Chapter 9 #2
His eyes shifted back to mine. For one second, I got the unsettling impression that he’d clocked everything—my tone, my nerves, the phone in my hand, the fact that I looked about twelve seconds from a stress-induced blackout.
He gave one short nod and stepped inside only after I moved out of the way.
The apartment changed the second he crossed the threshold.
It was ridiculous, really. Same furniture.
Same lamplight. Same cramped little living room I had spent months making feel like mine.
But now he was here, and the air felt different.
Smaller. Thicker. My apartment usually smelled faintly like laundry detergent, paperbacks, and whatever tea I’d forgotten to finish.
Now there was cold night air in it. Wool.
Cedar. Something sharper and male that didn’t belong to me.
He set the duffle bag down beside the wall with a quiet thud and adjusted the books in his grip.
Micah cleared her throat through my phone speaker.
I closed my eyes for one mortifying second. Right. Still on FaceTime.
“This is Micah,” I said, turning the screen toward him before I could overthink how strange that was. “My best friend.”
Micah lifted her hand in a small, cautious wave. “Hi.”
Alois looked at the screen, then at her, expression unreadable. “Hello.”
His voice was lower in person than it had sounded in interviews. Rougher, too. Less polished. It landed in the room and stayed there.
Micah’s brows rose just slightly. “I’m going to let you go,” she said, but her tone said very clearly that she would have preferred to do the opposite. Her eyes locked on mine through the screen. “Call me later.”
“I will.”
The screen went dark. The silence that dropped into its place felt immediate and total. No buffer. No witness. No one to absorb the awkwardness except the two of us standing several feet apart in my very small apartment, pretending this was in any way normal.
Bento chose that moment to reappear, only his front half visible, his golden eyes fixed on Alois with flat, suspicious intensity.
Alois noticed him. Of course he noticed him. His gaze dipped once, briefly, then lifted again.
“He doesn’t like me,” he observed.
The fact that those were the first words spoken after Micah hung up threw me badly enough that I answered before thinking.
“He doesn’t like anyone who disrupts his routine.”
One corner of his mouth moved. Not a smile. More like he acknowledged the hit. “Reasonable.”
I should have said something smooth after that. Something competent. Something that sounded like a woman in control of the very complicated professional arrangement she had been handed only hours ago.
Instead, I started talking too fast. “I know tonight is not ideal. Or normal. Obviously. And I know you were already briefed, but I thought it might make sense if we went over some of the logistics now, since tomorrow is going to be—”
“I was in the room too,” he cut in. His expression didn’t change, but something about his posture did.
Stillness, maybe. The kind that looked relaxed until you realized it was actually control.
One hand rested loosely against the books he still hadn’t put down.
The other hung at his side, knuckles broad and scarred and scraped in ways that made it hard not to think of the footage Micah had mentioned.
Heat flared again under my skin. “Right. Yes. I know that.”
He waited.
I resisted the urge to fill the silence just to make it stop. Barely. Finally, I gestured toward the coffee table. “You can put those down.”
In slow motions, his arms flexed and the books glided onto the table. The way he handled to the worn paperbacks was almost tender.
I crossed my arms, then immediately uncrossed them because it looked defensive. “We should at least be clear on what tomorrow looks like.”
His gaze settled on me fully then. Pale, direct, unsettling without being aggressive. “Media in the morning,” he recounted. “Before we head to New York.”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“And this”—he glanced once around the apartment—“is happening.”
For a second, neither of us spoke. Then I forced myself into motion, stepping around the coffee table to put more distance between us.
“The public part of this needs to be consistent,” I stammered. “That’s the only way it works.”
Alois leaned one shoulder lightly against the wall near the door. “I gathered.”
“We’ll need to be seen together when it makes sense. Team events. Travel. If media is around, there can’t be any hesitation or contradiction.”
“There won’t be.” His gaze stayed on me, steady enough that I could feel it even when I looked away. “You expected an argument.”
The annoying thing was, he wasn’t wrong.
“I expected pushback,” I relented
“I already did the pushback,” he replied. “In the meeting.”
