Chapter 11
Aurelia
The world looked different.
That was the first thing I noticed when I woke up. The morning light filtering through the sheer white curtains of my bedroom wasn't the harsh, interrogating glare I was used to. It was soft. Gold. It spilled across the duvet like melted butter.
I stretched, my limbs feeling heavy and loose, like I had been disassembled and put back together by someone who actually read the instructions. There was a dull, pleasant ache in my thighs—a muscular memory of the way I had straddled Atlas’s hips for hours.
I rolled over, reaching for the wall of heat that should have been there.
The bed was empty.
My heart gave a stupid, frantic lurch. He left. He panicked. He took the check and ran.
But then I smelled it. Coffee. Strong, dark roast. And bacon.
I sat up, pulling the sheet against my chest, a smile stretching my face that felt foreign. I wasn't a morning smiler. I was a morning "don't perceive me until I've had caffeine" person. But today, the air felt lighter. The dust motes dancing in the sunbeams looked like confetti.
I grabbed my silk robe—the black one with the lace trim—and padded barefoot out of the bedroom.
Atlas was in the kitchen.
He was wearing his suit pants from last night, but he was shirtless, the waistband riding low on his hips.
His torso was a masterpiece of morning light and violence—the purple bruise on his ribs was blooming aggressively, a dark galaxy against his skin, but he moved with a fluid grace that suggested the pain meds (or the endorphins) were still working.
He was flipping bacon with a focused intensity usually reserved for penalty kills.
"You're burning it," I murmured, leaning against the doorframe.
He didn't jump. He just turned his head, that dark, smoldering gaze locking onto me. A slow grin spread across his face—a real one, the kind that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made my knees weak.
"I like it crispy, Princess. You want limp bacon, go back to the dining hall."
"I don't eat bacon," I said, walking over to him. "Nitrates. Sodium. It's death on a plate."
"It's joy on a plate," he corrected. He put the spatula down and turned fully toward me. He opened his arms. "Come here."
I walked into him. I didn't hesitate. I wrapped my arms around his waist, careful of the bad side, and pressed my cheek against his bare chest. He smelled like soap, bacon grease, and him. It was the best smell in the world.
He rested his chin on the top of my head, his heavy arms caging me in.
"How are the ribs?" I mumbled into his skin.
"Manageable," he rumbled. "Worth it."
I pulled back to look at him. His face was shadowed. The morning stubble was darker, rougher. The scar on his brow was stark in the sunlight.
"You have the meeting," I said. The bubble burst slightly. "With my father. 8:00 AM."
Atlas glanced at the clock on the oven. 7:15.
"Yeah," he sighed, the lightness fading from his eyes. "The reckoning."
"He's going to offer you the world, Atlas. The contract. The connections."
"And the hush money," Atlas added. "Don't forget that."
He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. His fingers lingered on my neck, his thumb tracing my pulse.
"So," he said, his voice dropping. "What's the play? We go in there, I sign the papers, and then what? We shake hands? I pretend I didn't spend the last eight hours inside his daughter?"
"Yes," I whispered. "Exactly that."
"I'm a terrible liar, Aurelia."
"You're not," I said. "You're an athlete. You perform. Just... treat it like a game. He's the opponent. Don't let him see your weakness."
"You," he said simply. "You're the weakness."
My chest ached. "I'm the strategy. We keep this..." I gestured between us, to the domestic intimacy of the kitchen. "We keep this locked down. Underground. No one knows. Not Jax. Not Sloane. Not the press."
"For how long?"
"Until the season ends. Until the ink is dry on your NHL contract. Once you're signed, he can't touch you. You're an asset then. You have leverage."
Atlas looked at me. He looked conflicted. He hated hiding. I knew that. He was a man who lived his life in the open—on the ice, under the lights. Shadows made him itch.
"Okay," he said finally. "We go dark. Secret agent shit."
"Secret agent shit," I agreed.
He leaned down and kissed me. It wasn't a hungry kiss; it was a sealing of the pact. It tasted of coffee and promise.
"I have to go," he murmured against my lips. "I have to go put on a tie and sell my soul to the devil."
"Just make sure you get a good price," I teased weakly.
He pulled away, grabbing his shirt from the back of the chair. He winced as he pulled it on, hiding the bruise, hiding the tattoos, hiding the man I knew.
He was transforming back into The Anvil.
At the door, he stopped.
"Aurelia?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm keeping the spare key," he said, holding up the silver key to my apartment. "In case I need... ice."
