Chapter 7
Camille couldn't stop thinking about Lou.
The thought ambushed her during practice, disrupting her focus at the worst possible moments.
When she should have been reading the play, anticipating passes, calculating angles—instead she was watching Lou's movements across the ice.
The powerful stride of her skating. The controlled aggression of her defensive positioning.
The way her dark hair stuck to her forehead when she pushed herself through particularly brutal drills.
It was distracting in ways Camille didn't know how to process.
"Laurent-Dubois!" Mara's voice cut through her wandering attention. "Your head's somewhere else today. Find it, or I'll bench you."
Camille forced herself to focus, channeling her scattered thoughts into the clean precision of the drill.
Pass. Receive. Shoot. The mechanics were automatic after years of elite training, but the satisfaction felt hollow somehow.
Like she was going through motions while the real action happened somewhere else.
Somewhere involving green eyes and scarred knuckles and a conversation that had kept her awake for hours.
The scrimmage came as a relief—a chance to burn off the restless energy building beneath her skin.
Camille threw herself into the play with an intensity that surprised even her, weaving through the defense with sharp crossovers and explosive acceleration.
She wasn't just playing to win. She was playing to forget, to exhaust the part of her brain that kept circling back to that locker room, to Lou's unexpected honesty, to the way the air between them had crackled with something she couldn't name.
And then she was playing with Lou.
They'd been put on the same line for the final fifteen minutes of practice—Camille at forward, Lou dropping back to defense.
The combination shouldn't have worked as seamlessly as it did.
They'd barely exchanged words since their conversation, had circled each other with the careful distance of two people pretending nothing had changed.
But on the ice, none of that mattered.
Lou read Camille's movements like she could see into her mind.
A pass arrived exactly where Camille needed it, spinning perfectly onto her tape.
A defensive screen opened space for Camille to cut through.
Everything clicked into a rhythm that felt effortless, instinctive—the kind of chemistry that usually took months to develop happening in real-time.
They scored three goals in minutes. Each one felt like a shared victory, a conversation conducted through stick and puck and ice.
By the time Mara called an end to practice, Camille's legs were shaking and her lungs burned.
But she was grinning—a real grin, not the camera-ready smile she'd learned to deploy for audiences.
For the first time since arriving in Phoenix Ridge, she was a hockey player rather than a celebrity playing hockey.
Most of the team filtered out quickly, eager for showers and rest. Camille lingered, stretching out on the bench while she watched the arena empty. The familiar sounds of a team dispersing filled the space—gear bags zipping, lockers slamming, voices fading down corridors toward the parking lot.
She wasn't sure why she was waiting. Or maybe she was.
Lou was the last one on the ice, running through stick handling drills with the focused intensity Camille was beginning to recognize as her default state.
The arena lights caught the sweat on her skin, turning it to silver.
Her movements were economical, powerful—nothing wasted, nothing performed for anyone's benefit but her own.
Watching her made something twist in Camille's chest. Something warm and wanting and completely unfamiliar.
Eventually, Lou skated toward the bench. Her eyes found Camille's across the empty arena, held for a beat longer than necessary.
"Still here?"
"Still here." Camille stood, gathering her gear. "Good practice."
"Yeah." Lou stepped off the ice, settling onto rubber matting with the ease of someone who'd done it ten thousand times. "We play well together."
The words carried weight that exceeded their surface meaning. Camille felt it in her chest, in the flutter of her pulse, in the sudden awareness of how close they were standing in the empty corridor.
"We do," she agreed quietly.
They walked to the locker room in silence, but it wasn't the awkward distance of the past few days. This felt charged in a different way—anticipation rather than avoidance, something building rather than something being suppressed.
The locker room was empty when they entered.
Steam still clung to the air from earlier showers, fogging the mirrors and softening the harsh fluorescent lights.
Camille moved to her locker automatically, pulling off her jersey and pads with movements made jerky by awareness of Lou doing the same across the room.
She kept her eyes averted. Mostly.
But she couldn't help glancing over as Lou stripped off her own jersey, revealing the sports bra beneath. Couldn't help noticing the muscles in her strong shoulders, the lean strength of her arms, the confident way she moved in her own skin.
