2. Jessica
JESSICA
I just told Jordan Scott I'm a virgin.
The words hang in the air between us like a grenade I forgot to throw. Like I pulled the pin, held it too long, and now it's sitting on the floor between my feet and his and neither of us knows what to do except stare at it and wait for the explosion.
Except the explosion already happened. I detonated my own dignity.
I said the word OUT LOUD to a man I just met, a man who showed up at my door wearing a disguise like some kind of celebrity spy thriller, a man who turns out to be my stepfather—technically—because my mother got married and didn't mention it.
If this were a movie, the audience would walk out. Too unrealistic. Nobody's life is this stupid.
My brain tries to rewind. Tries to find the moment I could've salvaged this.
Maybe when he asked who got me pregnant—maybe I could've said "nobody" without the virgin clarification.
Maybe I could've just kept my mouth shut and let him assume whatever he wanted to assume.
But no. I had to CLARIFY. Had to make sure Jordan Scott, billionaire hockey legend and walking billboard, knew for absolute certain that no man has ever touched me.
Cool. This is fine. Everything's on fire but sure.
I force myself to look at him.
He's still standing three feet away, and without the mask and cap, I get the full impact.
Black hair cropped so close to his scalp it's almost military.
Stubble that's a few days past clean-shaven, thick enough to rasp if you—nope, not going there.
Gray eyes that haven't left my face since I said the word.
Jaw that looks like it was carved with a chisel and a grudge.
Six-six. Maybe two-twenty. Shoulders that make my apartment look like a dollhouse.
He's wearing a hoodie that probably costs more than my rent, and the fabric stretches across his chest in a way that makes it very clear what's underneath.
Arms that could bench-press me without a spotter.
Hands—I notice his hands because they're clenched into fists at his sides—scarred knuckles, thick fingers, the kind of hands that have broken bones and held trophies and done things I can't imagine.
Hockey hands.
He looks like what he is: a man whose body is a professional instrument. A man who's spent years being faster and stronger than everyone else on the ice. A man who takes up space because space moves for him, not the other way around.
And he's standing in my apartment. Looking at me. After I just told him I'm a virgin.
My body, which has TERRIBLE timing, decides this is the moment to remind me that I'm attracted to him. Heat moves through me—low, insistent, the kind of awareness I don't have time for and can't afford. He's too much. Too big, too present, too expensive.
The contrast between him and my space is almost funny—his hoodie against my bare walls, his size against my cramped furniture, his EVERYTHING against the reality of my life right now.
I bury the heat under irritation. I'm in pain. My shirt is soaked through. My chest feels like it's going to split open. This is NOT the moment for my body to catalog the way his shoulders move when he breathes.
His expression hasn't changed. He's staring at me like I just rewrote the laws of physics and he's trying to figure out which ones broke. His jaw works. His hands unclench, then clench again. His breathing changed—I hear it, deeper and rougher than it was a minute ago.
I don't know what he's thinking. Can't read him. But I can see the impact. Whatever I just told him landed somewhere deep, and he's processing it the way you process a hit you didn't see coming.
Then the pain pulls me back.
The processing stops because my body won't wait.
The fullness in my chest is worse now—the stress of the last ten minutes, the adrenaline, the humiliation, all of it making the pressure sharper.
I wince. Can't hide it. My arms are pressed so hard against my chest my knuckles ache, and the pressure doesn't help.
It's like trying to hold back a flood with my hands.
The virgin admission fades behind the more immediate problem: I am in physical pain and it's getting worse.
He sees the wince. His expression shifts—something clicks into place behind his eyes and his posture changes. Less stunned, more focused.
"I can help."
I blink.
"What?"
"With the pain." His voice is rough. Still processing, but his brain's engaged again. "I can help before I take you to the hospital."
I stare at him. "How would you know what to do?"
"Teammates. Their wives got pregnant. They talked about it." He says it like he's describing a play on the ice. Matter-of-fact. No embarrassment. "Manual expression. The technique. How to ease the pressure."
Manual expression. The words sit between us and I feel my face heat again.
"You learned that from... locker room talk?"
"Locker rooms cover a lot of ground."
