Chapter 11 #2
I saw it happen.
They heard it, clocked it. And just as quickly, the room changed. The energy tightened, no longer observational, but engaged in a different way. Less patient. More thirsty for fresh meet—a kettle circling overhead ready to swoop in a pick my bones clean.
Beside me, Alois moved. The subtle shift of his weight, the slight turn of his body toward mine, the space between us closing by a fraction that should not have mattered but did.
He did not interrupt me. He gave me the full length of the answer, the full opportunity to correct it myself.
Instead, he gave me just enough rope to hang myself.
Finally, his voice entered the space. “What she means is—” It cut through the room with precision.
I stilled beside him, every part of me aware of the shift without letting it show.
“The league determines discipline independently,” he continued, his tone even, stripped of anything unnecessary.
“Speculation doesn’t change that. We’ll respond when they do. Next question.”
The shift was immediate. Pens moved again. Shoulders adjusted. The brief moment of heightened attention smoothed back into something more controlled, though not as relaxed as before.
My pulse thundered against my temple, sharp and insistent, each beat a little harder than the last.
Another voice cut in before the space could settle, sharper than the ones before it. “Who exactly is Beatriz Ribeiro, why is she the one assigned you?”
I straightened slightly, anchoring myself in the posture I had built over years of proving I belonged in rooms that did not expect me to.
“I’m part of the Frosthawks’ communications team. I—”
I did not get to finish.
“Bea was hired at my request.” Alois’s voice cut cleanly across mine, low and even, carrying through the room without effort. It was not loud, but it did not need to be. The effect was immediate.
Every head turned.
Every pen stopped.
I turned toward him without meaning to. He was already looking forward. Not at me. Not at the reporters. Through them.
“She’s not just PR,” he continued, his tone stripped of anything unnecessary. “She’s the one person in this room I actually listen to.”
A ripple moved through the crowd, subtle but undeniable, the kind of reaction that came from something unexpected but not yet understood.
My skin prickled.
Here we go.
And then—“I’m in love with Beatriz Ribeiro.” The words fell from his lips without hesitation.
The room did not react immediately. For half a second, it held, suspended in the space between what had been said and what it meant.
Then it broke. Voices rose all at once, overlapping, sharper now, louder, questions colliding into each other as the focus of the entire room snapped into something entirely different.
“Since when—?”
“Does the team know about—?”
“Is this a conflict of interest—?”
Camera shutters fired in rapid succession, flashes going off in uneven bursts that turned the air white and disorienting. Chairs shifted. Someone stood. The energy surged, no longer controlled, no longer patient.
And through all of it—Alois moved, completely ignoring the chaos rippling all around us.
His hand came up without warning, fingers sliding firmly against the back of my head, strong fingers knotting into my hair.
There was no time to process it, no space to anticipate what he was doing before he was already pulling me toward him.
The world narrowed. Sound collapsed into something distant and distorted.
And then his mouth was on mine.
The heat of him was all-consuming, the solid weight of his presence calming and disorienting as his embrace held firm, guiding rather than forcing, leaving me just enough control to make it look like I was choosing this.
I knew this was part of the plan. I knew we were supposed to sell it. I had not known it would feel like this.
The faint scrape of his scruff against my skin sent a sharp, unexpected awareness through me, the kind that settled low and fast before I had time to brace against it.
His mouth moved with quiet certainty, not rushed, not tentative, but deliberate in a way that made it impossible to mistake this for hesitation or performance alone.
I should have stayed still. I should have let him lead it, let it read exactly the way it was meant to from the outside.
Instead, I leaned into it. The movement was subtle, instinctive, barely there, but it was mine.
For one brief, unguarded second I forgot where we were. About the room, the cameras, the noise waiting just beyond the edge of the moment. I forgot every rule I had set for us about keeping distance, about not letting any part of this feel real.
Because it did. Not entirely. But dangerously.
