Chapter Fourteen
New Territory
Banks
The apartment is quiet when I get home.
It’s always quiet. That’s the point. I chose this place specifically for its silence—top floor, corner unit, no shared walls. The kind of space where you can go days without hearing another human voice.
Usually, I like the quiet. Tonight, it feels oppressive.
I toss my keys on the counter and stand in the middle of my living room, unsure of what to do with myself. The TV is off, the lights are dim, and everything is exactly where I left it this morning because no one else has been here. No one else is ever here.
My lip throbs. I press my tongue against the split, tasting copper and the faint chemical tang of the butterfly bandages. It’ll heal in a few days. It always does. My knuckles ache beneath the tape, but that will fade too.
Physical pain I know how to handle. It’s simple. Predictable. You get hit, it hurts, it stops hurting. Cause and effect.
What I don’t know how to handle is the ghost of her fingers on my jaw, rubbing over my stubble like she enjoyed the scratchy feel of it against her palm.
I sink onto the couch, tip my head back against the cushion and close my eyes.
She touched me.
Not the incidental contact of bodies colliding on the ice. She reached up—deliberately, gently—and pressed her fingertips to my face like I was something fragile. Something worth being careful with.
Does it hurt?
Her voice echoes in my head. Soft. Concerned. Like she actually cared about the answer.
Not anymore.
I lied. It did hurt before she touched me. After, it ached in a completely different way.
I can’t remember the last time someone touched me like that. Hockey is all impact—hits, checks, fights, the occasional bone-crushing hug after a goal. There’s nothing gentle about it. Nothing soft. You learn to brace for contact, to absorb it, to give as good as you get.
But her fingers on my jaw were none of those things. They were careful. Tentative. Like she was afraid of hurting me, even though I’m twice her size and built to take punishment.
Like I was something worth being careful with.
When’s the last time anyone thought that about me?
The answer surfaces before I can stop it.
Celine.
The name alone makes my chest tight. I don’t think about her often. I’ve trained myself not to think about her for years. But tonight, with Winnie’s touch still burning on my skin, the memories push through anyway.
Celine and Don Nickerson. The last family. The one that almost kept me.
I was fourteen when I landed with them—angry, closed-off, convinced it was only a matter of time before they sent me back like everyone else. I’d been through four placements by then. I knew the drill: be quiet, stay out of the way, don’t get attached.
But Celine made it hard not to get attached.
She was soft in a way I didn’t trust at first—always smiling, always checking in.
She’d ruffle my hair when she passed me in the kitchen, hug me and tell me I was a good kid even when I hadn’t done anything to deserve it.
She made me lunch every morning—packed in a brown paper bag with my name written on the front in her careful handwriting.
No one had ever done those small things for me.
Don drove me back and forth to the ice arena, never once complaining about it. For two years, I let myself believe it might stick. That maybe, finally, I’d found somewhere to stay.
Then I turned sixteen, and Don got transferred to a job three states away. They couldn’t take me with them—something about jurisdiction, paperwork, the foster system’s endless red tape. Celine cried when she told me. Actually cried. Like losing me meant something.
“We’ll figure it out,” she kept saying. “We’ll find a way.”
But they didn’t find a way. They moved. I got shuffled to a group home. And I learned, once and for all, that people leave. Even the good ones. Even the ones who mean it when they say they’ll stay.
I haven’t let anyone touch me like Celine used to since. Haven’t let anyone close enough to try.
Until tonight.
Until Winnie stood in that hallway and reached for my face and brushed her fingertips over my jaw.
My phone buzzes on the coffee table, startling me out of the memory. I grab it, expecting a text from Zayden or some team group chat nonsense.
It’s Winnie.
But she’s not texting. She’s calling.
I stare at the screen for two rings, three, before I answer.
“Hello?”
“Hey.” Her voice is warm, a little sleepy. “Did I wake you?”
“No.”
“Good. I just wanted to check in. How’s the lip?”
“Fine.”
A pause. Then, amused, “You know, normal people use more than one word on phone calls too.”
“Oh.” I pause. “Right. It’s fine, thanks.”
She laughs—that bright, easy sound that does something complicated to my chest. “Hilarious. You’re a real comedian, Banks.”
“I try.”
“Seriously, though. Does it hurt? I saw you take that punch, and it looked… bad.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“It’s not supposed to be. It’s just the truth.”
I hear rustling on her end, like she’s settling into bed. Sheets shifting. A soft exhale.
