Chapter 13
EVIE
Keegan’s hands cage the wall, not me, and I know the difference.
My fist is knotted in his shirt. His breath comes hard against my forehead. One corner of his mouth is swollen around the split inside his lip, and every inch of him smells like cold air, clean sweat, and the ice he has carried home on his skin.
“Tell me to leave,” he says.
“You just got here.”
“That isn’t permission to stay.” His arms tremble on either side of me. “Tell me what you want.”
The television continues its silent celebration behind him.
Men pour over the boards. A replay catches Keegan on one knee after the winning goal, his face split open with triumph.
The man in my apartment looks nothing like that captain except for the C hidden beneath his suit jacket and the raw force he is refusing to use.
“I wanted you to stay the morning the photograph came out.” My fingers tighten in his shirt. “I said it plainly.”
Pain cuts across his face. “Yes.”
“You left.” My fist shifts against his chest, tightening the expensive cotton into a rope between us.
“I did.” His shoulders absorb the admission without moving closer.
“You broke us, Keegan.” The muted television throws another burst of celebration across his face, making the words feel obscene beside the victory.
He lowers his head until his forehead almost touches mine, then stops short. “I know.”
“That phrase is starting to sound like somewhere you hide.”
His palms slide down the wall, stopping level with my shoulders.
“Then I’ll say it longer. I broke us because I believed you would keep holding the marriage while I gave my best attention to anything that praised me.
I left because practice had rules and you needed something from me I could not dominate into being simple. ”
The precision makes my body loosen where anger should hold it rigid. “Did Jake write that?”
“Jake would use smaller words and more profanity.” The corner of Keegan’s mouth tries to lift and catches on the swelling.
“He’s efficient.” My knuckles ease slightly in his shirt before I can stop them.
“He’s an asshole.” Keegan’s voice warms around the insult.
“Your asshole.” I give the old answer back to him and feel five years stir beneath the wreckage.
The old joke passes between us, bruised but alive. Keegan’s mouth shifts. His gaze drops to mine, and the heat changes shape.
“Evie.” He says my name as warning this time, not demand. “Your hand.”
I have pulled him closer without deciding to. My knuckles rest against the hard plane of his chest. Beneath the shirt, his heart slams fast enough to expose him.
“You said you’re losing your mind.” My attention drops to the pulse beating hard above his collar.
“I am.” He keeps his weight braced away from me, though the shirt in my fist gives him nowhere to pretend he wants to go.
“You look functional.” I test the word against the man who scored a winning goal while our marriage waited outside the arena.
“Years of media training.” His voice roughens, the polish failing this close.
“The swollen lip improves the performance.” I touch the edge of it with one finger, careful of the split inside.
His almost-laugh brushes my mouth. “Cruel woman.”
“You married me.”
“Best thing I ever did.” The answer arrives without a smile. “Worst thing I ever failed to honor.”
I should step back. His hands remain on the wall, leaving me a clear path to either side. Instead I lift my free hand and touch the swollen edge of his lip.
Keegan goes still beneath one fingertip. “Does it hurt?” I ask.
“Not enough to make me want you less.”
“That was not the question.”
“Yes.” His voice drops as my thumb traces the uninjured side. “Everything hurts.”
“You survived Game 7.”
“Barely surviving this room.”
The truth is in the distance he holds. He could lift me with one arm. He could fill the apartment until every object belonged to his body. He waits with his palms flat and lets me decide whether the space closes.
My fingers slide into his hair. His eyes shut. A sound leaves him, low enough to travel through my wrist. I pull.
Keegan’s mouth meets mine with all the violence he kept out of his hands. The first kiss is impact—hot, rough, starved. He tastes faintly of mint. His arms stay locked until I open my mouth under his and tug harder.
“Touch me,” I breathe.
His hands leave the wall.
One cups the back of my head, callouses catching in my hair. The other settles at my waist and stops, broad enough to span the place where the old shirt ends against my thigh. He does not pull until my body arches into him.
Then restraint breaks without taking choice with it.
Keegan lifts me against the wall. My legs close around his hips, and his mouth moves down my throat with a hunger that turns every careful day between us into heat. The shirt rides higher. His hand closes on bare skin, firm and shaking.
“Still mine,” he says against my collarbone, then freezes.
The words open the wrong wound. My body hardens between one breath and the next.
Keegan lowers me immediately. His hands disappear from my skin. “No. Fuck. I’m sorry.”
I stand with my back against the wall, pulse tearing through me. “You don’t get to claim me because I kissed you.”
“You're right.” He steps away far enough that cold fills the shape of him. “I said it because my body is twenty years behind my brain. Not an excuse.”
“Your brain is not an innocent party.”
“No.” He scrubs one hand over his face and winces when it catches the cut. “You can stop this.”
I look at him: victorious captain, sober husband, arrogant disaster. The man who broke the marriage and the man who came here asking at every door. Wanting him is not evidence that I was wrong to leave. It is not a legal withdrawal, a pardon, or a promise about morning.
It is mine.
I cross the space between us and take his hand. “Bedroom.”
Keegan’s fingers close around mine, then loosen as if even the grip requires confirmation. “Are you sure?”
“If you ask me again, I’m going to assume the legendary endurance was another PR fabrication.”
His solar-flare smile appears for the first time without defense behind it. “That sounds like a challenge.”
“It is a warning, Captain.”
I lead him through the narrow apartment. At the bedroom doorway he stops, forcing me to turn back. His gaze travels from our joined hands to my face.
“This does not fix us,” I say.
“I know.” Before I can cut him for the phrase, he lifts my knuckles to his mouth. “It means you want me tonight. That is all I take.”
“Then we understand each other.”
“Evie.” His lips move against my skin. “I want all of it. I am taking tonight.”
The honesty lands hotter than a vow. I pull him across the threshold.
He undresses me slowly until patience becomes its own kind of desperation.
Every piece of clothing waits for my hands or my nod.
When I reach for his shirt, he lets me expose the familiar body beneath it: old scars, fresh bruises, the red mark where equipment pressed into his shoulder.
I touch the place above his heart and feel it answer.
“You watched,” he says.
“I watched hockey.” I trace the red mark the edge of his equipment left across one shoulder.
“In my shirt.” Keegan catches the hem between two fingers, smugness returning now that I have already chosen the bed.
“Laundry emergency.” I pull the fabric out of his grip before he can use it to draw me closer.
“Cruel,” he repeats, and kisses me until the lie dissolves.
The bed is too small for him. His weight covers me without crushing, one forearm planted beside my head, the other hand moving along my body as if five years have become a language he is afraid to speak without permission.
I guide him where I want him. He follows.
When the last distance disappears, the room narrows to breath, skin, and the broken sound of my name.
Later, the television has gone dark. Keegan lies on his back with one arm beneath me, his fingers open against my shoulder. He does not hold tight enough to prevent leaving. The choice is visible even in stillness.
“The petition is still active,” I say into the dark.
His chest rises beneath my cheek. “It is.”
“And tomorrow?—”
“Tomorrow is yours.” His hand remains open. “I’m not asking for it tonight.”
I listen to his heart slow. There are answers I should demand and boundaries I should rebuild before daylight. Instead exhaustion drags at me, warm and heavy.
I fall asleep against his chest without telling him he can stay past morning.