Chapter 6
The rink was quiet in a way it rarely was during daylight hours.
Lou sat on the bench in front of her locker, methodically working tape off her stick blade while the last echoes of practice faded into silence.
The smell of the locker room was different at this hour—less sweat and effort, more cleaning solution and the mineral scent of arena ice drifting through the vents.
The fluorescent lights cast their familiar harsh glare over worn benches and scarred lockers, shadows pooling in corners where the bulbs had burned out months ago and no one had bothered to replace them.
Most of the team had cleared out an hour ago—early dinner, sleep, the mundane rituals of athletes recovering from yet another brutal session with Mara.
But Lou had stayed late, running extra drills on her own until her legs shook and her lungs burned, pushing herself the way she always did when her mind wouldn't settle.
The problem was that her mind still wouldn't settle.
She'd been avoiding Camille for three days.
Avoiding wasn't quite the right word—they still played together in practice, still exchanged the minimal conversation required for teammates to function.
But Lou had stopped meeting her eyes. Had stopped letting herself be caught alone in the same room.
Had done everything possible to put distance between them that had nothing to do with physical space and everything to do with the memory of Camille's body pressed against hers on the ice.
It wasn't working.
The locker room door creaked open, and Lou's fingers stilled on the tape.
Camille emerged from the shower area wrapped in a towel, her blonde hair dark with water and streaming down her shoulders.
Droplets traced paths across her collarbone, catching the fluorescent light in ways that made Lou's mouth go dry.
Steam clung to her skin, flushing it pink, and she moved with the unconscious grace of someone entirely comfortable in their own body.
Lou looked away too quickly. Obvious. Telling.
"I didn't realize anyone else was still here." Camille's voice echoed in the empty space, carrying notes of surprise and something else—curiosity, maybe, or the same charged awareness Lou was trying desperately to ignore.
"Just finishing up." Lou kept her eyes fixed on her stick, pulling tape in long strips that curled against her fingers like pale ribbons. "Needed some extra ice time."
"Mara wasn't brutal enough for you?" The question carried a teasing edge that Lou hadn't expected.
"Mara's fine." She risked a glance up—a mistake.
Camille had moved to her own locker, directly across from Lou's position, and was pulling clothes from her bag with movements that drew attention to the length of her arms, the curve of her shoulders.
The towel shifted as she moved, revealing glimpses of skin that Lou absolutely should not have been cataloguing.
"You're allowed to admit she's a sadist." Camille's smile was different from the practiced ones Lou had seen during introductions—this one seemed genuine, edged with self-deprecating humor. "I've been dreaming about ice baths. That's not normal."
Despite herself, Lou's mouth twitched. "Ice baths are part of recovery."
"Ice baths are instruments of torture dressed up in sports science." Camille unwrapped her hair from a smaller towel, shaking it out in a cascade of damp gold that caught the light like something precious. "But I'm not complaining. It's working. I haven't felt this pushed since college."
"That's the point."
"I know." Camille turned to face her locker, reaching for the towel wrapped around her body. Lou should have looked away. Should have given her privacy, focused on her own gear, done anything other than watch as Camille let the towel drop.
Lou's breath caught.
Camille's back was a landscape of muscle and movement, the kind of body that came from years of elite training and genetic fortune.
Her shoulder blades shifted as she reached for her sports bra, the curves of her waist narrowing before flaring into hips that made Lou's fingers itch with the sudden urge to touch.
A droplet of water traced a slow path down her spine, disappearing into the small of her back, and Lou tracked its progress with helpless fascination.
She was stunning. Not just beautiful in the polished, camera-ready way Lou had expected, but genuinely, achingly stunning in the raw vulnerability of this moment.
No makeup, no careful styling, no performance—just a woman drying off after a shower, unaware of how completely she was undoing Lou's careful composure.
