Chapter 21
Logan
Jasmine is gone.
I turn around from the bar and scan the booth where she was sitting. Harper is there with Cole, and Natalie is walking back from the bar with Ethan. Avery is at Liam's table. Jasmine's seat is empty, and her coat is missing.
I check my phone. No text. I type one out.
Where did you go? I turned around and you were gone.
Blake is beside me, nursing his beer. “Everything okay?”
“Jasmine left,” I say. Why would she leave without telling me?
“I know. I saw her walk out about five minutes ago.”
“Why didn't you say something?” I say, in an irritated tone.
“I figured you'd notice.”
My phone buzzes.
Jasmine: Tired. Went back to the hotel. Good game tonight.
What? Why the fuck is she texting me as if we’re acquaintances? No “I'll wait up for you” or “come find me later.”
Me: You okay?
Jasmine: Fine. Just tired. Enjoy the night with the guys.
I stare at the screen. Something is wrong, and she's not going to tell me what it is over text.
“What happened tonight?” I ask Blake. “Did something happen while I was at the bar?”
Blake takes a sip of his beer and looks at me sideways. “You really didn't notice?”
“Notice what?”
“The blonde.”
“What blonde?”
“The blonde who was hanging off you for five minutes, Shaw. Tall, black dress, had her hand on your arm, then your chest. Ring any bells?”
I think back. A woman came up to me at the bar while I was talking to Theo. She asked if I played for the Renegades. I said yes. She asked about the game. I gave her a couple of short answers. She showed me something on her phone — a photo of her kid in a Renegades jersey.
It lasted three minutes. I didn't think about it once after she walked away.
“That was a fan,” I say. “She had a kid in a Renegades jersey. She showed me a photo.”
“I know that. But Jasmine was sitting across the room watching a woman put her hands all over you, and you let her.”
“I didn’t fucking let her,” I say, annoyed at the implication. I’ve never been that sort of man, even when Jasmine was not in my life.
But Jasmine doesn’t know that. All she knows is the reputation that hockey players have and a woman who seemed to be all over me. Worse still, she couldn’t claim me because we’re a secret.
My chest constricts painfully as I put myself in her shoes. Had it been me watching some guy lean into Jasmine at a bar, put his hand on her waist, I wouldn't have walked out quietly.
I'd have crossed that room in three strides and put myself between them. And if he didn't take the hint, Blake would have had to hold me back. I'm a hockey player. My first instinct when someone touches what's mine is to drop the gloves.
Jasmine had a front-row seat to a scene that gutted her, and she handled it the only way she knows how. She left with her dignity intact and her heart in pieces.
“Shit,” I say.
“Yeah,” Blake says.
“I need to go.”
“I'd say so.”
I put my beer on the bar and grab my jacket. Cole looks up from the booth as I pass.
“Heading out?” he asks.
“Yeah. Good game tonight, Cap.”
“You too. Get some rest.”
I push through the crowd toward the door. The cold Toronto air hits me on the street and I pull out my phone and call Jasmine. It rings four times and goes to voicemail.
I text her: I'm coming to the hotel.
I flag a cab and give the driver the name of the Shangri-La. The ride takes twelve minutes. I spend every one of those minutes replaying the evening from Jasmine's perspective.
I'm an idiot.
The cab pulls up to the hotel. I pay the driver and walk through the lobby. I don't have a room key for her floor. I pull out my phone to text her.
I'm in the lobby. Let me up.
A long pause. Then my phone buzzes.
Jasmine: Room 2814.
The elevator takes me to the twenty-eighth floor. The hallway is quiet and dimly lit with thick carpet that swallows my footsteps. I find her door and knock.
She opens it in leggings and a t-shirt. Her makeup is still on, but her eyes are red. She steps aside, and I walk in. The room is dark except for the glow of the CN Tower through the wall of windows.
Jasmine sits on the edge of the bed, pulls her knees up, and wraps her arms around them. I pull the desk chair over and sit facing her. Our knees are almost touching.
“Blake told me about the woman at the bar.”
Her jaw tightens. “There's nothing to tell. A woman talked to you. That's what women do when professional athletes go to bars.”
“She was a fan.”
“I'm not angry, Logan. You didn't do anything wrong,” she says.
Not true. “Then why did you leave?”
She doesn't answer right away. She rests her chin on her knees and stares at the window. The tower's blue light falls across her face.
“She touched you,” she says quietly. “She put her hand on your arm, then on your chest, and she was standing too close to you.”
“She was showing me a photo of her kid in a Renegades jersey. That's all it was.”
She presses her forehead against her knees. “I've never felt like that before with anyone. I've never cared enough to be jealous. But watching that woman touch you made me want to walk across that bar and remove her hand from your body.”
“Why didn't you?”
She lifts her head and looks at me. “Because nobody in that bar knows I'm your girlfriend, Logan. That's why. I don't get to walk over and put my arm through yours and let every woman in the room know you're taken. I have to just sit there and watch.”
