Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Three days.
Three days since Portland, since those quiet hours in her hotel room where she'd destroyed him at cards with gleeful efficiency.
Since she'd worn those ridiculous penguin socks and made him laugh harder than he had in months.
Since she'd insisted he get proper rest before the game, protective in a way that had nothing to do with their fake relationship and everything to do with actually caring.
That was the problem. It had been so easy. So natural. So comfortable in a way that made every interaction since feel forced and wrong.
Liam pushed through another sprint drill, his legs burning with familiar intensity, but his mind was elsewhere. Three days of careful distance. Three days of professional boundaries. Three days of an increasingly disconcerting wrongness beneath his skin he just couldn't shake.
From the ice, he could see Libby in her usual spot in the press section, laptop open, fingers flying across the keyboard.
She was wearing that navy sweater that made her skin glow, the one she'd worn to their first official "date" for the cameras.
Her hair was pulled back in a messy bun, a few strands escaping to frame her face.
She absently tucked one behind her ear, and Liam missed a pass entirely.
"Earth to D'Arcy," Tommy Santangelo called out, smirking as he retrieved the puck. "That's the third pass you've blown this morning."
"Focus on your own game, Santangelo," Liam shot back, but there was no heat in it.
How could he focus when she was right there, close enough to see but too far to touch?
He'd created this distance deliberately, methodically, the same way he approached everything in his life.
It was the right thing to do—protecting her professional integrity, ensuring no one could question her access or her articles.
He had half a mind to write Kate a thank you note for bringing him back to his senses in Portland.
The power dynamic was impossible. He was team captain. Her access to the team depended on his cooperation. The fake relationship had been his idea, something she couldn't really refuse without damaging her career before it truly began. He'd essentially trapped her in this performance, and now...
Now he couldn't stop cataloguing every detail about her.
The way her eyes crinkled into little crescent moons when she smiled—not the polite professional smile, but the real one she'd given him over cards.
The little curls that escaped at the base of her neck when she wore her hair up, catching the arena lights like a coil of spun silk.
The way her teeth worried her bottom lip when she concentrated on her notes, and how it took everything in him not to reach across the distance and soothe that lip with his thumb. With his mouth.
Christ. He gripped his stick harder, forcing himself through another drill.
"D'Arcy! You planning to actually hit the net today or just the glass?" Coach's voice boomed across the ice.
Liam refocused, forcing himself through the shooting drill. But every shot felt mechanical, his usual precision compromised by the constant awareness of her presence.
He noticed when she shifted positions to get a better view of a drill.
Noticed when she paused her typing to watch a particular play develop.
Noticed the way she absently rolled her shoulders after hunching over her laptop too long.
Noticed, most of all, the weight of her eyes on him when she thought he wasn't looking.
"Whatever's got you twisted up, save it for tonight," Tommy said, skating alongside him. "Portland's not going to roll over just because we're up in the series."
At 11:30 exactly, he watched her pack up her laptop. She moved with the same efficient grace she brought to everything—no wasted motion, no hesitation. Professional. Controlled. Everything he was pretending to be while falling apart inside.
Their eyes met across the distance as she stood to leave. Just for a moment. Just long enough for him to see a flash of emotion across her face before she turned and disappeared into the tunnel.
Liam hit the next drill with enough force to send Barnett sprawling.
"Jesus, Cap," Barnett groaned from the ice. "I'm a friendly, I swear."
Every professional interaction was agony.
Yesterday, she'd asked him about the team's defensive adjustments, and he'd had to grip his stick so hard his knuckles went white just to keep from reaching for her.
This morning, she'd arrived at the same time he had, and they'd done an elaborate dance of avoiding each other at the entrance, him holding the door but staying carefully distant, her murmuring thanks without meeting his eyes.
He was the one enforcing this distance. He knew that. It didn't make maintaining it any easier.
He'd turned Portland into something that couldn't exist in Boston.
One night of letting his guard down, and now they were both paying for it with this careful choreography of avoidance.
