Chapter 18
Nothing was normal.
I’d spent the rest of the weekend preparing for this. Rehearsing what I’d say. How I’d act. Professional but not cold. Acknowledging what happened without making it weird. Setting boundaries. Being mature about it.
No. Stop. Don’t think about him.
Better. Safer. Not the guy I’d kissed on Saturday night.
Not Andrew.
Andrew.
Oh my god, I got to call him Andrew now. Not Knox. Not Mr. Knox. Andrew.
Holy shit.
Focus.
We needed to talk. Obviously. About the kiss. About what it meant. About how we were going to work together now that everything had changed.
I had talking points. Bullet points, even. Typed in my phone and then deleted because typing them felt insane.
The elevator doors opened.
I could feel my heart pounding as I walked to the penthouse door. My palms were sweating. This was it. The conversation. The moment where we figured out what we were doing.
I unlocked the door and stepped inside.
Andrew was in the living room.
Shirtless.
With a hockey stick.
What the fuck?
He was just. . . walking around, whacking the stick against furniture. The coffee table—thwack. The back of the couch—thwack. The edge of a bookshelf—thwack. Not hard enough to damage anything, just enough to make noise.
Like a caged animal pacing its enclosure.
I stood there, frozen, all my carefully prepared talking points evaporating from my brain.
“Morning,” he called out, not looking up from whatever the hell he was doing.
“Morning.” My voice came out normal. A minor miracle.
He whacked the stick against the arm of a chair.
That was it? That was the whole conversation?
I waited for him to say something else. Anything else. To acknowledge Saturday night. To bring up the kiss.
Nothing.
He just kept wandering around, tapping things with his stick like this was a completely normal Monday morning activity.
I poured myself a cup of coffee, kept my back to him, focused on breathing.
In. Out. Do not look at his bare chest. Do not think about the kiss. Do not—
“We raised $847,000.”
I turned. Still didn’t make direct eye contact. Looked at his shoulder instead. Safer. “That’s incredible.”
“Yeah.” He smacked the stick against the coffee table again. “Medical fund’s gonna be set for the next two fucking years. Maybe three, if they’re smart about it.”
“That’s what you wanted.”
“Damn right it is.”
Silence.
I carried my coffee to the dining table, opened the laptop, pulled up emails. Seventeen new messages since last night. Sponsor follow-ups, media requests, one from the team owner asking how the event went.
One from a sports journalist: Heard there was an altercation at the gala Saturday—can you confirm?
I deleted that one immediately.
I could feel Andrew moving behind me. The soft thud of the hockey stick. The sound of him being thoroughly unbothered by everything that had happened Saturday night.
Meanwhile, I was losing my mind.
Weren’t we going to talk about it? Shouldn’t we address it? Set some ground rules?
Boston Wardens’ longest suspension before Andrew Knox: 6 games, 2019, Brett Smith for a blindside hit.
“You’re muttering again,” he said.
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Bullshit.”
I looked up. Andrew was standing near the window now, still shirtless because the universe hated me, his hockey stick resting against his shoulder as he stared out at the city.
“I’m reading emails,” I said.
“You’re freaking out.”
“I’m not—”
“You are. I can hear your brain working from here. You’ve been doing that weird muttering thing since you walked in here.” He turned to look at me. “What’s the problem?”
“There’s no problem.”
“Matthew.”
“I’m just—” I stopped. Started again. “Aren’t we going to talk about it?”
“Talk about what?”
Was he serious?
“Saturday,” I whispered.
Andrew looked around the room and then back at me. “Why are you whispering?”
“I—” I glanced around the empty penthouse. “I don’t know.”
“We’re alone, Matthew.”
“Right. Yeah.” I cleared my throat. Normal volume: “Saturday. The—the kiss.”
“What about it?”
I stared at him. “What about it? We kissed. In a hallway. At a charity event. After I punched you.”
“I was there.”
“Yes, I know, but you don’t think we should. . . discuss it?”
“What’s there to discuss?” He tapped the stick against the floor, casual as anything. “We’re figuring it out. Done.”
“That’s it?”
“What else do you want?”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. “I don’t know. I just thought—”
“You thought we’d have some big fucking conversation about feelings and boundaries and what this means?” He said it without judgment, just stating facts. “We already did that. Saturday night. In the hallway.”
“That was barely five minutes.”
“Felt like enough to me. You punched me, I kissed you, you kissed me back. It was hot as fuck. The end.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
Andrew went back to his stick-tapping, moving around the living room like a restless shark.
This was fine. This was normal. We were being professional.
Except nothing about this felt normal.
I typed a response to the team owner. Professional, concise, avoided mentioning Archibald or the fact that I’d kissed his suspended player in a hallway. Just the highlights. Great turnout, successful auction, excellent cause.
