18. First Kiss for the Cameras
Chapter eighteen
First Kiss for the Cameras
Sienna POV
Delia calls it organic content.
I call it what it is: a controlled burn with a camera crew and a craft services table.
"Something natural," she says, like she's ordering a salad. "Playful. Couple-soft. It needs to read like we caught you, not like we staged you."
We're two days into the road trip and I've already learned that life on the road with the Tridents operates on its own logic.
Buses at six a.m. Sponsor obligations slotted between practice and game time like they're just another drill.
And Delia, who apparently travels with the team now, appearing at doors without knocking and treating hotel suites like her personal production office.
This one is nicer than the last. Floor-to-ceiling windows, a sitting area big enough to run plays in, and two bedrooms I've already confirmed exist because I checked the moment we arrived. Delia hasn't seemed to notice or care about the bedroom situation. She's too busy directing the lighting.
I smile at her. The bar-smile. The one that never reaches anything.
"Sure," I say. "Natural. Got it."
Atticus is leaning against the kitchen counter in a grey henley with his arms crossed, watching Delia the way he watches opposing players.
Like he's already clocked every exit and decided none of them are worth taking yet.
There's something still about him that most people probably read as boredom.
I know the difference by now. It's the opposite.
He's running the whole room through a filter and keeping the results to himself.
He catches my eye. Looks at Delia. Looks back at me.
One eyebrow. Half a millimeter.
You good?
I tip my chin. Fine.
It's the most honest conversation we've had all morning.
The camera guy is Jordan, twenty-something, clearly thrilled to be here. He sets up near the window. Good light. City behind us. The whole curated fantasy of two people who chose this.
Delia gives us the brief: casual conversation, something that shows chemistry, end on a moment. She says moment the way a director says action. Like it's a thing you can manufacture and schedule.
Maybe you can.
I'm starting to think I don't know anymore.
"Don't perform it," Delia says on her way to the hallway. "I'll know if you perform it."
The door clicks shut.
Just me and Atticus and Jordan and his camera and the particular silence of a room where everyone is pretending this is casual.
Atticus pushes off the counter. He crosses to the couch and drops into it with the easy, careless economy of a man who takes up space without apologizing for it. He looks at me.
"You're going to be annoying about this," he says.
"I'm always annoying. That's my whole thing."
"I meant specifically about this."
"Atticus." I drop onto the opposite end of the couch and pull one knee up. "I was born ready to be annoying about this. You're going to want to manage your expectations."
Something flickers in his face. Not a smile. Adjacent to one.
Jordan raises the camera.
It starts easy. Easier than it should.
He asks me something about the bar, whether I'd ever let a hockey player work a shift, strictly hypothetical, and I tell him the last hockey player I let behind the bar knocked over a full speed rack and blamed it on the ice.
"There wasn't any ice."
"He said he had a condition."
Atticus's mouth curves. "What condition?"
"Being a hockey player."
He makes a sound. Almost reluctant. It takes me a beat to clock it as a laugh, a real one, not the dry exhale he uses in public, and something warm turns over in my chest that I absolutely do not examine.
Jordan shifts his angle.
I keep going. "I've seen your kind. You walk through the world like the floor should be grateful."
"That's specific."
"You once told a bartender the pour was wrong on his own signature drink."
"It was wrong."
"It was his drink."
"It was still wrong."
I laugh. Actually laugh, the kind that comes before I can decide if I want to, and Atticus watches me do it with an expression I can't read from this distance.
It's not the usual guarded, calculated look.
It's something quieter. More open. Like he's keeping inventory of something he doesn't plan to spend.
It does what it always does lately.
It makes me want to close the distance.
The kiss is Delia's idea, obviously.
Jordan signals it. A small nod toward us, a redirect of the lens. The moment she ordered.
"We should probably—" I start.
"Yeah." Atticus is already turning toward me.