Lou forced her gaze to the floor. Her heart was pounding so hard she was surprised Camille couldn't hear it echoing off the concrete walls. Heat flooded her cheeks, spread down her neck, pooled in her stomach in ways she desperately didn't want to acknowledge.
This was dangerous. This was exactly the kind of wanting she'd spent years learning to suppress, the vulnerability she couldn't afford.
But her body wasn't listening to reason.
Her body was very interested in the view she'd just denied herself, in the memory of Camille's skin gleaming with steam and shower water, in the way she'd moved with such easy confidence.
"Can I ask you something?"
Lou's head jerked up. Camille had pulled on underwear and a sports bra, was now stepping into comfortable-looking sweatpants—still too much exposed skin, still too much for Lou's composure. "What?"
"Why do you hate me?"
The question landed like a check to the ribs. Lou's hands stilled on the tape, her mind racing through possible responses. Denial would be easy, but Camille's eyes were too direct, too knowing—she would see through any lie Lou offered.
And maybe Lou was tired of lying. Maybe she was tired of the distance she'd been maintaining, the coldness that kept her safe but also kept her isolated.
Maybe something about the quiet intimacy of this moment, the empty locker room, the fluorescent lights humming overhead, the lingering steam from Camille's shower, made honesty feel possible.
"I don't hate you."
"You avoid me." Camille pulled a soft grey sweater over her head, emerging with her hair tousled and her expression unreadable.
"You look through me like I'm not even there.
Every time we're in the same room, you find a reason to leave.
" She sat down on the bench across from Lou, close enough that Lou could smell the clean scent of her shampoo, something floral and expensive. "If that's not hate, what is it?"
Lou stared at the tape in her hands. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, filling the silence with their constant hum. Somewhere in the building, a door closed—the night maintenance crew starting their rounds.
"I don't trust you," she said finally. "Your world. Everything you represent."
"And what do I represent?"
"Headlines. Cameras. The kind of attention that destroys people.
" Lou met Camille's eyes, letting her see the truth behind the words.
"I've spent my whole career in obscurity, playing for teams no one watches, building something real with people who understand what it means to earn every inch of ice time.
You come from a world where image is everything.
Where relationships are strategic and public and designed to sell magazines. "
Camille was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was softer than Lou had ever heard it. "You mean Mario."
"I mean everything. The sponsors, the press, the constant performance.
" Lou's grip tightened on her stick. "People like me, we're invisible.
And when you show up, with your famous ex and your magazine covers and your perfect fucking hair, you bring all that visibility with you. You make it impossible to hide."
"Maybe hiding isn't the answer."
"Maybe hiding is the only thing that's kept me safe."
The words hung between them, heavier than Lou had intended. She hadn't meant to say that much. Hadn't meant to reveal the fear beneath her resistance, the years of careful invisibility that felt increasingly fragile with every practice they shared.
Camille leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her expression open in a way Lou hadn't expected.
"Mario and I were never real. I know that's what everyone thinks—the golden couple, the fairy tale—but it was strategy from the start.
His team wanted visibility in certain markets.
My team wanted association with his brand.
We were two people performing a relationship that made sense on paper. "
"That's supposed to make me trust you more?"
"No." Camille's smile was rueful, self-aware.
"But it might help you understand that I'm not what you think.
I know how to play the game—I've been playing it since I was seventeen and my first agent explained how marketable I could be.
But that doesn't mean I like it. And it doesn't mean I don't know the difference between what's real and what's performance. "
Lou studied her face, looking for the tells she'd spent years learning to read. The careful mask Camille wore for cameras was gone. In its place was something rawer—exhaustion, maybe, or the particular vulnerability of someone who'd spent too long being what others wanted.
"The breakup," Lou said slowly. "Was that real?"
Camille laughed, but there was no humor in it.
"The breakup was the first real thing I'd done in years.
I ended it because I couldn't breathe anymore.
Because every morning I woke up next to someone I didn't love and performed happiness for people I'd never meet.