Send.
“I should get a dog.”
I looked up. Andrew was standing near the bookshelf now, stick balanced across his shoulders, arms draped over it.
“What?”
“A dog.” He glanced at me. “I should get one.”
My brain immediately shifted into logistics mode, grateful for something concrete to focus on. “Do you have time for a dog?”
“I’ve got nothing but fucking time. I’m suspended, remember?”
“Right now isn’t the same as always,” I said. “Training takes months. And once you’re back, you’ll be traveling again. Road trips. Appearances. You can’t just disappear for two weeks and leave a dog without structure.”
“I know all that.”
Did he, though?
“Right,” I said, realizing the decision was made. “What kind of dog?”
He shrugged. “Shelter dog. I don’t want some purebred show dog that costs ten grand.”
“Okay. . .”
“I want one that’s fucked up.”
I coughed. “Fucked up?”
“Yeah. You know. Damaged. The kind nobody else wants.” He said it casually, like he was talking about furniture. “One that needs the medical fund I’m paying for. Rehab. Behavioral therapy. That kind of shit.”
Something in my chest shifted, warm and unexpected.
“That’s. . .” I searched for words, then nodded. “That’s a good idea.”
“You think?”
“Yeah.”
He nodded, satisfied, and went back to his pacing.
My work phone buzzed on the table.
I glanced at the screen.
Unknown Number: Hey Matthew. It’s Brandon. Let’s grab coffee sometime. We should talk.
Archibald? How the hell did he get this number?
My brain immediately filled in the worst possible scenario—he had seen us. The hallway. The kiss. What if someone had taken a picture? What if he had? This was how it started. Casual messages that weren’t casual at all.
I stared at the screen, fingers frozen.
“Who is it?”
I looked up. Andrew had stopped moving. The hockey stick was still balanced across his shoulders, but his posture had shifted. He was more alert, sharp, like he’d sensed a threat.
“No one,” I said too fast.
Andrew’s blue eyes narrowed. “That wasn’t nothing.”
“It’s probably just—”
“Quinn.” His voice dropped. “Who.”
I hesitated. Long enough.
Andrew crossed the room in three aggressive strides. “Phone. Now.”
“Andrew—”
“Give me the fucking phone.”
I handed it over, and he read the screen. For half a second, his expression went still.
Then he saw the name.
“Archibald,” he muttered.
The calm snapped.
“That piece of shit,” he growled. “I thought—” He cut himself off, jaw tightening. “I thought this was about Saturday.”
He set the phone down on the kitchen counter.
The hockey stick came off his shoulders.
“Andrew, wait—”
The stick came down hard. Once. Twice. Three times.
The screen shattered. Plastic cracked. The phone skidded across the counter in pieces.
I stared.
“What. The. Fuck.”
“There,” Andrew said, breathing hard. “No more calls.”
“You—you. . . That was my work phone.”
“I know.”
“You can’t just—” I stopped, dragged a hand through my hair. “You just made my job harder.”
He studied the wreckage for a beat, then nodded once. “Okay. That’s fair.”
That was. . . not the response I’d expected.
“I’m not sorry I broke it,” he continued. “That guy doesn’t get access to you. Period. But I should’ve thought past the first ten seconds.”
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and tossed it at me.
I barely caught it.
“What is this?”
“My phone.”
It was heavier than I expected. An older phone in a clear plastic case that had gone cloudy with age, scratched to hell, cracked at one corner like it had survived multiple impacts with concrete and won.
“I realize that.” I stared at it. “Your—Andrew, no. I can’t—”
“Use it until I get you a new work one,” he said. “Just for today. I’ll get a new one you can use for work. But for now, you use that.”
I blinked. “What about you?”
“I don’t need it.”
“You absolutely need your phone.”
“I’ve gone entire road trips without it,” he said. “I’ll survive a few hours.”
I looked down at the screen. It lit up immediately. The battery indicator glowed red. Eight percent.
“No passcode?” I asked.
“There is one.”
I waited.
He sighed. “One-two-three-four-five.”
I looked up slowly. “You’re kidding.”
Andrew shrugged. “You’re not going to steal my shit.”
That stopped me.
My chest tightened—not with panic this time. With something heavier.
“Okay,” I said finally.
He stilled. “Okay?”
“Yeah.” I met his eyes. “Okay.”
The tension eased out of his shoulders, just a notch.
“Good. And for the record,” Andrew said, “Archibald pulling that shit right before the hearing was not an accident.”
My stomach sank.
The hearing. The thing we’d both been pretending wasn’t looming over everything.
I looked down at the phone in my hand. His phone.
The room felt quieter suddenly. Heavier.
Monday had arrived.
And the hearing was next.