Chapter 25 #2
Suddenly, I realize I'm in a two-front war.
On one side, my team is trying to fight their way to that part of me that keeps everyone at arm's length, and positively cannot make friends with anyone lest I be hurt.
And James is hunting down the part of me that always wants to rebuild walls and refuses to trust.
As I dance, I watch him, and he's watching me.
He’s not pretending to pay attention to his friends anymore. Just watching me with this expression—like I’m a wrapped present he’s been shaking, trying to guess what’s inside, and now he’s finally seeing hints through the paper. And when our eyes meet, he mouths something…
I'm pretty sure it's beautiful.
Heat floods through me. Not the sharp spike of attraction I’ve been fighting every time we meet, but something far more dangerous.
Something that makes me want to walk over there and claim that mouth that’s been haunting my dreams, show everyone that he's mine even though he isn’t, can’t be, won’t be—
“Shots!” Mills appears with a tray of something violently green. “Team tradition! Everyone drinks!”
“I don’t—”
“Vice captain's orders,” she says, pressing the glass into my hand. “Unless you’re afraid of a little alcohol?”
My team clusters around, their ice queen captain, who they love anyway.
The realization steals my breath.
“To the Morgue!” Mills raises her glass. “The scariest, toughest, most badass bitch in college hockey!”
“To the Morgue!” they echo, and I’m raising my glass with them, the burn sliding down my throat, tasting awful and perfect at the same time.
“Another round!” Rachel shouts, already heading to the bar with determination, and watch out anyone who stands in her way.
I should stop her. Should enforce limits and maintain authority. But Mills has her arm around my shoulders, Sarah’s telling some story about her high school team that has Jen crying with laughter, and I realize I don’t want to be their captain right now.
I just want to be Morgan, twenty-one years old, making questionable choices.
“You good?” Mills asks, closer now, breath all cheap beer and possibility.
I look at her, this girl who followed me to build something from scratch and never once questioned why her captain was so cold. Who kept showing up, kept believing, and kept pushing me to be human even as we ran out of tape and had to take the ice at six in the morning.
“Yeah,” I say, smiling for once. “I’m good.”
Mills whistles low. “Who are you, and what did you do with our captain?”
“Morgan?”
I spin, recognizing the voice—Leo Cooper, looking about as comfortable as I do, which is to say he looks like he’d rather be literally anywhere else. That list might include an actual torture chamber, though at least there he’d know what to expect.
“Cooper.” I nod, trying for casual while my heart attempts to escape through my throat. If Cooper’s here—
“He’s in the bathroom.” Cooper’s mouth twitches in what might be amusement. “Figured I’d save you the surveillance work.”
Heat floods my face, grateful for dim lighting. “I wasn’t—”
“Sure.” He leans against the wall beside me, close enough to be heard but maintaining an appropriate distance. “Your team looks happy.”
I follow his gaze to where my girls have returned to the dance floor, then smile at him. “They played well tonight," I say.
“That’s not what I mean.”
I turn to look at him fully. "What?"
“They look happy because you’re here with them,” he says. “Being yourself instead of whoever you think you need to be.”
The words slide through my defenses, perfectly placed.
“Rook’s good at that, making people remember who they are underneath all their armor,” Cooper adds. “You bring the steel and the discipline…"
Something in Cooper’s steady gaze makes me think he sees everything. James suddenly working to be more serious, and me trying to open up at least a little.
“He’s trying,” I say. “To be better.”
Cooper nods. “He is. So are you. Together, you'd make a hell of a team.”
The weight of that statement sits between us, but before I can formulate a response that doesn’t admit James has already gotten further past my defenses than anyone in years, he emerges through the crowd and makes a beeline towards us.
His eyes find mine immediately, and the smile spreading across his face is bright enough to power the bar. I feel a weird combination of nausea and euphoria, like being at the top of a roller coaster knowing you’re about to drop but wanting it anyway.
Is this what normal people feel?
“Morgue," James says, as Cooper makes himself scarce. The nickname sounds different now. Less mocking, more endearing. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Team bonding,” I say, proud of how steady my voice sounds when my body feels electrified.
“You looked…” he starts, then stops, running a hand through his hair, which is his tell for trying not to say something stupid. “Happy, out there, dancing.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
“Too late.”
The words hang between us, loaded with promise, threat, memory of his hands on my hips, his mouth on mine, and the sound he makes when he comes that I definitely haven’t been thinking about during every practice, meeting, and quiet moment.
A sound I'd only heard a few times, years ago, but never forgotten.
“I should get back to my team,” I say, not moving.
“Be with your team. Be human,” he says softly. “I’ll be here when you’re ready.”
The words follow me as Mills drags me toward what will definitely be a beer pong massacre. But the terrifying thing—the wonderful, awful, inevitable thing—is that I’m starting to think I already am. That maybe I’ve been ready since that first day he walked back into my life.
The realization should send me running and trigger every defensive mechanism. Instead, I let Mills hand me another shot—pink this time—and let myself exist in this moment where I’m not the Morgue, not the captain, not the girl who built a fortress around her heart and her emotions.
Here, I'm just Morgan.
And across the bar, James watches, patient as gravity, certain as sunrise.