Chapter 21
twenty-one
MORGAN
A team without resources.
A war with the athletic director who recruited me here four months ago.
An alliance with the guy who broke my heart.
And… whatever that kiss was.
This isn't the life I'm used to living, and it's got me feeling like I'm spinning out of control. And now James wants to meet me, alone, to discuss who the hell knows what. So here I am, waiting for him while frantically trying to rebuild my walls in real-time.
Because if he wants to talk about 'us' I'm not sure I'll be strong enough to resist.
The empty study room in the library is run-down and empty, a ghost town until it gets renovated in a few months. There are no other students here, because there are plenty of much nicer study areas on campus, making it perfect for a rendezvous we don't want anyone to see.
To be extra sure of privacy, I leave the lights off as I walk inside.
The security floodlights from the hallway slice through the doorway, creating a chessboard of shadow and fluorescence on the walls.
I position myself in the darkest square, back against the wall where I can see everything and be seen by nothing.
My phone burns radioactive in my pocket, his text message practically vibrating with its own desperate frequency, words that I’ve spent the past ten minutes dissecting. My brain has run seventeen different scenarios, each more emotionally and professionally complex than the last.
But it comes down to one conclusion: James needs something from me.
And, after what happened in that stairwell—
Thankfully, I'm prevented from accessing that particular memory by the sound of footsteps. His silhouette fills the doorway, and fills is the only accurate word because James doesn’t simply occupy space, he colonizes it with the oblivious confidence of someone who’s never met a room that didn’t want him in it.
“Hello?” The word cracks slightly, vulnerability leaking through.
I don’t move, because I've rebuilt my defenses enough to know that it's better to let him seek me out and be on the back foot. And as he steps forward, I track his movement with predator focus, and when his eyes finally find me, he actually stumbles back, one hand flying to his chest.
“Jesus Christ, Morgan," he gasps. "You trying to give me a heart attack?”
His hand scrambles for the light switch with the desperation of someone who needs to see what’s hunting him. The fluorescents assault us both, but I'm surprised by how bad he looks, dark shadows cratering beneath his eyes and his usual hurricane energy seeming heavier.
Something has grounded him.
Is that why he asked to meet?
He’s pacing before I can catalog all the damage. Three steps left, pivot sharp enough to squeak, three steps right. The silence stretches between us, but still I let it go on, because I know it's the one thing he can't stand. He breaks in under thirty seconds, and I feel a small surge of pride.
Amateur.
The piece of paper he pulls out of his pocket is already destroyed—crumpled and re-crumpled—and he slides it across to me with the exhausted manner of someone pushing their last chip across the poker table. Whatever is on the page, it has crushed him and led him to me.
“He’s going to get me kicked off the ice,” he says.
The who is clear—Galloway—but the how is a mystery.
I pick up the paper and find it's still warm from his pocket and slightly damp with anxiety sweat. Before I look down at it, I look at his face, but it's clear he wants me to read it. And I can understand why, because the header alone makes my threat radar light up.
FROM: Arthur Galloway
TO: Dr. Marjorie Albright
CC: Coach Tom Pearson.
My eyes devour the bureaucratic brutality.
It’s genius. Horrible, vindictive genius.
Galloway isn’t creating some new rule out of the ether or cooking up fake disciplinary grounds for benching players. He’s simply enforcing rules that have been dormant since PBU Hockey became the darling of the athletic program decades ago. And, suddenly, guys who never had to study now do.
“He’s punishing you for the lobby.” My assessment is as clinical as a coroner’s report. “For the transgression of treating me like I matter.”
His laugh is as bitter as burnt coffee. “Yeah, no shit. I guess having a spine comes with a price tag I can’t afford.”
No self-pity, just exhausted recognition, and something in my chest tightens unexpectedly. Because I know his exact feeling—I discovered it two hours ago, staring at a budget freeze designed to strangle my program—and suddenly we're two captains staring down the barrel of countless losses.
