Peyton
Iwake to him watching me.
Early light turns the room gray-blue. His T-shirt is on the floor where I dropped it. My bra is somewhere near the door. His back, I happen to know, carries the marks I left there. He is propped on one elbow, looking at me like he has been at it a while and does not plan to apologize.
“You are staring,” I say.
“Observing.”
“Dangerous habit. Leads to journalism.”
“I hear the career outlook is unstable.”
His smile is unfair this early.
Coffee becomes a negotiation neither of us wins. He makes it. I add too much cream on principle. He takes the mug out of my hand before I can drink and kisses me against the counter until it goes cold and my hands are inside the waistband of his sweats.
“You have recovery skate,” I say against his mouth.
“I have recovery skate.”
“I am respecting your schedule.”
“No. You are reminding me so you can pretend you are the responsible one.”
“I am wounded by your accuracy.”
He carries me back to bed anyway.
Last night was his. He had me against the wall with the careful finally gone, and I let him take it, because I had waited all season for him to stop holding back and I was not going to spend the first night he did it asking him to slow down.
This morning, I am not waiting for anything.
I pull his shirt over my head and let him look. Morning gives us no crisis to blame and nowhere dark to hide.
“Still sure?” he asks.
I bring my hands to his face. “Ryan.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I let him sit in it a second. Then my mouth gets away from me. “No. This morning, I’m asking.”
It stops him. Good.
“Lie down.”
His breath changes. I feel it more than hear it.
“Problem?”
“No.”
“Good.”
He lies back because I told him to. I take a second to look — all of him, the morning making no apology for the light, no game clock and no crisis and no one waiting for his next call.
I settle over his hips, slow, in no hurry, and watch him decide not to rush me.
“You are staring,” he says.
“Observing.” I take the word right out of his mouth. “Dangerous habit.”
I kiss him before he can be charming about it. Not soft. My hand slides down his chest, his stomach, lower, and closes around him, and whatever he meant to say leaves him in a breath that is almost a curse.
That sound. Ryan McAllister, captain of everything, coming undone under my hand before I have even started.
“I like you like this,” I tell him.
“Like what?”
“Not in charge.”
He laughs, rough and useless. “Do not get attached.”
“Too late.”
I move down his body and take him in my mouth, and the laugh dies in his throat.
“Fuck.” His head goes back against the pillow.
I hum, because I like what the word costs him — like I pulled it out of him without permission.
He does not grab my hair. Does not push. Does not try to run this the way he runs everything. He lies there and lets me have him, one hand fisted in the sheet, and the restraint it takes is the hottest thing in the room.
I take my time. Too much of it, on purpose, until his breath frays and his hips want to move and don’t.
When I look up, he is already watching me.
“Peyton.” Wrecked. “Come here.”
“Bossy,” I say, and let him go slow.
“Desperate.”
Fuck. That one works on me.
I climb back up and kiss him with the taste of him still on my tongue. He reaches to take over, hands already moving, and I catch both his wrists and put them back against the mattress.
He goes still.
“Let me.”
Two words, and his whole body answers.
I reach for the condom and roll it on, steadier than he would be, and the way he watches me do it almost costs me my composure. I do not let it show.
I could sink down on him here, face to face, and watch him watch me. I have done that. It is good.
I want more than good.
I turn, onto my hands and knees, my back to him, and feel the second he understands.
“Peyton—”
“I want you watching me.” I look back at him over my shoulder. “All of it.”
He comes up behind me and for one breath just rests there, hands at my hips, giving me the room to change my mind.
I don’t. I push back and take him myself.
The sound I make is not one I would let daylight have. The sound he makes is worse. Better. Both.
“Don’t you dare come first, McAllister.”
I set the pace. Slow, then mean, his hands gripping my hips not to drive but to hold on, to feel the rhythm I choose. He says my name like a warning he has no standing to give.
“Then move,” he manages.
