Chapter 16
Sixteen
Cassie’s flight back from Vancouver was mercifully quiet.
The storm that had stranded them an extra night had cleared, but the runways were still fringed with snow.
Cassie secured a window seat near the back, pulled her hood over her hair and let the hum of the engines drown out the chatter of exhausted passengers.
Through the glass, the city lights receded and the endless black of the Pacific gave way to cloud banks lit by the moon.
With no Wi-Fi and no interviews to conduct, she had nothing but time and the ache in her chest to occupy her.
The past few weeks had been a blur of near misses and quick smiles in hotel hallways, of texts typed and deleted and of late nights replaying every interaction.
It had been thrilling, yes, but also consuming.
Connor’s grin in the lobby haunted her; he’d treated the moment like a joke, but it wasn’t funny to her.
The more she turned it over, the more it dawned on her that Luke risked very little by bending the rules.
He was a multi-million-dollar defenseman with a contract that spanned years.
If they were caught, he might get … what, a talking-to from the Renegades’ public relations manager?
He wouldn’t lose his livelihood. Teams didn’t cut cornerstone players over a relationship.
She, on the other hand, would be hung out to dry.
She’d seen what happened to colleagues who were accused of conflicts of interest: reassigned, demoted, whispered about.
In a field where there were so few women to begin with, the margin for error was razor thin.
As the plane arced east, Cassie thought about the years that had led her here—the nights spent watching Renegades highlights with her father, the mornings she spent as a young girl waking up at dawn to play pickup at the local rink, the college papers filled with game summaries marked up by professors.
She’d fought for internships, scraped together enough to travel to minor-league tournaments and endured condescending comments in locker rooms because she loved the sport and because she believed her words mattered.
The beat wasn’t just a job; it was the realization of a childhood dream.
Was a secret romance worth gambling that dream? Was Luke worth it?
She closed her eyes and saw his smile when he was genuinely happy, the way his hair stuck to his forehead after a game, the tenderness in his voice when he whispered her name.
She also saw the look in Stan’s eyes when he reminded her about ethics.
The scales tipped back and forth. By the time the captain announced their descent into Pittsburgh, she hadn’t arrived at an answer, but she knew she couldn’t keep pretending that the risks were equal.
Back in her Mount Washington apartment, the first thing she did was drop her bags and text Luke: “Home. Long flight. I’m…freaking out a little about this. Can we talk later?” The three dots appeared almost instantly.
“Of course,” came his reply. “We’ll make this work. I don’t want you to lose anything because of me.” A moment later: “I’m sorry about Connor. He’s a good kid but he runs his mouth. I’ll talk to him.”
She stared at the screen, a mixture of relief and frustration pooling behind her ribs. “It’s not just Connor,” she typed. “You’re bulletproof. I’m not.”
A pause. Then, a reply from Luke: “Maybe not bulletproof, but I get it. I know what you’ve built. I respect it. We can slow down if you need. I’ll follow your lead.”
Cassie let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. It wasn’t a solution, but it was something she needed to hear—that he understood the imbalance and was willing to adjust. She texted back a single word: “Okay.” After a moment, she added a heart. He sent one in return.
Luke stood in the middle of his loft with his phone in his hand, staring out at the river without really seeing it.
The lights along the Allegheny blurred together, reflections stacking on top of each other like something he should recognize but couldn’t quite name.
He replayed the last twenty-four hours on a loop: Connor’s grin in the elevator, Cassie’s careful tone, the way she’d laughed it off too easily.
He’d taken comfort in the idea that if a teammate noticed, it couldn’t be that dangerous.
That had been selfish. Comfort was a luxury he could afford. She couldn’t.
He thought about consequences the way hockey players were trained to—two minutes in the box, a talking-to from the coach.
He had been coached through worse. He had survived worse.
The realization landed heavily: if this blew up, his life would be bruised, not broken.
Hers could be dismantled quietly, efficiently, by people who would swear they were only protecting standards.
