Thirty #2
The handwriting is Delilah’s—big, loopy cursive, the B’s and A’s dramatic. Terms of Entry, it reads at the top, double-underlined.
Below that, a numbered list:
1. You do not speak to the press about Ivy without her express say-so. Not her past, not her bar, not her name. Ever.
2. The Penalty Box is not your content. She is not your redemption arc. If you make her either, I will end you, and I will be creative about it.
3. You show up when it’s hard, not just when there’s a camera.
My throat does something complicated.
I read it twice. I know exactly what this is. It’s every way Westfield used me, listed out and barred at the door by a woman who was watching the whole time, who clocked the danger before I let myself name it.
There’s a fourth line, smaller, at the bottom. An afterthought.
4. Wear the damn Penalty Box beanie in at least one post-game scrum. Helmet hair and all. No exemptions.
A laugh comes up before I can stop it—short and startled and real, breaking the pressure before it can swell into something I’m not ready for.
“She made you sign this.”
“Initialed every clause.” He nods at the bottom corner. There, in his handwriting: GC. And below it, in Delilah’s: witnessed he picks it up.
“My sister, Valentina,” he says, by way of explaining the look.
He’s already typing. Slowly, with both thumbs. He backspaces once. Reads it over. “I usually give her twelve words. Fine. Busy. Talk soon.” He keeps his eyes on the screen. “Something that ends it before it starts.”
“And now?”
He hits send. Sets the phone face-down on his thigh.
“Now I’m trying to do the thing where I don’t do that.” Gabriel’s mouth tilts. “Turns out I’ve been ending a lot of conversations before they start. With her. With Holt.” A beat. His eyes come up to mine. “With myself, mostly.”
It’s barely four sentences. He’s still looking at me when he finishes, skipping the recovery move—the tilt, the joke that rebuilds the wall. He just sits there and lets me see him.
“That’s a lot of new habits at once,” I say, my voice husky. “For a guy who scheduled his whole life around not feeling anything.”
“Yeah. Apparently I’m a fast learner when the stakes are right.”
He’s looking at me when he says it.
My pulse thrums in my throat, making it hard to swallow.
The bag by the door, the napkin, the penthouse he walked out of—I could hold all of that at arm’s length.
I can’t hold this. A man learning, in real time, to stop running from the people who matter, and choosing to do it where I can see.
Choosing to show me the unfinished version instead of the polished one.
The realization arrives the way the worst ones do: quietly, fully formed, impossible to put back.
Oh.
I’m in love with him.
I’ve been carrying that hate so long I built the rest of me around it. Take it out and I don’t know what’s holding the roof up. I’m still angry, still keeping the receipt—it just moved over and made room for this.
Not the man who walked into my bar three months ago. This one. The one rebuilding himself on my couch with a half-answered text to his sister and a napkin contract folded in his pocket.
I look back at the TV before my face can give it away. My heart slams against my ribs like it’s trying to get out and go to him.
“It’s getting late,” I manage. My voice comes out rougher than I mean it to. “Four-thirty’s going to hurt.”
Gabriel doesn’t look at the clock. He looks at me.
“It’ll never be too late for you, Hayes.”
That should sound like a line, but it doesn’t. He delivers it flat, certain, like a fact he’s already checked twice.
My fingers itch. I have a sudden, violent urge to reach out. To smooth the line between his brows.
I want to touch him so badly my palm aches with it.
Gabriel sees it.
He sees the moment my guard drops, just an inch.
He moves first.
One cushion closer. His knee bumps mine.
My pulse jumps, then settles somewhere lower.
His hand lifts, hovering for a beat in the space between us.
His fingers land on the front of my hoodie, right over my collarbone.
His knuckles graze skin at the edge of the collar.
A small brush of warmth that makes my breath hitch.
The room goes quiet around that point of contact.
His fingers slide a fraction, a slow drag along the seam, and I feel it everywhere—down my throat, across my ribs, clench in my core.
My hand moves to his chest, palm flattening over the hard beat beneath it, fast and stubborn.
Gabriel’s eyes drop to my hand, then back up to my face. He leans in, slow enough that I can bail. I don’t.
His mouth brushes mine first. I answer by sliding my hand up his chest and pulling him in.
The kiss lands slow. He takes his time like he’s learning the shape of me all over again—the way my mouth opens, the spot just below my ear that makes my breath trip.
His hands are enormous and rough from years of tape and sticks, holding my face like I’m something worth being gentle with.
He came here, I think, dimly. He packed a bag, and he came here.
Gabriel shifts in his seat, gently pressing me into the corner of the sofa. His forehead drops to mine for just a moment before he pulls back. His gaze moves over my face, then catches on the Calgary Blades logo across my chest. It stays there.
He presses one kiss to the cracked lettering. Right over my heart. Slow and deliberate, like punctuation.
My throat closes.
Then he slides off the couch. His knees hit the rug with a soft thud, and I go very still.
I’ve seen this man fill arenas. I’ve watched him own every room he walked into on sheer confidence alone—two hundred pounds of controlled arrogance and franchise polish.
And right now, he’s kneeling on my cheap rug in his travel-rumpled Crows hoodie, looking up at me like I’m the only play that matters. The contrast short-circuits me.
His hands slide down to my knees, gently but firmly pushing them apart, spreading me open for him.
His thumbs sweep lightly over my thighs. Careful.
“Don’t think,” he murmurs, his voice rough, eyes heavy with intent. “Just let me take care of you.”
The words settle low in my stomach, warm and dangerous.
He’s not performing, I realize. There’s no one to perform for. This is just him.
The thought hits, and everything I’ve been bracing against for months releases at once. My shoulders drop. My jaw unlocks. The hand I didn’t know I’d fisted into the cushion opens, finger by finger.
For the first time in longer than I can name, nothing in my body is braced for impact.
“Tell me no,” he breathes.
I look at the exhaustion in his eyes, the heavy, waiting stillness of his hands, and I make the choice.
“I’m not telling you no,” I whisper.