That was so dry I looked up before I could stop myself. Still nothing resembling a smile. Not really. But there was something there. A hard-edged awareness. As if he knew exactly how absurd this was too and saw no point pretending otherwise.
I dragged in a breath and let it out slow, trying to organize something that refused to be organized. “This doesn’t have to be complicated,” I sighed, more to myself than to him.
He didn’t move. Just watched.
I shook my head once. “Actually, no—that’s a lie. It’s a complete mess. But we’re not going to act like it is.”
One of his brows lifted slightly.
“Three things,” I continued, holding up my fingers before I could overthink it.
His gaze dropped to my hand, then back to my face. Waiting.
“Don’t fight in public,” I began. “I don’t care if you hate me by tomorrow morning—we don’t show it.”
“Agreed.”
There was no hesitation in it. No attitude. Just fact. That threw me off kilter.
I nodded quickly, pushing through. “Second—don’t break the script. I don’t care how stupid it sounds or how much you don’t like something.”
His jaw shifted slightly. Not a refusal. Not agreement either. But he didn’t interrupt.
Good enough.
“And third—” I hesitated, just for a second, because this one felt different. Less professional. More…something else. I forced it out anyway. “Don’t start believing it.”
Silence. Awkward and empty.
His expression didn’t change, but something behind his eyes did. Something quieter. Sharper. “Believing what?” he asked.
I let out a small, sullen breath. “That any of this is real.”
Another moment stretched between us. Long enough that I was suddenly very aware of how close we were standing.
Of the way the room felt smaller than it had just minutes before.
Of the fact that I had absolutely no idea how this man thought, reacted, existed outside of headlines and a two-hour meeting.
He watched me like he was trying to decide if I meant it.
Finally—“That won’t be a problem,” he snickered.
Something in my chest tightened.
“Good,” I threw back.
Neither of us moved.
I cleared my throat, forcing myself back onto steadier ground. “And if something goes sideways—media, public, whatever—and I say we leave…”
His gaze sharpened again.
“…we leave,” I finished.
“And if I don’t want to?” he asked, eyes narrowing.
I held his gaze a second longer than I probably should have. “Then you can not want to somewhere else.”
Something shifted at the corner of his mouth, lingering just long enough to make my pulse trip.
“Fine,” he growled.
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It pressed in. Heavy. Aware. Like the room had clocked something we hadn’t said out loud.
And then reality caught up. My eyes flicked, traitorous, to the bedroom. Then to the couch.
Alois followed the movement without turning his head fully, like he didn’t need to. Like he already knew what I was seeing.
One bed. One very small couch.
“I can take the couch,” I stuttered quickly, before my brain could spiral into anything worse.
His gaze slid back to mine. “No.”
I blinked. “It’s my couch.”
“You live here,” he reminded, like that was the entire argument.
“Which is why I’m offering—”
“No,” he repeated, quieter this time, but somehow more final.
“You want to sleep on my couch?”
“Not in the slightest,” he spit out a little too quickly.
My eyes narrowed. “You don’t get to insult my furniture and refuse it.”
“I’m not insulting it,” he groaned, glancing at the couch. “We’re adults,” he continued, like he was stating something obvious. “We can both sleep in your bed.”
I stared at him. “That is not a solution.”
“It is,” he declared calmly.
Something in the way he said it—matter-of-fact, not dismissive—caught me off guard.
“You don’t know what I can sleep on,” I shot back.
His eyes moved over me once, slow enough that I felt it. Not inappropriate. Not crude. Just…aware.
“You’re already exhausted,” he offered. “You won’t sleep on that.”
The words landed softer than they should have. Which was annoying. And worse—true.
I crossed my arms, holding onto the irritation anyway. “And your solution is what, exactly?”
“I’ll stay on my side,” he added, like that fixed anything.
I opened my mouth, then closed it again, because frustratingly, there wasn’t a clean argument left.
He watched me process it, completely unbothered, and that almost made me push harder out of principle alone.
I pressed my fingers briefly to my temple. “This is insane.”
“Yes.” No argument. No attempt to soften it. Just agreement.
And somehow, that made it harder to fight.
By the time we got ready for bed, the conversation had died completely.
He took his shower first. I stood in the kitchen while the water ran, pretending to straighten things that did not need straightening.