That wasn’t theoretical. He’d seen it happen to women around the league, their access slowly evaporating, their credibility questioned.
Luke ran a hand through his hair and exhaled. He cared about her more than he cared about being comfortable, more than he cared about how badly he wanted her next to him instead of on the other end of a phone. Wanting her wasn’t the problem. Letting his want outweigh her safety would be.
He looked down at his phone again, thumb hovering over her name. If he was going to do this right, he needed to say it out loud. He needed her to know he saw the imbalance clearly now—and that if they were going to do this, he wasn’t going to make her carry it alone.
Cassie set her phone down on the arm of the couch and stared at it as if it might buzz again on its own.
The apartment was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the distant whine of traffic on Bigelow.
She told herself she should unpack, should shower, should do something productive to shake off the fog of travel and emotion.
Instead, she stayed where she was, knees pulled to her chest, replaying the words she’d sent and the ones she hadn’t.
Her phone rang.
She flinched, then picked it up before she could overthink it. “Hey,” she said, keeping her voice neutral.
“Hey,” Luke said. He sounded tired. Not postgame tired—something heavier. “Do you have a minute?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I do.”
There was a brief pause, the kind that felt deliberate. Cassie imagined him standing in his loft, phone pressed to his ear, pacing the length of the windows that overlooked the river.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” Luke began. “About the flight. About risk.”
Cassie closed her eyes. “Okay.”
“I don’t think I really understood it before,” he said. “Not all the way. I knew it was harder for you. I just… I didn’t sit with what that actually means.”
She didn’t interrupt.
“If we do this… and someone finds out,” he continued, choosing his words carefully, “they write a headline about me. Maybe a joke. Maybe a paragraph about distractions. I get a warning from PR and everyone moves on.” He exhaled.
“If they find out about you, they don’t write a headline. They rewrite your credibility.”
Cassie swallowed. Hearing him say it out loud loosened something tight in her chest. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “That’s the part people don’t like to acknowledge.”
“I should’ve acknowledged it sooner,” Luke said. “I keep thinking about you sitting on that plane, turning this over by yourself. That’s not fair.”
She stared at the ceiling. “I didn’t want to make it sound like I was blaming you.”
“I know,” he said. “But I want to be clear about something.” He paused again, longer this time. “You don’t ever have to ask me to step back.”
Cassie’s breath caught. “Luke—”
“No,” he said gently. “Let me finish.” His voice softened. “If this ever starts to cost you—your sleep, your focus, your reputation—I’ll be the one to pull away. Publicly. Completely. No explanations required.”
Her fingers curled into the couch cushion. “That’s… a big thing to say.”
“It’s the bare minimum,” he said. “You built something before I got here. I don’t get to be the reason it cracks.”
Cassie felt a sting behind her eyes and blinked hard. “I don’t want you to feel like you’re disposable in this.”
“I don’t.” He paused a beat. “Caring about you means I don’t get to be reckless.”
Cassie shifted on the couch, drawing her knees closer. “I don’t want to lose you,” she admitted. “But I can’t lose myself either.”
“I know,” Luke said. “So we move at your speed. We follow your rules. And if the safest thing at some point is distance, then I’ll take it.” He gave a quiet, self-deprecating laugh. “I’ve spent my whole career being told to wait my turn. I can do it here too.”
She smiled despite herself. “You hate waiting.”
“I hate hurting people more,” he said.
They sat in the silence that followed, not awkward, just full. Cassie realized she was breathing easier than she had since Vancouver.
“Thank you,” she said finally.
“For what?”
“For seeing it,” she replied. “Really seeing it.”
“Always,” he said. “Get some rest. Long flight.”
“You too,” she said. “We’ll talk soon.”
“Yeah,” Luke said. “We will.”
When the call ended, Cassie stayed where she was for a long moment, phone warm in her hand. Nothing had been solved. Nothing had been decided. But for the first time since boarding the plane in Vancouver, the weight didn’t feel like hers alone to carry.