She'd picked up on his withdrawal immediately and responded with walls of her own.
Professional. Controlled. Exactly what he'd wanted.
Exactly what was killing him.
"D'Arcy!" Coach called across the ice. "Forwards meeting in five. Wrap it up."
Right. Game 5. The reason he needed to focus, needed to compartmentalize, needed to stop fixating on someone who'd clearly gotten his message and responded exactly as he'd intended.
He was so completely fucked.
The café was crowded with the pre-game lunch rush, but Wickham had secured a corner booth that offered privacy. He stood when she arrived, pulling out her chair with an exaggerated flourish and a wicked smile that undoubtedly worked wonders on the puck bunny crowd.
"You look like you could use this," he said, sliding a coffee across the table—oat milk latte, extra shot, exactly how she'd ordered it when they'd grabbed coffee after the towel cart incident.
The fact that he'd memorized her order from one meeting should have been flattering.
Instead, it felt like performance, like he'd filed it away as useful information rather than genuine interest.
"Thanks," she managed, wrapping her hands around the warm cup.
"Rough morning?" Wickham asked, stirring his coffee with slow, deliberate movements.
"Pre-game day chaos," Libby replied. "Still getting used to the playoff intensity." She took another sip of coffee. "You seemed off at the gala the other night. I wanted to check in—are you doing okay?"
He waved off her concern with practiced ease, but she caught the tightness around his eyes. "Just some contract stuff. Nothing exciting. The Mariners are being... difficult about next season."
"I'm sorry. That must be stressful."
"It is what it is." He leaned forward slightly, his voice dropping. "Speaking of stress—how's our captain doing? Physically, I mean. That hit he took in Game 4 was brutal. Heard from some media friends he was moving stiff at practice yesterday."
Libby raised an eyebrow. "Our captain, huh?"
Wickham gave her that charming smile. "You can't blame me for trying. If we lose this one, we're out."
"And you'll be out too?"
His smile turned into a grimace. "Unless I have the game of my life, probably."
"All I can tell you is what's publicly available," Libby said evenly. "He's starting tonight with no known issues." She took a sip of her latte, then added with deliberate casualness, "As far as I know, that's true."
"As far as you know?" Wickham's eyebrow raised, and there was something knowing in his expression. "Don't tell me there's trouble in paradise..."
The words hit closer than he could know.
"Having our relationship go viral during the playoffs wasn't exactly ideal timing," she said carefully.
"I was surprised when I heard," Wickham said, sitting back to study her. "Liam doesn't seem like your type."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Just that you seem... I don't know, too alive for someone like Liam. He's all control and calculation. You're all fire and instinct."
Don't ask him. Don't engage. This is about hockey, not personal history.
"You grew up with him, didn't you?" The question slipped out before she could stop it.
"Same prep school, same summer hockey camps, same circles." His smile turned rueful. "Though the D'Arcys were always in a different stratosphere. Old Boston money, you know? The kind of family where rebellion means choosing Yale over Harvard."
Libby thought of her own state school education, the scholarships and part-time jobs that got her through. "Must have been quite an experience."
"It was. Is." Wickham's fingers drummed against the table.
"You must know Kate Davenport's daughter." The question escaped before Libby could stop it.
Wickham's eyebrows raised slightly. "Anne? Of course. Why do you ask?"
"Her name has been brought up a few times."
"That's not surprising." He leaned forward slightly. "Anne and Liam... they have quite the history. The D'Arcys and Davenports have been thick as thieves for decades. Same circles, same expectations."
Each word felt like a small cut. "They dated?"
"If you can call it that. It was more like..." he paused, searching for words. "Imagine two dynasties planning a merger. They were together through prep school, into college. Everyone assumed they'd end up married, producing athletic genius babies with perfect genetics and trust funds."
"But they broke up."
"Did they?" Wickham's smile was sad. "I mean, they're not together right now. Anne's been in Paris for the art scene, Liam has been focused on hockey. But that's not really how their world works. It's more like... a pause. These families, they think in generations, not moments."