The image appears unbidden—Winnie in pajamas, probably something soft and pink with maybe a little lace at the hem.
Her golden hair fanned out across white pillowcases.
Long legs tucked under the covers. Phone pressed to her ear, her mouth probably adorably smirking at my lack of conversational skills.
I bet her skin is soft. The kind of soft that comes from lotions and routines and all those products women keep in their bathrooms.
I shove the thought away hard enough to give myself mental whiplash.
This is Winnie. Off-limits in about seventeen different ways. And I’m lying here in the dark like some creep, imagining what she looks like in bed. I shove the thought away.
“You still there?” Her voice is sleepy now, a little raspy, and that doesn’t help anything.
“Yeah.” I clear my throat. “Still here.”
“Thank you for tonight,” she says. “For coming to the bar. I know that’s not your thing.”
“You asked.”
“I did. And you said yes, which surprised me.” Another pause. “You’re full of surprises lately.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I’m not surprising. I’m predictable. Boring. The guy who sits in the corner and doesn’t talk.
But she makes me want to be different.
“Anyway,” she continues, “I should let you get some rest. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m okay.”
“Good.” Her voice softens. “Goodnight, tough guy.”
Tough guy.
The words hit me somewhere unexpected. She has a nickname for me now, and one that’s not “The Wall” or “Brick” or any of the other names the guys throw around. Something just for her. Just for us.
“Goodnight, Win.”
Neither of us hangs up immediately. There’s a beat of silence—comfortable, weighted—and I can hear her breathing on the other end. Soft and steady.
“Banks?”
“Yeah?”
“Tonight… at the bar…” She hesitates. “Was that okay? Me sitting on your lap like that? I know it was kind of… a lot.”
A lot. That’s one way to describe it.
My body responds to the memory before my brain can catch up. The weight of her on my thighs. The warmth of her back against my chest. My hand against her waist. The way she shifted and squirmed and drove me slowly insane.
I’m hardening again. Just from thinking about it. Just from hearing her voice.
I shift on the couch, adjusting my position, but it doesn’t help. The ache is building, insistent and demanding. I press the heel of my hand against myself through my pants, trying to relieve the pressure.
It only makes it worse.
“It was fine,” I manage, my voice rougher than I intended.
“You sure? Because you seemed… tense.”
Tense. That’s definitely one word for what I was.
“I’m sure.”
I squeeze myself through the fabric, biting back a groan. This is insane. She’s on the phone, talking about whether I was comfortable, and I’m sitting here in the dark getting hard at the sound of her voice.
What would it feel like if it was her hand?
The thought ambushes me, vivid and visceral. Her soft, delicate fingers wrapping around me instead of my own. Those blue eyes looking up at me, curious and wanting, as she strokes me slowly. Her palm sliding along my length, learning the shape of me, driving me out of my mind.
I press harder. My breath catches.
“Banks? You still there?”
“Yeah.” The word comes out strangled. “I’m here.”
“You okay? You sound weird.”
“I’m fine. Just tired.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry, I’m keeping you up.” She sounds embarrassed. “I should go. Let you sleep.”
“Yeah.” I need her off this phone. I need to not be hearing her voice while my hand is shoved down my pants and my dick is throbbing like it has its own heartbeat. “I should—yeah. Early practice.”
“Okay. Well… goodnight. Again.”
“Goodnight.”
I hang up before she can say anything else.
For a long moment, I just sit there. Phone in one hand. The other still pressed against myself, hot and hard and aching.
I should stop. This is wrong. She set boundaries. I agreed to them. Getting off while thinking about her is… a violation of something. Trust, maybe.
But I can’t stop seeing her. Feeling her. The ghost of her touch on my jaw, the weight of her on my lap, the way she called “tough guy” in that soft, teasing voice of hers.
I pull my hand out of my pants and force myself to breathe.
Cold shower. That’s what I need. Ice-cold water until my body remembers how to behave.
I push off the couch and head for the bathroom, stripping off my shirt as I go. My reflection in the mirror stops me—split lip, bruised jaw, eyes that look hollow and hungry at the same time.
What the hell am I doing?
I turn on the shower and step under the spray before it has a chance to warm up. The cold hits me like a slap, shocking the heat out of my blood, forcing my body back under control.
But even as the water pounds down on me, I can still feel her fingers on my face.
Still hear her voice in my ear.
Goodnight, tough guy.
I press my forehead against the tile and close my eyes.
I’m in so much trouble.