The hiss of the shower reached me in waves through the then wall, along with the occasional muted shift of movement.
I hated that I was aware of every second of it.
Hated even more that my own body felt hyper-alert in response, as though the apartment itself had become one exposed nerve.
When he emerged, the sight of him in dark sleep pants and a plain black T-shirt irritated me on principle.
He looked too comfortable for a man who had just invaded my life and my apartment in a single evening.
Barefoot, damp-haired, broad enough to make my small bedroom look even smaller.
He gave me one nod and moved toward the books he’d stacked earlier, selecting one as if this were any other night.
I grabbed my own things and shut myself in the bathroom harder than necessary.
By the time I came out, hair damp, oversized sleep shirt brushing my thighs, the bedside lamp was on and he was already in bed, propped slightly against the headboard with one of his books open in his hands. Reading glasses rested low on his nose.
I stopped short.
He looked up.
And for one disorienting second, the image did not match the narrative my nervous system had spent all day constructing.
There was something almost scholarly about him like that.
More human. A man with a book and tired eyes and glasses sliding down his nose, not just the player from every looped clip and headline.
Then his gaze shifted to my face, and the room snapped back into uncomfortable focus.
“I can leave the light on,” he said. “If you need it.”
The fact that he asked with that same flat, controlled tone made the courtesy feel strange somehow.
“No,” I said. “It’s fine.”
I crossed to the bed and climbed in carefully, keeping as much distance between us as the mattress allowed.
The sheets were cool against my legs. The scent of my detergent rose around me—lavender, clean cotton, familiar—and beneath it now was him.
Soap. Skin. It made the space feel stolen in a way I could not explain.
Alois closed the book, set it on the nightstand, and switched off the lamp.
Darkness settled instantly. Every sound sharpened.
The rustle of sheets as he shifted once onto his back. The faint creak of the mattress adjusting to his weight. The quiet rhythm of his breathing filling in the silence where mine turned shallow and annoyed. Somewhere under the bed, Bento made a small, indignant sound.
I stared into the dark, eyes open, body rigid.
Beside me, Alois exhaled slowly. Then, after several agonizing minutes, he fell asleep. His breathing deepened. His body settled heavier into the mattress. The tension that had held him so carefully together all evening loosened into something unconscious and unreachable.
I watched shadow shapes shift faintly across the ceiling from the streetlight outside and counted the seconds between passing cars. I turned onto one side. Then the other. Then onto my back again. My skin felt too warm. My thoughts too loud.
And then it started.
Not thunderous. Not cartoonish. Just a low, steady snore that sawed gently through the dark and landed on my last functioning nerve.
I closed my eyes. “You have got to be kidding me,” I whispered into the dark.
I lay there slowly accepting the truth with bitter clarity: I was not going to sleep beside a professional hockey player who snored like a distant engine.
Slowly, I slid out of bed, gathered my pillow, and pulled the throw blanket from the chair by the dresser. Bento lifted his head from the floor as I passed, watching me with the smug, resigned air of someone who had anticipated this outcome from the beginning.
I made my way back to the couch in near-darkness, lit only by the weak silver spill of streetlight through the blinds.
The fabric was cool when I lowered myself onto it.
Narrow. Slightly too firm. My apartment settling around me again, piece by piece, as if it recognized me out here more than it had in there.
Bento hopped up a second later and circled twice before settling against the bend of my knees with a soft, satisfied huff. I let my hand fall into his soft fur, fingers circling.
No matter how much I tried to force the sinking feeling to go, there was no denying that I was in way over my head.
Before I could overthink it, I grabbed my phone and rattled off a message to Lo.
I have no idea what Ezra has gotten me into, but I think it’s going to end horribly.
The message whooshed away into the dark.
From the bedroom, the faint, maddening rhythm of his snoring carried out through the partially open doorway.
Tomorrow, I would stand beside him in front of cameras and microphones and pretend I knew exactly what I was doing.
Tonight, all I knew was this felt like the beginning of something I did not understand well enough to survive cleanly.
And somehow, despite everything in me screaming that this was a disaster, sleep still came slowly, reluctantly, with my cat curled against me and a stranger in my bed.