Enough that my chest tightened on a breath I did not control, enough that I felt the warmth of it spread across my cheeks before I could stop it.
I hated how easily my body responded, how quickly it slipped past logic and into something softer, something reactive, something I needed to contain.
But I did not pull away. I let it play, giving the cameras exactly what they were begging for, my hand lifting slightly against the table as if to steady myself while everything inside me shifted out of alignment.
Then he pulled back. Not abruptly, not reluctantly, but with the same calm he had brought into it, ending the embrace on his terms before it could tip into something else entirely.
He room rushed back into rapid focus. Voices rose over each other in a sharp, immediate surge, questions shouted instead of asked, chairs shifting, bodies moving, the rapid, relentless burst of camera flashes turning the air white in uneven pulses as the entire room erupted around us.
“Next question,” he deadpanned the wake, as if he had not just detonated the narrative in front of every vulture in the room. As if this was exactly how it had always been.
Adrenaline moved through me in a sharp, unfamiliar wave, faster than I could regulate. My breath came a fraction too quick, my chest rising and falling before I could smooth it out, the physical reaction impossible to ignore even as I tried to contain it.
Get a grip, Beatriz. It was a fake kiss.
I drew in a slow, cautious breath, forcing my shoulders back into alignment, forcing my expression into something composed, something professional, something that matched the version of myself I had walked into the room with.
I did not look at Char. I did not need to. I could feel her.
Her attention was fixed, steady and unbroken from where she stood at the side of the room, not intervening, not redirecting, not doing any of the things she should have been doing to regain structure.
She let the moment expand instead, let it take up space, let it grow into something larger than the incident we were supposed to be addressing.
The room fed off it immediately. Reporters leaned forward, voices sharper now, more animated, the tone shifting from measured inquiry to something closer to pursuit.
Cameras flashed faster, more aggressively, chasing angles, chasing reactions, chasing anything that would capture what had just unfolded.
And Char—she watched it happen.
Stealing a moment, I glanced over at my new, unhelpful boss. I could not read her expression, but I could feel her energy. I felt it in the absence of restraint. In the way she did not step forward. In the way she allowed the chaos to replace the narrative we had come here to control.
Something about her settled wrong. Not obvious. Not immediate. But enough to register as a shift I could not yet name. Because this felt different. Less like oversight. More like calculated design.
As I tried to shake off the unsettling feeling, my phone buzzed in my pocket. While Alois was wrapping up a question about how we met, my attention left his voice and snapped to my phone screen, happily welcoming the interruption from my best friend.
Micah: OMGEEEEE! Alois kissed you on TV! I’m watching the interview. YOU LOOK AMAZING! So proud of you!
I smiled despite myself. I straightened.
You’ve got this, Bea.
The room snapped back into focus as Alois was wrapping up, “…and I believe our time is up. We have a plane to catch.”
“Alois,” one young female reporter all the way in the back hollered, “any last thoughts for the game tonight in NY against the Otters?”
“All I can say is that the Frosthawks are ready for anything the Otters can throw at us.”
With that, Alois’s hand closed around mine, and he was pulling me out of my seat and off the stage as fast as my heels could keep up behind him. With stomping feet and huffing breaths, Alois led me straight into an office across the hall and locked the door.
After a few controlled breaths, while he pinched the bridge of his nose, Alois laid into me. “Stop answering things you don’t understand.”
“What?”
Alois took one large step, closing the distance enough that I had to tilt my head slightly to hold his gaze.
“You don’t guess in that room,” he growled. “Not about league discipline. Not about anything.”
My jaw tightened. “I wasn’t guessing.”
“You must have been.” The certainty in his voice hit harder than if he’d raised it.
“I answered based on standard protocol,” I shot back.
“It wasn’t accurate.”
Heat flared—sharp, immediate. Undeniable.
I took a small step forward before I could stop myself. Close enough to feel the heat of him. Close enough to see the exact shade of his eyes under the fluorescent light—cold blue, sharp, assessing.