He's not joking. He's not uncomfortable. He's explaining a fact the same way he'd explain anything else—bodies are bodies, problems have solutions, and years in professional hockey means you've heard every possible conversation about what bodies do.
The lack of squeamish edges is almost more startling than the offer itself. He's standing in my apartment suggesting he put his hands on the most intimate part of my body, and he's talking about it like it's a medical procedure he knows how to perform.
Which—technically—it is.
But it doesn't feel technical.
It feels like a line I can't uncross.
"This is wrong." The words come out before I can stop them. "You're my stepdad."
He looks at me. Steady. Unhurried. Gray eyes holding mine without flinching.
"We're not related by blood. I'm just trying to help."
The statement lands with the weight of a fact I can't argue with. He's right. Technically, legally, genetically—he's right. Mom married him for a few months and then unmarried him, and I didn't even know it happened. We share nothing except a piece of paper I didn't sign.
But the wrongness sits in my chest anyway.
A stranger. A famous stranger. A man almost twice my age who showed up from out of nowhere, and now he's offering to touch me in a way nobody ever has.
The war starts.
Pride says no. I've been handling everything alone since I was sixteen. I put myself through college without a cent from anyone. I worked fifty-hour weeks and took night classes and graduated early because I didn't have time to waste. I don't ask for help. I don't take help. I figure it out.
Embarrassment says no. He just found out I'm a virgin. If he touches me now, that fact is going to sit between his hands and my skin like a third presence neither of us can ignore.
The fact that I've been alone for five months and it's gotten me here says no—broke, sick, crying in a wet shirt, leaking milk I can't afford to stop. If this is what independence looks like, maybe I'm doing it wrong.
And something deeper says no. Something that sounds like my mother's voice, the woman who raised me to stand on my own two feet and never depend on anyone for anything. Accepting help feels like betraying that. Like admitting I can't handle my own life.
But the pain says yes.
The pain says YES louder than anything else.
The pressure in my chest is building. The wet patches on my shirt are spreading. I can't stand up straight. I'm pressing my arms against my breasts and it's not helping—it's making it worse, the friction and the heat and the weight all combining into something sharp and unbearable.
And something else says yes too.
Something quieter. Deeper.
He's here.
He showed up because my mother asked, and he's standing in my apartment offering to help a woman he just met because she's in pain.
Not because he has to. Not out of obligation.
He doesn't owe me anything. He doesn't owe Erin anything—they were married for a few months, and it's been over for years.
He's choosing to help.
Nobody has ever chosen to take care of me.
Nobody has ever even offered.
The realization cracks something open that I didn't know was closed. I've been carrying my own weight for so long I forgot what it felt like to set it down. And the terrifying part—the part that makes my chest tighten in a way that has nothing to do with the milk—isn't that he's taking over.
It's that I WANT him to.
I close my eyes.
Nod.
Can't make myself say it out loud, so I give him the permission with the movement instead. A single dip of my chin that means yes and help and I'm out of options and please.
The barrier falls.
He steps closer.
His hands are warm.
That's the first thing I register. The heat of them through the soaked fabric of my tank top. He touches my shoulders first—steadying, grounding—and I flinch. Not because it hurts. Because nobody's ever touched me like this.
"I need to move your shirt."
His voice is low. Rough around the edges. I nod again because my throat won't work.
He slides the straps of my tank top down. Slowly. Carefully. Like he's defusing something. The fabric peels away from my swollen breasts and the air hits my skin and I gasp.
The exposure is immediate—physical and emotional all at once. I'm bare from the waist up in front of a man I just met, and the absurdity of it crashes into me so hard I almost laugh.
Except I can't laugh. Because his hands are on me now.
He cups my left breast, his massive palm cradling the heavy, aching weight of it like he’s testing something fragile and volatile. Those callused, scarred fingers drag across my fever-hot skin, and the rough friction sends a raw, electric jolt straight down between my legs.
My stomach clenches hard, a deep, shameful twist of heat that has nothing to do with relief and everything to do with how exposed I am.
He’s so fucking gentle. Gentler than a man built like a damn wall should ever be. But when he squeezes, applying just enough pressure to coax the milk out, a sharp bolt of pain-laced pleasure rips through me and I yelp, the sound raw and broken in my throat.