Chapter 13
thirteen
BEN
The puck is a blur of black against white ice, and I see the play developing two seconds before it happens.
The opposing forward—a stocky kid from UMass—thinks he has a clean lane to the net. He’s got his head down, stick tight to the puck, all his focus on the shot he’s about to take. But I’ve been watching him all game, cataloging his tells, and I know he licks his lips before he releases.
It’s a pattern, predictable as a feedback loop.
When I see it, I drop into a slide.
My 6’4” frame becomes a horizontal barrier across the ice, my stick extended like a giant’s arm. The cold burns through my gear as I skim across the frozen surface, my weight perfectly distributed, and the exact moment he tries to pull the trigger, I sweep the puck clean off his blade.
It’s a surgical strike. The kind of play they show on highlight reels.
And the crowd fucking erupts.
The roar rattles through my chest, impossible to ignore. I push myself up, my skates finding purchase, and the sound follows me as I glide back toward the bench. My teammates are already on their feet, banging their sticks against the boards in a deafening tribal rhythm.
“THAT’S MY SASQUATCH!” Stiles bellows from down the bench. “NAILED THAT ASSHOLE!”
Nash is grinning at me, not the usual smirk that precedes some humiliating chirp, but genuine. “Kellerman, you magnificent bastard!”
Rook gives me a silent nod. Cooper congratulates me.
They all do.
And as I swing my leg over the boards and drop onto the bench, my lungs burning, for one perfect moment I feel invincible. Not “good on the ice and a disaster everywhere else.” Not “happy as long as he’s not getting directly teased.”
No, I feel like the king of my own small, frozen empire. One of the guys, accepted and unconditional, in on the jokes instead of the butt of them. For once, I’m not the awkward kid brother they tolerate because I’m good on D but have to protect.
And the reason?
5’7” of defiant energy in a leather jacket.
Cass.
The memory of the party kiss detonates in my mind.
The way she’d grabbed my shirt, her small fist twisting the fabric. The softness of her lips, nothing like the hard edges she projects to the world. The heat of her mouth when she’d opened for me, her tongue sliding against mine with a confidence that I couldn’t even dream of.
And my reaction.
The hard ridge of my own arousal, impossible to hide, pressing insistently against her hip through our jeans. And the way she hadn’t flinched, hadn’t pulled away, but had just leaned in like she wanted it too, and like she was as lost in it as I was.
My hand had slid down to cup her ass, and I’d pulled her tighter against me, greedy and desperate. She’d made a sound, this small, gasp-moan I still hear when I close my eyes, and the knowledge that I made fearless, untouchable Cassidy Vance make that sound—
My brain flashes an error code. It’s the same feeling as when I accidentally cross two wires and watch a component light up for a split second before it fries—a dangerous surge of energy that my system can’t handle, crackling through circuits never designed for this kind of voltage.
I give my head a small shake, trying to clear the thought, and focus on the game. Thankfully, the buzzer sounds for the end of the second period, and we all climb to our feet and file toward the tunnel, even as Rook and Coach are giving updates and orders to several of the guys.
The locker room is chaos—a cacophony of overlapping voices, the clang of gear being adjusted—but the energy is electric, the kind of pre-victory buzz that makes your skin prickle. We’re up 3-0, in total control, and the guys are hamming it up.
But for once, they’re including me.
Nash is reenacting my slide tackle for a cluster of guys, complete with sound effects. Stiles is laughing so hard he’s choking on his Gatorade. Someone—I think it’s one of the freshmen—starts a chant: “SASQ-WATCH! SASQ-WATCH!”
It’s everything I’ve ever wanted.
But then, the more I think about it, the more it feels hollow.
I pull off my right glove, the damp leather peeling away from my skin with a faint squelch, and I stare at my own hand. This is the hand that tangled in her hair, cupped her jaw, slid down her body, and gripped her ass with a possessiveness I didn’t know I was capable of.
The roaring energy of the locker room fades into white noise.
They’re cheering for “Kell the Sasquatch,” a character I accidentally started playing, a role I’m finding I’m surprisingly good at. The guy who got the punk rock girl. The guy who isn’t afraid to make a move. The guy who belongs.
But the aching, secret truth belongs to Ben Kellerman.
And he’s terrified.
I pull off my other glove and drop it onto the bench.
Because this acceptance, this respect, this sudden elevation from team joke to one of the guys is all built on scaffolding made of lies. A lie she helped me construct, sure, but a lie nonetheless. Except now, after that kiss, I’m not so sure it is a lie.
For me, anyway.
I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees, my head hanging.
Out there on the ice, I know exactly what I’m doing. I can read a play, anticipate a pass, position my body with geometric precision to intercept a shot. It’s cause and effect. Input and output. A system I understand and execute.
