Chapter 21
Gio
Cold air hangs in the briefing room, thin and recycled. Coach is talking strategy, his voice a low drone about defensive gaps and power plays. I'm nodding, tracking the angles, but my focus is split. My phone sits on the table, screen down, a fucking black mirror waiting to crack.
It vibrates once—a sharp, insistent buzz against polished wood. I ignore it. Coach's eyes flick to me, a silent question. A short, sharp nod back. Nothing. It's nothing.
The phone buzzes again. And again.
"Rossi," Coach says, tone flat. "You with us?"
"Yeah." The word is gravel. I pick up the phone, flipping it over under the guise of checking the time. The screen lights up with a message from an unknown number. Rylan. The name hits like a punch to the gut.
The preview is a photo. Zoe. Walking out of the design building, her head up, spine straight, looking like she owns the fucking sidewalk. The photographer was far away. Long lens. The message underneath makes my blood run cold.
She looks calm. You don't.
Another text follows immediately, no photo this time. Just words.
I didn't get what I wanted. Funny how some stories get rewritten. Sealed records can feel like a safe bet… until they're not.
He's watching me. He's digging. He's threatening to unearth the one thing I buried—the one thing that could end everything before it even starts.
My knuckles go white around the phone as the air in the room gets thicker, harder to breathe.
I'm trapped. Between a ghost from my past and Coach's expectations.
Then the family group chat blows up. A news alert from my sister.
Hockey Star's New Campus Flame?
My mother's message follows immediately.
Giovanni, who is this girl?
Dad's is next.
We need to talk about optics.
Optics. They're turning my private life, my leverage, into a public spectacle. Another thing to manage. Another thing I can't fucking control. Pressure builds behind my eyes, a hot, sharp spike. Rylan has my past. My family has my present. And Zoe… Zoe is in the middle of it all.
"Rossi." Coach's voice cuts through the haze. I look up. He's stopped talking. The whole room is staring.
"You good, or do I need to hit you?"
"I'm good." I stand, the chair scraping loud against the floor. I don't wait to be dismissed. The phone goes into my pocket and I walk out. Leaving strategy behind. Containment just failed. It's time to break something.
Outside the briefing room, the hallway is a blur of gray concrete and bad lighting.
Texts from Rylan and my family brand the inside of my skull, a fire I can't put out.
Containment is a fucking joke. Strategy is useless.
Rylan is digging at my past and my family is trying to manage my present, and all of it is looping back to Zoe. The only variable I can actually touch.
"Rossi!" Coach's voice echoes down the hall, sharp with command. "Get your ass back in here."
I don't break stride. I don't turn around. I push through the heavy doors leading out of the complex, the cool air a useless shock against my skin. Thinking is what got me trapped. Instinct takes over. Raw, predatory, aimed at a single target.
The design building. My movements are sharp, economical.
I cut across the quad, my path a straight line that ignores the meandering crowds.
People see me, part for me, their faces blurring into irrelevant noise.
Focus narrows to one point: her schedule.
I know it. I've always known it. She'll be in the main studio for another twenty minutes, but she hates the post-class traffic.
She always cuts through the west corridor to the service exit.
Quieter. Faster. I'm not going to her. I'm cutting off her escape.
I reach the design building and don't hesitate, pushing through the main entrance.
The air inside smells of chemicals and fabric, a scent I now associate with her.
I bypass the main studio, the hum of conversation and sewing machines a distant, irrelevant buzz.
Stairs take me down, footsteps echoing in the sterile stairwell.
This is a tactical interception. I'm breaking my own rules about institutional boundaries, about public optics.
Right now, I don't give a shit. The need to reassert control on something—on someone—overrides every piece of strategy I've ever learned.
Here to prove that in a world of shit I can't manage, I can still manage her.
The west corridor is exactly as I knew it would be: deserted, dim, and smelling of old paper and floor wax.
The narrow space amplifies every sound. The hum of the overhead lights.
The distant clang of a radiator. My own breathing.
I stop in the middle of the hall, a statue in the gloom, and wait.
