Chapter Twenty-One
NATALIA
I wake to the sound of knocking on the chalet’s front door.
I turn to find Luka already gone for the morning, but the scent of chlorine and his skin on my body reminds me of everything we did last night.
Last night, Luka was so much less like the calculating winger who terrifies opposing players on the ice, and more like the boy who once smuggled a one-eyed cat into boarding school.
The knocking comes again.
"Ms. Kovac? Guest services. Your room is ready."
My stomach drops. Oh, right… I had a reservation once upon a time–ten days ago to be exact. Before I ended up in a hot tub with Luka’s mouth on my skin and his fingers making me come.
I slide out of bed, grabbing my phone to see the sticky note Luka left:
Good Morning
Went to the gym
–L
I smile at seeing his scrawl on the yellow sticky note and the fact that he thought to leave it for me. I wrap the sheet around myself before padding toward the door.
When I crack it open, a young attendant stands there with a polite smile and a key card resting on a small silver tray.
"Apologies for the early hour. We were able to prepare it sooner than expected. The airport is back open, and some guests have gotten flights out."
I take the card with the hesitation that I shouldn’t feel. I should be relieved.
"Thank you."
The door shut quietly behind me.
I stand there for a long moment, staring at the rectangle of plastic in my hand.
I could go back to bed, pretend that this card never came, but last night we both agreed to one time.
My professional career demands that I keep to that promise, and even if I wanted things to be different, I’ve seen enough evidence that Luka Popovich doesn’t stay.
There’s one thing I can still salvage… still hold onto—my job. That is if I stop climbing into hot tubs with hockey playboys and get real about what I am here to do.
He’s made it abundantly clear over the last few days. No one can hold on to him because he doesn’t want them to.
I look back toward the bedroom.
For a reckless second, I considered going back. Sliding back under the blankets and letting myself have one more hour of something that feels dangerously like belonging to a man who belongs to nothing and no one. That feels like a heartbreak waiting to happen.
Instead, I gather my clothes, toothbrush, and everything else I can find and zip up my rolling bag. He agreed to let me stay on the grounds that I had nowhere else to go. It feels almost deceptive not to take the hotel room now that it’s being offered, giving him back his space.
I make the bed and leave a sticky note of my own:
Thank you for giving me a safe place to stay.
The room I checked into on the third floor is fine, but it’s empty, and it smells like bleach and not him.
I dropped my things, changed into a sports bra, sweatshirt and yoga pants and headed for the yoga studio. I need to clear my head and get back to what I came here for.
To save my career.
LUKA
I leave the gym with my hoodie half-zipped and my hair still damp from the locker room shower, letting the cold outside hit me. It should reset me. It usually does. Routine has always been the thing that keeps my head quiet.
Today it doesn’t.
Because this time, something is different.
There is weight on my chest. A warm, soft body pressed against my side. The faint scent of whatever shampoo Natalia uses—clean, not floral enough to be annoying—hit me before my eyes fully adjusted to the dark.
She was asleep on my shoulder.
Not sprawled out, taking up more space than she needed. Just… there, like she belonged in my bed, like it was normal to have a woman’s breathing sync with mine while her hand rested against my ribs as if she reached for me in her sleep and found me.
I remember staring at the ceiling, perfectly still, afraid that if I moved even an inch it would break whatever fragile thing was happening.
I don’t remember the last time I slept all night, but last night… I did. I tried to remember the last time I woke up with a woman still in my bed.
I couldn’t remember the time for that either.
Probably because it's never happened—I’ve never let it happen.
I don’t stay, or don’t linger, or make promises I don’t plan to keep.
I don’t do mornings. I especially don’t do the real kind of sleep—the kind where your guard drops and someone else exists in your space for hours without you waking every twenty minutes to make sure they aren’t going through your things or collecting ammunition.
And yet, there she was.
Breathing softly, hair across my arm, mouth parted in sleep, like she wasn’t carrying a hundred thoughts even while unconscious. No tension in her shoulders. No vigilance. Just warmth.
I hated how much I liked it.
I hated how fast my mind went there. How easy it was to imagine her waking up slowly, blinking at me, making some mouthy comment about my body being an alarm clock. How easy it was to picture her tucked into my side again while I pretended I wasn’t holding on.