She's right. We agreed to keep it a secret, but right now, looking at her red eyes and tight jaw, the timeline feels like it's costing more than it's protecting.
“I didn't feel anything,” I say. “When that woman touched me, I felt nothing. She could have been a wall or a lamppost. I was thinking about you the entire time I was at that bar. Every time I looked across the room and found you in the booth, that was the only thing that mattered.”
“I believe you.”
“Do you?” I ask, searching her eyes.
“Yes. I believe you didn't feel anything. But that doesn't change the fact that I felt everything.” She unwraps her arms from her knees and lets her legs stretch out on the bed. “This is new for me. The jealousy and possessiveness. I don't know what to do with it.”
“Come here,” I say.
She doesn't move.
“Jasmine. Come here.”
She slides off the bed, and I pull her onto my lap in the desk chair. She tucks her face against my neck, and I wrap my arms around her and hold her. She's shaking slightly.
“Is this what it's going to be like?” she asks against my neck. “Women approaching you in bars and events? Is this the life?”
“Sometimes. I can't control who approaches me. But I can control how I respond. And I will always respond the same way — politely, briefly, and then I walk away.”
“What about when I'm not there?”
“The same. Whether you're in the room or on the other side of the country. I'm yours, Jasmine. That doesn't change based on geography.”
She pulls back and looks at me. Her eyes are wet, and her mascara has smudged under her left eye. She's still the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.
“I hate this secret,” she says.
“I know.”
“I want to be able to stand next to you in public, hold your hand, and let every puck bunny in every bar in every city know that you're mine.”
“Puck bunny?” I ask with a laugh.
“That's what the girls call them,” Harper says, then grows serious. “I want to stop hiding, Logan.”
“Then let's stop.”
She searches my face. “You mean that?”
“I've meant it for weeks. I've been waiting for you to be ready.”
“I'm not ready. But I'm tired of the alternative.”
I wipe the mascara smudge from under her eye with my thumb. “We don't have to figure it all out tonight. But when we get back to New York, we start. Your mom. My parents. The whole thing.”
“That's terrifying,” she says.
“I know.”
“Our parents are going to throw a fit,” she says. “And you're okay with all of that?”
“I'm okay with anything that means I don't have to watch you leave a bar alone because you can't stand next to me in public.”
Her breathing slows. My arms tighten around her.
“I'm sorry I left without telling you,” she says.
“I'm sorry I didn't notice sooner.”
“You didn't do anything wrong.”
“Neither did you.”
She kisses me. Soft at first, then deeper, her hands on my face, her fingers sliding into my hair. I pull her closer on my lap, and her robe falls open at the collar. I move from her lips to her jaw, then her neck.
“Stay,” she says. “Harper can sleep in Avery and Natalie's room.”
“Are you sure?”
“I want to fall asleep next to you in Toronto.”
I text Blake from the chair with Jasmine still on my lap: Not coming back to the hotel tonight.
Blake replies in ten seconds: Obviously. Goodnight, idiot.
Jasmine reads the text over my shoulder and laughs. “Blake is my favorite person on your team.”
“Don't tell him that. His ego can't handle it.”
She stands up from my lap, takes my hand, and leads me to the bed. We undress each other slowly in the blue light from the window. Then we slide into bed.
I pull the covers over us, and she presses against me, her back to my chest, my arm across her waist. The city is quiet twenty-eight floors below.
“Logan?”
“Yeah?”
“Next time a woman touches you in a bar, I'm going to walk over and tell her to stop touching my boyfriend. I don't care who sees.”
“I'd like that.”
“Good. Consider yourself warned.”
I press my lips to the back of her neck. She arches against me. My hand on her waist slides to her bare stomach.
“Logan.”
“Hmm.”
“I don't want to sleep yet.”
She turns in my arms to face me. Her eyes are dark in the blue light from the window, and her lips are parted. I trace my thumb along her jaw and down the side of her neck.
“You are the most beautiful woman I have ever known,” I say. “Not just how you look. The way you carry yourself. The way you fight for the people you love. The way you walked into my life again after I gave you every reason not to.”
She makes a sound as if she’s going to interrupt.
“Let me finish.” I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “That woman at the bar tonight meant nothing. No woman has meant anything to me in ten years. You ruined me, Jasmine. You ruined me at sixteen, and I have been yours ever since.”
Her eyes are glistening. She pulls me down and kisses me. Her mouth is warm and soft. She curls her fingers into the hair at the back of my neck.
I roll her onto her back and settle over her. Her legs part to make room for me, and I press my weight against her.
I kiss the hollow of her throat, then trace my mouth across her collarbone, tasting the salt on her skin. Her chest rises under my lips. I slide lower and press a kiss between her breasts.
“I want every part of you, Jasmine. Not just tonight. Every night.”
“You have me.”