Predatory focus from the walk sharpens into a single, raw point of need.
Control. The feeling of forcing the world back into its fucking box.
A door opens at the far end, the sound echoing toward me.
Soft footsteps. Hers. She appears, a silhouette against the light from the stairwell, her portfolio case held loosely at her side.
She doesn't see me at first, not in the shadows.
She takes three steps into the corridor before her pace falters.
Her head lifts. Her body registers the threat before her eyes do.
I see the subtle shift in her shoulders, the way her weight settles.
Silence. No need to speak. One step forward blocks the path back to the stairs.
Another puts me in her way, a wall of muscle and intent.
The space between us vanishes. I keep coming, forcing her backward until her shoulders hit the concrete wall with a soft thud.
Her portfolio case slips from her fingers, clattering to the floor.
I'm in her space now, close enough to feel the heat radiating off her skin, close enough that the air we breathe is the same.
The anger from the texts, the pressure from my family, the threat from Rylan—it all melts away.
It's just this. The raw, unfiltered need to erase every other fucking variable in the world and focus on the one in front of me.
My body is doing all the talking, and it's saying one word. Mine.
Her eyes are wide, but not with fear. With challenge. Her chin tilts up. She doesn't shrink. She doesn't flinch. She meets my gaze head-on, a silent refusal to be cornered. The air crackles, thick and heavy.
"What the fuck are you doing, Rossi?" Her voice is low, a blade in the quiet. It cuts through the haze, but it doesn't break it. It sharpens it. Her question hangs in the dead air, sharp and clean. The anger I was riding hits a wall. Absolute, unyielding stillness. She's waiting.
My forearm presses into the wall beside her head, the brick rough against my sleeve. I lean in, trying to crowd her, to force this back into a language I understand. My voice drops into a low growl. "I'm making a point."
She raises a single, perfect eyebrow. The look is so condescending, so fucking calm, it makes my blood run hot. "That you can pin a girl to a wall? Congratulations. You've proven you're bigger than me."
My jaw clenches. She's deliberately misreading me, reducing this to a crude display of power. She knows it's more than that. "You know what this is," I bite out.
Her gaze is steady, a challenge that's more intimate than a touch. "Do I? Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you're having a tantrum. Did your family text you something you didn't like?"
The words land like a slap. She sees too much. The last thread of my restraint gives way.
"Fuck you, Zoe."
Her lips part, a soft, sharp intake of breath. But I see it. I see the flicker in her eyes, the way her pupils dilate. It's a fucking invitation. The only language left is physical.
That invitation is a lit match to gasoline.
The fight drains out of me, replaced by a single, pulsing current.
The need to win the argument, to prove a point, evaporates into pure, sensory overload.
All that's left is this. The heat of her body, the scent of her skin, the magnetic pull of her mouth.
My hands leave the wall. They move fast, slamming flat against the concrete on either side of her head, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the narrow hall.
I'm caging her. Trapping her with my body, my arms, my intent.
I don't kiss her. I lean in, mouth hovering next to her ear, breath hot against the delicate shell of it. I feel the fine hairs on her neck rise.
"You're already thinking about it," I murmur, the words a low vibration against her skin. "Aren't you? Thinking about how this would feel."
She turns her head, just enough to speak, her lips brushing my jaw. The contact is a brand. "You don't get to decide that." Her voice is a low, steady counterpoint to the chaos in my head. "You don't get to decide what I'm thinking."
I pull back just enough to see her face, to see the challenge burning in her eyes. My cock is a hard, insistent pressure against my zipper, a painful testament to how badly I want this—how badly I want her. Every instinct screams to take, to claim, to stop this fucking torture.
"Then tell me to stop," I snarl, the command ripped from my throat. It's a test. A final, desperate gamble. "Tell me you don't want my cock inside you right now, and I'll walk away."
A slow, dangerous smile spreads across her lips. It's the most terrifying and beautiful thing I've ever seen. She doesn't hesitate. She doesn't flinch.
"I love telling you what to do," she purrs, the words a silky threat. "But I'm not going to lie. Not to you. Not to myself."