Because I was twenty-eight years old and I didn't know who I was under all the layers of image management. "
Her voice cracked slightly on the last words. Lou watched as she pressed her palms against her thighs, steadying herself. The gesture was so human, so far from the polished media persona Lou had been expecting, that something loosened in her chest.
"That sounds exhausting," Lou said quietly.
"It was." Camille's laugh was bitter. "Imagine waking up every day and having to remember which version of yourself you're supposed to be.
Which smile you're supposed to wear. Which answers you're supposed to give to questions you've answered a thousand times before.
After a while, you start to lose track of where the performance ends and the real person begins. "
Lou could imagine it. Could imagine the slow erosion of authenticity that came from constant public scrutiny, the way hiding could become so habitual that you forgot you were doing it. She'd built her own version of that wall—different in scope but similar in purpose.
"The press made it into a scandal. Mario's team spun it as his decision, because his brand couldn't handle looking rejected.
I let them, because fighting would have meant more attention, more cameras, more of the visibility you're so afraid of.
" Camille met Lou's eyes. "I came to Phoenix Ridge because I wanted to play hockey without all of that.
Because I wanted to remember why I started this sport in the first place—for the ice, for the game, for the feeling of being good at something that mattered. "
Lou didn't know what to say. The woman in front of her was nothing like the tabloid celebrity she'd expected. Nothing like the polished, performing star who'd arrived with designer luggage and a perfect smile.
"I'm sorry," Lou said finally. "For judging you before I knew you."
"You weren't wrong. Not entirely." Camille's smile was gentler now. "I am all those things you said—the headlines, the cameras, the performance. But I'm also trying to figure out who I am without them. And that's terrifying."
The honesty of it hit Lou in the chest. She recognized that terror—the fear of being seen for who you really were, the vulnerability of dropping the mask you'd worn so long it felt like skin.
"Phoenix Ridge is a good place to figure things out," Lou said. "No one's watching. No one cares about any of us."
"You care."
The words were simple, but they carried weight Lou wasn't prepared for.
She looked at Camille—really looked at her—and saw something she hadn't expected to find.
Someone genuine beneath the polish. Someone seeking the same things Lou had been chasing for years: authenticity, connection, a place to belong that didn't require constant performance.
"Yeah," Lou admitted. "I do."
Something had shifted between them. The tension was still there—that charged awareness Lou had been fighting since the first moment their eyes met—but it was layered with something new. Understanding. Recognition. The beginning of something Lou wasn't ready to name.
She watched as Camille tucked her hair behind her ear, a gesture that seemed unconscious rather than calculated. Without makeup, without the careful styling, her face seemed younger somehow. More open. The kind of face Lou could imagine waking up next to.
The thought ambushed her with its specificity, its dangerous intimacy. She pushed it away, but not before it had planted itself somewhere deep.
Camille stood, gathering her things with movements that seemed reluctant.
Her bag was designer—Lou recognized the label from magazines she'd never admit to reading—but she handled it carelessly, without the precious attachment of someone who valued possessions for their status. "I should go. Early practice tomorrow."
"Yeah." Lou stood too, feeling the stiffness in her legs from the extra training. "Me too."
They walked toward the door together, their shoulders nearly brushing in the narrow corridor. At the threshold, Camille paused.
"Lou?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For listening." Her blue eyes were soft in the dim light of the hallway. "It's been a while since anyone wanted to hear the truth instead of the story."
She was gone before Lou could respond, her footsteps fading down the corridor toward the parking lot.
Lou stood in the doorway for a long moment, the cold arena air washing over her heated skin, listening to the silence settle around her like a familiar weight.
Her heart was still racing. Her hands were still unsteady.
And somewhere in her chest, something that had been locked away for years was starting to crack open.
She let herself feel the full weight of what had just happened.
Camille Laurent-Dubois wasn't what she'd expected.
And that was far more dangerous than anything Lou had been afraid of.