“I had it handled,” I breathed, hating how thin my voice sounded.
“You didn’t.”
My chest rose on a sharper inhale. “And you think kissing me like that was saving me?”
“It worked, didn’t it?” he chuckled. “And you played your part very well.”
My cheeks flushed instantly, and I damned my body for any form of physical reaction. The satisfaction that danced in Alois’s gaze was not lost on me, forcing my blood to boil.
“You are a PR nightmare!” I yelled, getting up on my tiptoes in a futile attempt to meet his stare.
“You liked it, didn’t you?” The laugh that cracked out of his chest sent me into a rage.
“Don’t mistake any of this for chemistry. It’s strategy,” I hissed.
“If that’s strategy, why are you blushing?” His voice dropped into a gravelly huff as he wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me into his chiseled chest. “I thought we weren’t supposed to fall for any of the act.”
Pushing away from him was pointless. His grip held me in place, heat pressing into me as wrath and something far more dangerous tangled together. My breath caught—once, sharp and unsteady—betraying me in a way I could not afford.
I hated that my body leaned before my mind could stop it, that my hands instinctively pressed against his chest, not to shove him away, but to steady myself against the solid, unrelenting presence of him.
His gaze dropped to my mouth. That was all it took.
Something in the room shifted again, smaller this time, contained between us but no less volatile. The air felt tighter, heavier, like it was waiting to see which one of us would break first.
“Don’t,” I warned, though the word came out quieter than I intended.
“Don’t what?” he murmured, not loosening his grip.
“This—” I pressed harder against him, forcing space where there was none. “This is exactly what we are not supposed to do.”
Alois didn’t move. Didn’t budge. If anything, his hold tightened just enough to make the point.
“No,” he murmured, his breath warm against my ear, controlled and certain, “this is exactly why it works.”
Heat surged through me, unwanted and immediate. My temper snapped to meet it, sharp and reckless.
Shoving him back with everything I had, I finally broke free of his hold, stumbling half a step before catching myself.
“We have a plane to catch,” I bit, dragging every ounce of control back into place.
Alois’s mouth curved—not soft, not kind, but unmistakably amused.
“Good,” he said, his voice low, threaded with something that felt dangerously close to approval. “There’s the fire that I was hoping for.”
My glare sharpened. The words landed somewhere between a taunt and a compliment, and I hated that I couldn’t immediately decide which.
Something flickered in his expression—approval, maybe, or something more calculated—but it was gone as quickly as it appeared.
Then he shifted. The ease dropped from his posture, replaced by something more deliberate, more aware. His attention moved past me, toward the door, toward the noise building just beyond it.
“Stay close,” he ordered, already stepping forward, his tone no longer teasing.
The second the door opened, the noise hit us. Reporters had spilled into the hallway, voices rising again the moment they saw us, questions firing before we even had a chance to step fully into the open.
“Beatriz—how long has this been going on?”
“Is this appropriate within the organization?”
Flashes went off in rapid succession, bright and disorienting, forcing my eyes to narrow against the sudden burst of light.
Alois didn’t hesitate. His hand found mine again—firm, unyielding—and then shifted, pulling me closer, angling his body acting as a shield in front of mine as we moved forward.
His shoulder took the brunt of it, bodies pressing too close, voices too loud, cameras shoved into space that should not have been occupied.
I felt the force of it through him, the way he absorbed it without breaking stride, without slowing, without giving them anything more than what he chose to give.
My fingers tightened in his without thinking, my body instinctively staying close as we navigated the pandemonium, the air thick with allegations and speculation.
By the time we scrambled to the street, a black car was waiting, engine running. Alois guided me in first, his hand steady at my back, as I ducked into the seat. He followed immediately after, slamming the door closed as the driver pulled away from the curb.
I stared straight ahead, my pulse still racing, my breath not quite steady, my thoughts struggling to catch up to everything that had just happened.