It's supposed to be clean. A period at the end of the sentence. Photogenic and quick and done.
I lean in. He meets me halfway.
His mouth is warm.
That's the first thing I register. Not the cameras, not the city light, not the sound of Jordan shifting behind us. Just warmth. The warmth of a man who doesn't do anything without meaning it.
I wasn't ready for that.
I thought I was. I'd told myself it was just a kiss, just a beat, just a checkbox on Delia's content calendar. I'd kissed people for worse reasons. I'd survived worse things than this.
But his mouth is warm and he's completely still against me, like he's giving me the space to decide what this is before he does, and something in my chest cracks open at the patience of it.
At the fact that even now, even here with a camera rolling and an audience and every reason to perform it, he's not performing.
He's just there.
Steady and warm and waiting.
That's what's been building. Not the tension, not the banter, not the electricity in every room we've shared for weeks. This. The terrifying possibility that Atticus Knox is exactly who I've been watching him quietly become.
One beat.
Then his hand comes up.
Not my shoulder, not my arm. His hand comes up to cradle my face, slow and certain, his palm warm against my cheek and his thumb settling just below my cheekbone like he's thought about exactly where it would land.
The kiss tips.
Slower. Deeper. His fingers press into my cheek, gentle and certain all at once, and I stop thinking about cameras entirely. I stop thinking about Delia or Jordan or the city light through the window or any of the fifteen thousand reasons this is a bad idea.
I grip the front of his shirt.
I don't decide to. My hand just closes in the fabric and holds.
He makes a sound against my mouth. Restrained, pulled from somewhere behind his chest. I feel it in my throat, in the soft place where my pulse lives, in the base of my spine.
My fingers tighten in his shirt.
The kiss is not quick. The kiss is not photogenic-and-done.
The kiss is the most honest thing I've let happen in months and I'm dimly aware that's going to be a problem.
Jordan clears his throat.
We break apart.
I am breathing like I ran for it. My hand is still twisted in the front of his henley and his forehead almost touches mine and the room is very quiet except for the blood in my ears.
I let go of his shirt.
Try to smooth the wrinkles. Don't look at him.
Look at him.
His eyes are dark and his expression is the one I've only seen in unguarded moments, in parking lots and hotel hallways and the back of quiet elevators.
Like the careful, controlled version of him stepped out for a second and left something rawer behind.
His thumb traces one slow path across my cheekbone, down to the corner of my mouth, before his hand finally drops.
"Good," Jordan says from behind the camera. "Really good. Very natural."
I almost laugh. I don't.
Jordan starts breaking down his gear. Says he's going to grab the second card from the case in the hall. The door swings shut behind him.
Atticus's hand finds my wrist.
Not restraining. Just there. And then not just there. Pulling me back, gently, once, until I'm close enough that the warmth of him is all I can register.
"Atticus—"
"I know." He says it against my temple. His mouth traces the edge of my jaw and I stop finishing the sentence because the sentence was going to be something responsible and I can't remember what responsible feels like right now.
My hands go to his chest. I don't push him back.
His mouth finds my throat and I tip my head and my fingers curl into the fabric of his henley again, like they've been waiting to. He makes a sound that is quiet and certain and entirely not for the cameras, and I feel it move through me all the way down.
The key card hits the lock.
We separate.
I'm at the window. He's at the counter. I don't remember moving.
Delia walks in and looks between us with the expression of a woman who has seen this before and is currently deciding how useful it is to her.
"Five more minutes," she says. "Then the suite's yours."
She goes to collect Jordan.
Atticus doesn't look at Delia. He looks at me. When the door clicks shut again his voice comes out rough at the edges.
"We need to change the rules."
My pulse spikes.
I open my mouth and nothing comes out, which has never happened to me in my life. Atticus Knox watches me not answer with an expression that looks terrifyingly close to hope.
The problem, the real problem, is that I know exactly which rules he means.
And I'm not sure I want to argue.