I didn’t touch her. I don’t know if that’s restraint or fear. Maybe it’s both.
I slipped out of bed like a thief, quiet as I could, because some part of me wanted to come back and find her in the exact same place. Like proof it wasn’t a hallucination. Like proof, she stayed again, even when I wasn’t asking.
My steps crunch over packed snow as I cut around the side of the village and head for the chalet path, my pulse kicking up for reasons that have nothing to do with cardio.
It’s ridiculous.
She’s a PR agent. She’s here for a job. She’s not mine. She isn’t even… anything.
But my brain doesn’t care about logic this morning.
All it cares about is that in a few minutes I’ll open the door and smell coffee, or hear her moving around, or see her hair pulled up messy while she sits at the table with her laptop like she owns the space.
The thought makes my chest feel tight in a way I don’t know what to do with.
I reach the chalet, pull the door open, already bracing for heat to hit me… And the first thing I notice is the silence.
No clink of a mug. No soft keyboard taps. No frustrated sigh at bad Wi-Fi… nothing.
The air feels colder than it should. My gaze snaps to the entryway.
Her boots are gone.
Her bag is gone.
And the bed… the bed is made. Too neatly, I might add. Like she was never there at all.
There’s a note but all it says is: Thank you for giving me a safe place to stay.
What the hell does that mean? Was that a goodbye note?
I move through the chalet like I'm searching for evidence of a crime. The kitchen, the living room… there’s nothing left of hers around. Even the towels we used last night are gone, like she erased every trace of herself before she left.
My pulse kicks up, hard and fast, the kind of adrenaline spike that comes right before a fight.
Did she leave?
Did she take the first fucking flight out without saying a word?
I grab my phone and pull up her contact, thumb hovering over the call button.
No.
Texting first. Calling feels too desperate, and I'm not desperate… not yet, anyway.
I type fast and send it:
Where are you?
I stare at the screen.
Three dots appear almost immediately.
Natalia: They dropped off the keys to my room. I just checked in. I'm heading down to the yoga studio.
I read it twice.
I spin back around, and I'm out the door before I can talk myself out of it.
The yoga studio is tucked into the lower level of the resort, all floor-to-ceiling windows and polished wood floors that smell like eucalyptus and granola farts.
I walked in without knocking.
A dozen people are scattered around the room, rolling out mats, adjusting their overpriced leggings, sipping from metal water bottles like they're preparing for enlightenment instead of an hour of stretching.
And there she is.
Middle of the group, unrolling a purple yoga mat as if she hadn't spent last night in my bed, as if she hadn't left without a word, as if everything's fine.
I walk straight over.
She sees me coming and freezes, eyes going wide.
"What are you doing here?"
"You left," I say, loud enough that the woman next to her glances over. "What was that about?"
Natalia straightens, her jaw tightening. "My room opened up. It seemed like the logical choice."
"Logical."
"Yes."
"Without discussing it with me?"
She glances around, and I can see the panic starting to creep into her shoulders. "Luka," she says, quieter now, like that's going to make me lower my voice.
It won't.
I couldn't give a fuck who's watching. I need an answer. I need to know what the hell is going on in her head after last night. Sure, we said one night, but that was before she slept in my arms all night… because I slept all night without feeling the need to bolt.
"I left a note," she offers, as if the note she left gave any information as to what’s going on in her head or why she left.
"It said, Thank you for giving me a safe place to stay. That’s it. No other information about why you packed up and left. For all I knew, that note implied you left the country."
"I didn’t mean to be elusive, but I don’t understand why you’re upset. You should be happy," she says, forcing a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. "This was always supposed to be temporary."
"That’s what we need to talk about."
"Class is about to start, and then I need to get some work done at the café. I'll come by later tonight, and we can talk then."
The instructor, a woman in her forties with the kind of serene smile that makes me want to punch something, clapped her hands together. "Is everyone ready? Do you have your mats?"
I raise my hand.
"I don't have a mat yet," I tell the woman and then glance back at Natalia with a smirk. "Or I could just stay."
Natalia’s eyes narrow. "Luka," she hissed under her breath. "Don't you dare."
A woman to my left, blonde, too much makeup for a yoga class, eyelashes fluttering like she's trying to signal a helicopter, leans over. "Here, you can have mine."