But the second I step off the ice, the second I’m just Ben trying to navigate the incomprehensible world of human connection, I’m a fumbling idiot with no schematic, no troubleshooting guide, and no way to isolate the variable.
And the worst part?
I have no idea which version of Cass—of us—is real.
Is it the one who’d been kind to me, absolved me of the disaster in my dorm room, and made it OK? The one who’d admitted she knew what it felt like to be dismissed for not belonging? The one who’d dropped her guard, just a fraction, letting me see the person underneath the facade?
Because it had felt real. The easy banter. The way the conversation had shifted, grown warmer. It had been like talking to an actual friend instead of running a con, like building something transactional that could grow into—
Into what, dumbass?
My mind mocks me, and it has Nash’s voice.
I don’t even know. I just know it felt good. Safe. Like I could be myself—hockey star who’s also a giant nerd who fixes broken electronics in his dorm room and goes to water around girls—and she wouldn’t laugh, wouldn’t mock, wouldn’t walk away.
But then there’s the other version of her, and of us.
She’d played the crowd at the party like she does at one of her gigs, giving me—and the guys—exactly what was necessary to feed the lie and achieve the goal. The kiss had felt real, to me, sure. But I don’t know if it had for her.
And afterwards, she did walk away.
So I don’t know.
Love or lie.
Real or fake.
So at the same time I’ve felt on top of the world among the guys, my brain has spent days running a diagnostic of things with Cass, trying to figure out if it was real or not. And the data is clear.
She’s an artist. A performer. A girl who lives in a world of chaotic energy and creative fire, who thrives in the loud, sticky-floored chaos of dive bars and mosh pits. Her life is instinct and emotion and raw, unfiltered self-expression. She makes noise. She demands to be seen.
I’m a guy whose happiest moments involve a soldering iron. I live in a world of logic and order, of problems with solutions, of systems that can be fixed if you just isolate the right variable. I try my best to blend in, to not stand out, to be part of the team but never out in front.
How could it be real?
How could someone like her—a defiant, chaotic, brilliant storm of a person—ever want someone like me?
God, I’m an idiot.
She’s so good at performing. I’ve seen her on stage, commanding a room full of drunk assholes with nothing but her voice and her guitar and the sheer force of her presence. She knows how to make people feel things. How to sell a moment.
She grabbed my shirt, pulled me down, and kissed me with the exact right amount of passion to sell the lie to Nash and the guys. She knew what she was doing. She’s been doing it her whole life, broadcasting a version of herself that people can’t ignore.
What if I’m the only one who thought it was real?
What if that’s all it was?
What if all of that was just her being a really, really good actress?
The humiliation of that possibility is almost too much to bear. I’d be the idiot who fell for the performance, the pathetic fake boyfriend who caught real feelings and misread every single signal because I’m so desperate for connection that I see it where it doesn’t exist.
So no, real or not, it doesn’t matter.
Because it can’t happen.
So, real or not, I need to honor the arrangement.
I owe her that.
Tomorrow night, I’ll show up at her gig like I promised. I’ll be the visible, non-threatening deterrent she hired me to be. I’ll stand near the stage, make sure nobody gets handsy, and prove to Frank, the bar owner, that she has her “people” under control. And if anything happens, I’ll help her.
And I won’t make it weird by acting as if the kiss was real.
Because that would be selfish. She gave me this acceptance, this belonging, this sudden elevation from team joke to respected equal. She gave me the social shield I desperately needed, and she did it without judgment, without ridicule, and with a generosity I don’t deserve.
Naming my real feelings would be the most selfish thing I could possibly do.
It would put the burden on her to reject me, to admit the kiss was fake, to take away the very gift she just gave.
It would make her the bad guy for not reciprocating feelings she never asked for, never invited, never wanted.
And after everything, I owe her better than that.
She did her part.
Now it’s my turn to do mine.
Coach Pearson clears his throat, his voice cutting through the noise. “All right, ladies, get your asses back out there! We’ve got a game to finish!”
The guys start filing back out, the energy ratcheting back up, and I force myself to follow my team back toward the ice. There, the noise of the arena hits me like a wall as we step back into the tunnel—the roar of the crowd, the blare of the goal horn, the thump of bass from the sound system.
It’s overwhelming and grounding all at once.
Because for another twenty minutes it’ll get me out of my damn head.
But as I take my position, I can’t help thinking—one last time—how badly I wish the thing with Cass could be real. Because I want the girl who understands me, the girl who kissed me like that, but I respect her too much to force the question, break our arrangement, and make it weird.
But if she ever decides to open that door—if she ever gives me the smallest sign that this could be more than performance—I tell myself I’ll walk through it without hesitation. But it has to be her choice, because it’s her gift to give, not mine to demand.
Until then, I’ll show up and do my job.