Chapter 20 Grayson #2
With three minutes left, we get a power play.
Coach points at me and Weston. “You. You. End it.”
Kai wins the faceoff clean, sliding it back to me on the half wall.
I look up, and the lane is there.
I fake the shot, pull the puck in, then snap a pass across the seam to Weston. He one-times it.
Net.
3–1.
The crowd explodes.
Weston throws his arms up, hands motioning to the crowd for more praise. Cocky little shit.
We pile on him anyway.
And again—like my body has its own magnet—I look up. Harlow is smiling. Not small. Not careful. But a real smile that makes her whole face soften. She presses her hands to her mouth again like she’s trying to keep it in, like it’s too big for her to hold.
And for one dangerous second, my brain supplies the thought like a prayer and a curse:
I want her to look at me like that.
Not because I assisted a goal. Not because I’m a hockey player. Because I’m me.
The final horn sounds.
We win.
The handshake line blurs. The postgame noise hits like a wave. Coach claps shoulders. Fans yell names. Someone shouts about next weekend. I do the normal things. Smile when expected. Answer quick questions. Let a scout shake my hand with that firm grip that means I’m evaluating you even right now.
My head nods. My mouth moves.
But my attention is already gone.
Because I know where she’ll be.
I spot her in the hallway near the locker room entrance, half tucked against the concrete like she’s not sure where she’s allowed to stand. The jersey sleeves are pulled down over her hands. Her hair is loose. Her eyes are bright.
Kai is a few feet away, talking to Asher, posture relaxed but still alert, like he can’t fully turn off.
Harlow looks up when she sees me. The hallway quiets in my head.
“You were really good,” she says softly.
It’s not loud praise. It’s not performative. It lands like something warm and heavy in my chest.
“Yeah?” I ask, keeping my voice low.
She nods. “You look…different out there.”
I tilt my head. “Different how?”
She hesitates, then says the word like she means it. “Confident, pretty calm. And certain. Like you know what to do, regardless of what the other team does.”
The compliment hits deeper than it should. She’s not trying to feed my ego; she’s just seeing me, not the jersey.
I take a step closer, stopping short of her space. Close enough to feel her warmth, far enough to give her room.
“You okay?” I ask.
She nods. “Yeah. Being here was good.”
My throat tightens. I lift my hand slowly, brushing my knuckles against the sleeve of Kai’s jersey. Just fabric. Still, my body goes hyperaware. Harlow’s breath stutters like she feels it too. The moment stretches thin and electric. My gaze flicks to her mouth before I can stop it.
Then I hear Kai’s voice—sharp and familiar—cutting through everything.
“Harlow.”
She flinches. The spell breaks. I step back immediately, hands dropping to my sides like I didn’t just almost do something reckless.
Kai turns toward us, eyes sharp. “You ready?”
Harlow nods, but her eyes flick back to mine once—apologetic, wanting, unresolved.
I hold her gaze.
Soon, I think.
Not out loud.
Not yet.
She walks away with Kai, swallowed by the hallway traffic. I stand there longer than I should, chest still humming with the echo of her breath catching.
This isn’t a slow burn anymore.
This is restraint.
And restraint is starting to feel like a dare.
At home, the apartment is quiet as I drop my keys on the kitchen counter and head toward my room.
Kai and Harlow were making a stop at the store on the way home and aren’t back yet, so I hop in the shower, letting the water beat down until the sweat and adrenaline rinse off, standing under the stream longer than I need to, palms flat against the cold tile, head dropped forward.
The spray hammers the back of my neck, my shoulders, the space between my shoulder blades where tension lives like a permanent resident.
But it doesn’t touch the restlessness I feel.
Because the second I close my eyes, I see her, Harlow in Kai’s jersey, hands at her mouth, smile peeking through, as if the joy caught her off guard and she didn’t have time to hide it.
The wrong name on her shoulders, the right look in her eyes.
That moment when her eyes met mine, as if she felt my stare and knew exactly where to look.
I turn the water colder, but it doesn’t help.
I sit on the edge of my bed, towel around my waist, hair still dripping, staring at my phone like it’s going to buzz with an answer to all my problems, but the screen stays dark.
The forum icon sits there like a door I’ve used too often, a place that used to feel safe, like shouting into a void that shouted back just enough to take the edge off.
I can’t open it tonight.
Not when I’m this wound up. Not when I’m afraid I’ll type something I can’t take back. Something with her name in it. Something true.
I drop the towel.
I lie back and let my imagination have what reality won’t.
Her in that jersey again, the hem hitting her mid-thigh, the way she’d tugged at the sleeve, but it’s not Kai’s number she’s wearing.
It’s mine.
My name across her back, where it belongs.
Her choosing it from a rack, off my floor, or out of my hands. I can’t decide which version is better, so I let them blur together.
Fisting my cock, I move my hand back and forth along my shaft. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt the need to do this, but my body is begging for release.
As my mind plays its own version of the fantasy with Harlow in my jersey, I realize something else. I’ve memorized her without meaning to.
The way she smiles shyly, the way she captures her bottom lip between her teeth when she’s trying not to.
I want to release it from her torture and replace it with my own.
I want to kiss her, long and slow, exploring her mouth and learning the sounds she would make.
The way her body would melt into me and mine into her.
My pace changes, my hand moving faster as I think about her hands.
The way they’d feel exploring my body, slipping down lower and lower until she touches me.
My lips at her throat, feeling the beat of her pulse and knowing that I was the reason.
The way she’d feel pressed against a wall or a door or any flat surface if I stopped being careful for five consecutive seconds.
I think about what it would take to make her stop composing herself, to get under that careful, watchful exterior and find the version of her that forgets to be guarded.
I want that version. I want to be the reason for it.
Release comes hard and fast, punched out of me, and I lie there in the dark with my chest heaving and one arm thrown over my eyes like I can block out what I just did.
Guilt replaces the relief that I feel quickly, the automatic punishment for wanting something that isn’t mine to want.
Then something worse slips in underneath it.
Hope.
The dangerous kind. The kind that doesn’t stay abstract.
Because now it’s not just a fantasy I can shut off.
It’s a desire that I can’t outrun or ignore.
A future my brain keeps reaching for even though it knows better, sketching out scenes I have no business drafting, with her in my clothes, my space, in my life, looking at me like I’m worth the risk.
I want her to wear my jersey and mean it.
I want her to look at me like that and not look away.
And with November 21 sitting on the horizon like a storm front moving in slow and inevitable, I can feel my control slipping, my grip on the careful, manageable version of this loosening, and my whole life tilting toward something I’m not sure I can afford to want.
The ceiling doesn’t have any answers, but I keep asking anyway.