The warmth in Camille's chest spread lower. Deeper.
This wasn't normal. This wasn't anything like how she'd felt about men—about Mario or any of the others who'd passed through her carefully curated life. This was urgent and unsettling and completely foreign, a desire she'd never known how to want before.
She grabbed her towel and fled to the showers.
The water was hot, almost scalding, and Camille let it pound against her shoulders while she tried to make sense of what was happening inside her. Steam billowed around her, turning the shower room into a hazy private world where nothing was quite solid or certain.
She was straight. She'd always been straight. Every relationship, every encounter, every attraction she'd ever acknowledged had involved men. The possibility of wanting something else had simply never occurred to her—not as denial, but as complete blindness to an entire dimension of herself.
Until Lou Calder.
Until green eyes and honest words and the electric awareness that sparked between them every time they shared the same space. Until not long ago in this very locker room, when Camille had recognized something in Lou's careful distance that matched the walls she'd built around herself.
The shower room door opened. Camille turned, breath catching in her throat.
Lou stood in the entrance, Camille’s eyes drawn by her lean muscle; a study in light and shadow. Lou was completely naked, completely unself-conscious, her short dark hair slicked back from her face in a way that emphasized the sharp lines of her jaw and cheekbones.
Camille couldn't breathe.
"Sorry." Lou's voice was rough. "I didn't realize—"
"It's fine." The words came out too fast, too eager. Camille felt heat flood her face, but she couldn't look away. Couldn't stop her gaze from tracking down Lou's body—the small breasts, the tight abdominals, the powerful thighs that spoke to years of explosive skating.
She was beautiful. Not in the polished, magazine-ready way Camille had spent her life being told to value, but in a rawer sense. Real. Present. Devastatingly attractive in ways Camille hadn't known she could be attracted.
"I can wait outside." Lou was still standing in the doorway in the steam, hot water from Camille’s shower streaming past her feet toward the drain. Her eyes were fixed on Camille's face, dark with something that made Camille's stomach clench.
"Don't."
The word escaped before Camille could think better of it. She watched Lou's expression shift—surprise, then understanding, then something deeper that matched the wanting pooling low in Camille's belly.
Lou stepped further through the steam towards Camille.
The steam wrapped around them both, turning the world into something soft and indistinct. Lou moved to the showerhead beside Camille's, reaching for the soap with movements that seemed deliberately casual. But Camille could see the tension in her shoulders, the controlled steadiness of her hands.
She was as affected as Camille was. The knowledge was intoxicating.
Camille's shampoo bottle slipped from her fingers, clattering against the tile. She bent to retrieve it at the same moment Lou did—their hands colliding, fingers brushing in the slick steam.
The contact was electric.
They both straightened slowly, too slowly, their faces suddenly inches apart. Camille could see water droplets clinging to Lou's eyelashes, could count the faded freckles across her nose. Lou's breath was warm against her lips, unsteady in a way that matched the racing of Camille's heart.
"Camille." Lou's voice was barely a whisper. "What are we doing?"
"I don't know." The honesty felt like a gift she was giving them both. "I've never—" She broke off, unable to finish the sentence. Never wanted a woman. Never questioned who she was or who she wanted. Never felt anything close to this desperate, consuming need.
Lou's hand rose slowly, giving Camille time to pull away if she wanted to. But she didn't want to. She stood frozen as Lou's palm cupped her cheek, as Lou's thumb traced the curve of her lower lip, as every nerve in her body screamed for more.
"We don't have to." Lou's eyes searched hers, thumb still tracing Camille's lower lip. "Tell me this is okay. Tell me you want this. Because if you're not sure—"
"I'm sure." Camille's voice came out steadier than she expected. "I want this. I want you."
Lou held her gaze for a beat longer. "We can stop anytime. Just say the word."
"Please." The word emerged broken and wanting.
"Don't stop." Camille reached for Lou's wrist, guiding her hand from her cheek to her hip.
The sensation of Lou's fingers against her bare skin was overwhelming—heat and pressure and want converging in a point of contact that left her trembling. "Please, Lou."