Which means less money, less attention, and fewer scouts in the building. And less of a shot at a hockey career for the players on our teams. For him, it's a top-of-the-league team that faces decapitation. For me, it's a program that will die in its infancy of starvation.
“Sit,” I say.
He collapses into the plastic chair, and suddenly we’re at eye-level.
This close, I can see everything—how exhaustion has carved itself into his face, the way his jaw keeps clenching and releasing—and my lizard brain whispers inappropriate biological observations about how I could be the one to make him feel better…
“He's making sure my program is being systematically starved,” I begin, shaking off the physical attraction. “He's put a budget freeze on all purchases, so we can't buy tape, can't replace broken laces, and can't sharpen skates because replacement steel requires a purchase order.”
“So we’re both fucked because of Galloway.” He slumps further, somehow making the totally normal-sized chair look even more ridiculous under his not-normal-sized frame. It's like watching a Great Dane try to fit in a cat bed. “Great. Awesome. Love this journey for us.”
“We’re not fucked, we’re under siege," I say, feeling more angry with each word. “There’s a significant difference.”
I stand because I need the height advantage back, and need to move before my body does something stupid like notice how his eyes track my movement with an intensity that makes my skin feel too tight. And I definitely did not just notice his glance flickering down to my chest and back up again.
“Galloway is fighting on two fronts using the same weapon—bureaucracy." I shrug. "But bureaucracy has rules, and rules have loopholes.”
“Morgan, I'm a terrible student," he laughs for the first time, the sound ping-ponging around inside of me. "Explain it simply, or draw it in crayon…”
“Then shut up and I’ll speak plainly," I say, firmly, although I can't hide my smile.
“You need someone who understands academic bureaucracy well enough to game it, and then you need to hit the exact metrics that matter while expending minimal effort.
Because, let's face it, sociology isn't your future, right?”
"Fuck no."
“So you need me," I say, realizing there could be a double interpretation there. "And I need something you have in abundance…”
"What?" His eyes narrow, and I can see the gears turning, until his eyes widen again. "You need gear?"
I nod. "Your program has resources in embarrassing abundance, three times more of everything than you need. No one inventories your shit, so equipment that gets over-ordered and forgotten or… misplaced… won't be an issue for your program but will be survival for mine.”
His eyes sharpen, all that chaotic energy suddenly focusing. "You want me to steal for you.”
“I want you to redistribute resources already allocated to athletics,” I correct, my voice prim as a librarian explaining late fees. “It’s not theft if it stays in the department. Think of it as… communist hockey. From each according to their surplus, to each according to their desperate need.”
The corner of his mouth twitches into a smile. “And in exchange, you’ll tutor me?”
“God, no.” I actually shudder. “Tutoring implies patience and hand-holding. What I’m offering is academic triage. It'll be like emergency battlefield medicine for your GPA, showing you exactly what you need to do to get you the minimum grade required. We're not aiming for A's here, James.”
“What about Nash? Stiles?”
I hadn't thought about them, but it's a fair question.
If I'm asking him to to steal for me and my team—and, niceties and word games aside, that is what I'm asking him to do—then it's only fair that his players all get looked after as well.
But three idiots are exponentially more work than one, and I don't have the time.
"I'll get two girls on my team to work with them." I shrug. "But if I hear any bullshit, especially from Nash, they're out."
"Nash is an asshole, but he'll know how serious this is," James says. "He's counting on hockey to pay his way, so he'll knuckle down."
"Deal, then?" I say.
“Deal.” The word exits so fast he might have been physically holding it back. “Whatever you want. However you want it. I just—” He stops, hands diving into his hair again before catching himself. “I can’t lose hockey. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me.”
The raw honesty in his voice melts me, because I now know that he had a terrible home situation growing up and pretty much constantly feels like an imposter. And if he lost hockey and his future in the NHL simply because he stood up for me…
“You won’t lose it,” I hear myself say, immediately wanting to perform a self-tracheotomy for sounding like I care.