I do. Harder, until his control is one thread and mine is not far ahead of it.
It takes me from the inside out, my arms giving, my face dropping to the sheet, his name breaking out of me with nothing careful left in it. He follows the second I let him, a curse and my name and both arms hauling me back against his chest like the morning is not allowed to end.
After, we go down into the sheets together, slick and wrecked and breathing like we ran here.
“That was new,” I say.
His laugh is rough against my shoulder. “Yeah.”
“You let me.”
“I am learning.”
He is. I can see it on him.
“You need to go skate,” I tell him.
“I need five minutes.”
“You have three.”
“Ruthless.”
“Supportive.”
He laughs and drops back beside me.
His phone starts going off before either of us has moved.
Jennifer. Then Sully. Then Colt, a row of question marks and one entirely unnecessary eggplant.
I read it over his shoulder and laugh before I can stop myself.
“Your team is subtle.”
“My team is a workplace hazard.”
He goes to skate. I go to work.
By afternoon I am in the media room with everyone else, credential clipped on, notebook open, pretending I am here to cover this and not to be covered.
The room goes quiet when Ryan steps to the microphone.
First question, the series. Second, Round Two. Then a national reporter I know by reputation leans in with a smile I have worn myself — the one you put on right before you go for the throat.
“Ryan, given the ongoing speculation around Peyton Hayes, do you believe your relationship with a former beat reporter has become a distraction?”
My own name in someone else’s mouth, turned into a trap.
I keep my face still. It is the one professional skill that has never failed me.
Ryan looks at the reporter. Then at the cameras. He does not look at me.
I know why. If he looks at me, this becomes a love story the room gets to pass around. If he keeps his eyes on them, it is the only thing it needs to be: the world hearing him choose me, out loud, where no one can call it a secret again.
“Peyton Hayes is not a distraction.” His voice does not rise. “She is a person I love. My job is to play hockey. Her job is to write the truth. Neither one of us needs your permission to do either.”
The room freezes.
Then it breaks open — every hand up at once, the sound of a story changing shape in real time.
He steps back from the microphone before anyone can turn the word love into a follow-up.
He still does not look at me. He doesn’t have to. He already knows I choose him, and I have known longer than I admitted that he chose me. The podium is for the people who needed proof. We were never on that list.
So I look down. And I smile, just for me, where no lens can reach it.
I have spent a whole career making private things public.
I am keeping this one off the record.
Later, the story moves the way stories do.
The clip runs everywhere for a day. One national writer files the version where he was reckless. Three file the version where he was honest. None of them need my help to fight about it.
Two nights later I am at his kitchen counter with my laptop open and a coffee going cold beside my hand.
My phone lights up.
Gil: Legal cleared. Six p.m. Disclosure stays high. Source confirmed.
I read it twice. My face does not change, which is how he knows it matters.
“That’s it?” he asks.
“That’s it.”
“The source?”
I look up.
He stops himself. “Sorry.”
“One came back.” It is all I can give him. “That’s all I can tell you.”
“Then that’s all I need.”
He means it. I look back at my screen so he will not see what that does to me.
I attach the final file, the disclosure note, the source matrix Gil made me rebuild twice, because apparently love does not exempt a person from documentation.
“If I send this, I’m in it,” I say.
“You were already in it,” he says. “This time your name is on your own terms.”
“Do not make me sentimental.”
“You’d edit it.”
He gets half a smile out of me.
I hit send.
It runs before dinner. Not about him. The long one — the one I came to Texas to write. My byline. My conflict on the page, where there is nothing left for anyone to expose. It makes people angry the way the true ones do.
I let him read it after. Not for permission. Because he is the person I tell things to now.
Round Two starts Thursday.
I will be in the building. Press box, broader assignment, my own credential this time, watching everything he cannot see from the ice and telling him about it after.
I came here for a story.
I am leaving with the byline, the credential, and him.
Their math, not mine.