!" I sobbed, a tear immediately betraying me and rolling down my nose.
He closed his eyes for a second and exhaled, a long, controlled breath through his nose. He looked like a man who was counting to ten to stop himself from punching a wall.
"If you stay," he said, opening his eyes, "you are gone by morning."
"Fine," I lied. I needed more than a night, but I would take what I could get.
"And," he stepped closer, invading my personal space until he was all I could see.
He loomed over me, a tower of judgment and muscle.
"If you stay, you do not speak. You do not touch anything.
You do not leave a mess. This is not a frat house.
This is my home. I require absolute silence and absolute order.
Can you handle that, or should I throw you out now? "
I looked up at him. My neck cricked. He was overwhelming. Being this close to him made my skin prickle with a weird, electric anxiety that felt suspiciously like attraction. Which was insane. He was an asshole. He was a robot. He was the enemy.
"I can be quiet," I said.
"I doubt that," he murmured. He reached out.
I flinched, thinking he was going to grab me.
Instead, his large, rough hand brushed past my shoulder and locked the deadbolt on the door behind me. The sound of the lock sliding home was final. It felt like the door to a cage slamming shut.
He pulled his hand back, but he didn't step away. For a second, his hand hovered near my waist. I felt the heat radiating off his palm, searing through the wet silk. My breath hitched.
He looked at my mouth. His pupils dilated, swallowing the gray irises. For a split second, the cold indifference cracked, and I saw something else. Hunger. Dark, repressed, violent hunger.
Then the mask slammed back down.
"Bedroom on the left is the guest room," he said, his voice flat. "Don't come out until I leave for practice at 6:00 AM."
He turned his back on me and walked back to his chair, picking up his whiskey.
"And Georgia?" he said, without looking back.
"What?"
"If you drip on the rug, I'm billing you."
Toby
I waited until I heard the guest room door click shut before I let out the breath I’d been holding.
My hand was shaking. Just a tremor, barely visible, but it was there. I clenched my fist around the crystal tumbler until the knuckles turned white, forcing the tremor to stop.
Control.
That was the only thing that mattered. On the ice, in the classroom, in this apartment. Control was the currency I dealt in. Emotions were variables, and variables led to mistakes. Mistakes led to losses.
Georgia Sterling was a walking, talking, screaming variable.
I took a long pull of the scotch, letting the burn settle in my chest. It didn't do much to drown out the image burned into my retina.
Georgia, soaking wet. The silk dress clinging to her curves like a second skin, outlining the shape of her nipples, the curve of her hips, the darker shadow between her legs. Her eyes, wide and terrified and defiant all at once.
She was a mess. A chaotic, loud, entitled disaster. Everything I hated. Everything I had spent my life avoiding. My parents were chaos—screaming matches in boardrooms, divorces played out in the tabloids. I had built this life, this discipline, specifically to keep people like Georgia Sterling out.
So why had my pulse spiked to 140 the moment she picked my lock?
Why had I wanted to pin her against the door and taste the rain off her skin instead of throwing her out?
I looked at the puddle of water in the foyer where she had stood. It marred the perfection of the white marble. It was a stain. A disruption.
I should have called security. I should have called her father. Richard Sterling was my GM; he held my draft prospects in his hand. If he found out his daughter was sleeping in my apartment, regardless of the circumstances, he would bury me. The optics were a nightmare.
She has nowhere to go.
The thought annoyed me. I didn't do charity. But the look in her eyes... underneath the bratty entitlement, there was genuine terror. I recognized it. It was the look of someone who realized that the people who were supposed to protect them were actually the ones holding the knife.
I knew that look. I saw it in the mirror every time I thought about my own father.
I finished the whiskey in one gulp and set the glass down.
I stood up and walked to the foyer. I stared at the puddle.
I should clean it up. I needed to clean it up. Disorder was intolerable.
But instead of getting the mop, I just stared at the water, listening to the muffled sounds of her moving around in the guest room. A trunk thudding against the floor. A stifled sob.
The silence of the penthouse was broken. The ecosystem was compromised.
I rubbed the scar on my eyebrow.
Letting her stay was a mistake. I knew it in my bones, the same way I knew when a defenseman was about to blindside me. This was going to end in a collision.
I walked to the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of water, and hesitated. Then, cursing myself for being a fool, I grabbed a second one.
I walked to the guest room door. I didn't knock. I just set the bottle on the floor outside.
"Drink it," I said to the wood. "I don't need you passing out from dehydration in the morning."
I didn't wait for an answer. I walked back to my room, the sanctuary of the master suite.
I stripped off my sweatpants and climbed into the cold, empty bed. I stared at the ceiling, listening to the wind howl against the glass.
Usually, the silence of the apartment helped me sleep. It was heavy, comforting.
Tonight, the silence felt different. It felt like the calm before a storm.
Across the hall, the Ice Princess was in my castle. And for the first time in years, the walls didn't feel thick enough to keep the chaos out.
I closed my eyes, but all I could see was wet silk and defiant blue eyes.
One night, I told myself. She's gone tomorrow.
But even as I thought it, the lie tasted bitter on my tongue. Georgia Sterling wasn't the kind of problem that just went away. She was the kind of problem that burned the house down.
And God help me, I was already reaching for the matches.