He stands abruptly, and the space between us compresses dangerously. He's too close, as if he's staring over my hastily-repaired but not yet fully patched emotional walls. I can see the pulse jumping in his throat, and some primitive part of me wants to put my mouth—
“So how do we do this?” he asks, and I have to mentally shake myself back to rationality.
“Invisibly,” I manage, stepping back to reestablish a safe distance. “Everything happens off-radar. We meet where Galloway would never look. You order small batches of extra stuff that won't trigger an alert for some bean-counter. And absolutely no one finds out.”
“A secret alliance,” he says, and his voice drops half an octave in a way that makes my stomach perform acrobatics. “You and me against the system.”
“This is a transaction,” I say, my voice sharp. “A temporary, mutually-beneficial business contract. Nothing more.”
But even as I say it, I’m catastrophically aware of how the terrible light somehow makes his eyes look darker, how he’s radiating heat like a space heater set to ‘seduce.’ The stairwell memory tries to surface again, like the water level only inches from flowing over the top of a dam.
“Fine. Transaction. All business.” He extends his hand, and I stare at it with the suspicion it deserves. He waits a second, then barks a laugh. “What, we’re not even going to shake on our completely professional business arrangement? Come on, Morgan. I don’t bite. Unless you want me to…?”
The flirtation is so unexpected my brain actually stutters.
The smirk on his face says he’s testing me, and my pride rears up, offended.
I’m not afraid of James Fitzgerald or his hand or the way he’s looking at me like I’m a particularly complex equation he’s determined to solve or a snack he wants to eat.
I take his hand.
The plan: brief, professional, half-second acknowledgment.
The reality: I'm stuck in a palm-sized tractor beam, and might not escape.
His palm is warm, calloused in places that tell of thousands of hours gripping a stick. His fingers close, firm but not aggressive, then his thumb moves—definitely intentionally—across my knuckles in a gesture so gentle it short-circuits my entire electrical system.
I jerk back, but the damage is done, because he saw my pupils dilate and felt my pulse spike. And now I get to see his eyes darken with satisfaction and something else that looks dangerously like hunger, even as his gaze sweeps over my body—lips to chest to torso and back up again.
“Tomorrow,” I say, voice admirably steady for someone whose endocrine system just committed treason. “Eight p.m. This room. Bring textbooks, every assignment rubric, class notes, and coffee." I pause. "Good coffee, not the athletic complex swamp water.”
“Yes, ma’am," he says.
"OK," I say, moving to the door, desperate to escape before I lose control.
“Morgan," he says, his voice stopping me.
I don’t turn around. “What?”
“Thank you.”
Two words.
Totally genuine.
From a guy who usually confronts such moments with jokes and volume.
I smile, but I don't let him see it. God no, he can't see it.
“Don’t thank me yet," I say. "You have no idea what you’ve just signed up for.”
I leave him, but feel his gaze following me, roaming over my ass like hands.
And only when I'm at the exit and in the cool air do I realize my hands are shaking. Not from fear or anger, but from the terrifying realization that I’ve just made a deal with the one person who has proven he can make me malfunction.
But what choice did I have?
My team needs resources.
And, more than that, he took a chance helping me.
So he deserves a commitment from me to help him.
It's a deal to benefit both of us. A simple equation. A solution. Nothing more.
I repeat this mantra all the way back to my apartment, but my body calls me a liar with every step—skin still buzzing where he touched me, pulse still elevated, my mind already constructing elaborate fantasies about what those calloused hands could do with proper motivation and significantly fewer clothes.
Or maybe no clothes at all, bent over the table in that dusty classroom—
Stop.
By the time I reach my building, I’ve almost convinced myself I’m still in control. That I can manage this, manage him, the way I manage everything else—with logic and discipline and a hard-as-granite edge that definitely will not crack even if he looks at me like that.
The lie is unconvincing, but I swallow it anyway.