I smiled. "Just ice?"
He winked. "Maybe some physical therapy."
The door clicked shut behind him.
I stood in the silence of my expensive, white apartment. The bacon was burning in the pan.
I turned off the stove. I walked to the window and watched him walk out of the building, head down, shoulders set against the wind.
I felt a strange, terrifying sensation in my chest. It felt like a balloon expanding, pressing against my ribs.
I was happy.
And I was absolutely terrified that the needle was already coming to pop it.
Campus felt different.
Usually, when I walked from my apartment to the Fine Arts building, I kept my head down. I wore oversized sunglasses. I put my AirPods in and blasted classical music to drown out the whispers. There goes the Princess. There goes the mess.
Today, I forgot my sunglasses.
I walked across the quad, the snow crunching under my boots, and I felt... electric. The gray stone buildings looked majestic, not oppressive. The biting wind felt bracing, not cruel.
I caught my reflection in the glass door of the student union. My cheeks were flushed pink. My eyes were bright. I wasn't scowling.
I looked like a girl with a secret.
"Who are you and what have you done with the Ice Queen?"
I turned. Sloane was standing there, holding a massive portfolio case and a cup of coffee that looked like sludge. She was eyeing me with deep suspicion.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said, adjusting my scarf.
"You're smiling," Sloane accused. "On a Wednesday. Before noon. It's unnatural. Did you get a lobotomy? Or did you finally switch vodka for green juice?"
"I had a good sleep," I lied smoothly. "Restorative."
"Uh-huh." Sloane fell into step beside me. "And how is the 'Project'? Did the Anvil survive the game? I heard he took a hit that would have killed a lesser mammal."
"He's fine," I said, keeping my voice neutral. "He's durable."
"Durable," Sloane repeated. "That's a weird word for a guy who looks like a Norse god carved out of granite. Speaking of... he's looking at you."
I froze. "What?"
"Twelve o'clock. By the fountain."
I looked up.
Atlas was there. He was standing with a group of guys—Jax, Miller, and a few freshmen recruits. They were laughing, tossing a puck back and forth. Atlas was leaning against the stone rim of the fountain, looking effortless in his team parka.
But he wasn't looking at the puck. He wasn't looking at his teammates.
He was looking straight at me.
The distance across the quad was maybe fifty yards, but the connection was instantaneous. It snapped into place like a physical tether.
He didn't wave. He didn't smile. He just stared. His eyes tracked me, heavy and possessive. He took a sip of his coffee, his gaze dropping to my lips, then back up to my eyes.
A shiver went down my spine that had nothing to do with the temperature.
I saw his hand flex on the coffee cup. I knew what those hands felt like. I knew the texture of his callouses against my inner thigh. I knew exactly how he sounded when he groaned my name.
My face heated up.
"Oh my god," Sloane whispered. "You are blushing. You are actually blushing. Aurelia St. James does not blush."
"It's the wind," I snapped, looking away.
"It is not the wind," Sloane hissed, grabbing my arm. "You slept with him."
"Sloane!"
"You did! I knew it! The cabin! The 'studying'! You totally hooked up!"
"Keep your voice down!" I looked around frantically. A group of sorority girls was passing by. "We did not hook up. We are strictly professional."
"Professional my ass. He's looking at you like he wants to eat you for breakfast. And you're looking at him like you're the buffet."
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I pulled it out.
Atlas: Stop looking at me like that, or I'm going to drag you into the nearest janitor's closet and finish what we started this morning.
I bit my lip to suppress a smile.
Me: Like what?
Atlas: Like you own me.
Me: Maybe I do.
Atlas: Careful, Princess. Hubris kills.
I looked up again. Atlas smirked—just a tiny tilt of his lips—and turned back to Jax, pretending to listen to whatever story he was telling.
"You're texting him!" Sloane accused. "Let me see."
I shoved the phone back into my pocket. "No. We have class. Walk."
I marched toward the building, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
It was dangerous. It was reckless. It was stupid.
And I had never felt more alive.
The sneaking around became a game. A high-stakes, adrenaline-fueled game that was more addictive than any substance I had ever tried.
Over the next week, we became masters of the "brush pass."
We met in the library stacks on the fourth floor—the section housing dusty encyclopedias from the 1980s that no one ever touched.
I would be pretending to look for a book on dance history. He would appear behind me, silent as a shadow.
"Found anything interesting?" he'd whisper, his breath hot against the shell of my ear.
"Just dust," I'd breathlessly reply, not turning around.