Chapter 14 Sloane
Sloane
An empty conference room on a Tuesday night. Not exactly romantic.
But with Garrett's apartment a revolving door for teammates—including my brother—and my place off-limits for the exact same reason, our options are nonexistent.
A bar or restaurant? Too public. Too risky.
The bookstore had been perfect, stolen and brief, a glimpse at something real before reality crashed back in.
So here we are. Conference Room C. Where I can pretend to work late on the Northstar account if anyone asks. Plausible. Professional. A perfect lie.
I close my laptop. The snap echoes in the sterile quiet, louder than it should be. The proposal I'd pulled up as cover stares back at me, untouched. My shoulders ache—not from hunching over spreadsheets, but from the tension I've been holding for the last hour, waiting.
My phone buzzes against the table. Another alert from the PR team. Subject: URGENT - Caleb Jones Livestream Gaffe. I silence it without reading past the preview. Another fire to put out. It can wait until tomorrow.
Tonight, I'm choosing something else.
The door opens, and Garrett fills the frame, his presence immediately changing the temperature of the room. He's holding something small, and when he crosses to the table, he places it in front of me with the kind of careful deliberation that makes my pulse kick.
A napkin. With a flower drawn on it in blue ink.
I stare at it for a beat, then look up at him, raising an eyebrow to hide the nervous flutter in my chest.
"Oh, this is a date, is it?"
“Absolutely is.” A slow, genuine smile spreads across his face, transforming him. He pushes a stack of printouts aside, then stands and moves his chair from the far end of the table to sit directly beside me. The room suddenly feels smaller. Warmer.
“Alright, tell me one story from when you were a child that explains everything I need to know about you,” Garrett says.
The question is so unexpected, a real laugh escapes me.
“Okay, fine. When my brother Easton was seven, he refused to do his chores. So, I made a binder.”
Garrett leans forward, chin resting on his hand like this is the most important story he’ll ever hear.
“It had a color-coded chart. A demerit system for non-compliance. I scheduled weekly performance reviews with him in the living room. Tried to convince my parents to tie his allowance to his Key Performance Indicators.”
He throws his head back and laughs, a full-bodied, joyful sound that echoes in the quiet room and settles deep in my chest.
“You put your seven-year-old brother on a corporate improvement plan?”
“He started taking out the trash,” I say, mock-defensive. But I’m laughing too. “Okay. Your turn. Same question.”
He turns to the window, watching the lights of the city flicker below. A smile lingers on his face.
“We had this goat on my family’s farm in Saskatchewan. Chester. He had this thing for eating my hockey jerseys. Loved them. So I spent an entire weekend building this elaborate fortress around the clothesline—scrap wood, chicken wire, pulleys, three-latch gate... I thought I was a genius.”
“And was it?”
“Chester ate a hole through the gate in five minutes. Then fell asleep on my best jersey. I gave up and started hanging them in the barn.”
I grin. “So we both have a history of trying to manage stubborn, uncontrollable forces.”
"Seems so," he says, his voice softer now.
His eyes meet mine. And in them, I see not the star athlete, not the man with the media-wary stare—but the kid who got outsmarted by a goat.
The story breaks the last of the tension, and the conversation flows easily from there. We move from childhood mishaps to family dynamics, trading stories about the people who shaped us.
"You know what's funny?" he says, leaning back in his chair. "Growing up as the only boy with three sisters, you learn things they don't teach you in hockey."
"Like what?" I ask, genuinely curious.
A small smile tugs at his mouth. "Like how to French braid hair at six in the morning before school because Emma had a presentation and Mom was already at work.
Or that when your little sister comes home crying because some kid called her stupid, you don't teach her to fight back—you teach her she's brilliant and then you spend the whole weekend helping her build the best science fair project the fourth grade has ever seen. "
Something warm unfurls in my chest. "That's... really sweet."
"Sweet nothing. They were ruthless." His laugh is genuine, affectionate.
"Made me sit through hours of princess movies, used me as a practice dummy for makeup, forced me to be the groom in about a thousand pretend weddings.
But they also had my back in ways that mattered.
When I got cut from my first junior team, they made this elaborate 'Garrett is the best' banner and hung it in my room.
Didn't ask if I wanted to talk about it—just made sure I knew they believed in me. "
He pauses, something vulnerable flickering across his face.
"Hockey taught me strategy, but my sisters taught me loyalty. The real kind—not just when someone's winning, but when they're falling apart and need you to hold them together."
The honesty in his voice catches me off guard. I think about Easton, about the way we've protected each other, but how different our dynamic was.
"I can't imagine having sisters," I say.
"Growing up with Easton was like having a bodyguard who doubled as a worried parent.
He used to walk me to the bus stop every morning until I was in eighth grade—not because I needed protection, but because he needed to make sure I got there safely.
Even now, he still texts me after every away game to make sure I made it home. "
"Must've been nice, though. Having someone look out for you."
"It was. But it was also suffocating sometimes." I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. "Your sisters sound like they saw you as a person, not a problem to solve. Easton loves me fiercely, but he's always trying to fix things for me instead of just... being there while I fix them myself."
Garrett nods slowly. "That's the difference, isn't it? My sisters trusted me to handle things. They just made sure I knew I didn't have to handle them alone."
He reaches for something on the table—a forgotten bag of vending machine pretzels I didn't even notice him bring in—and offers it to me. Our fingers brush as we both reach for one, and the contact sends a jolt of warmth up my arm. Neither of us pulls away immediately.
"Is that what you want?" he asks quietly, his thumb barely grazing my knuckles. "Someone who trusts you to handle things?"
The question hangs between us, loaded with meaning that goes far beyond family dynamics. I look up at him—really look—and see something in his eyes that makes my breath catch. Waiting.
"Yeah," I whisper. "I think it is."
The conversation softens after that, meandering through smaller, easier topics—favorite books from the shelves of his loft, terrible movies we both secretly love, the first concerts we ever went to.
The easy back-and-forth stretches, punctuated by comfortable silences, until the room feels less like a corporate meeting space and more like a private sanctuary.
The silence stretches, but it's not empty—it's full of promise, of connection, of two people finally seeing each other clearly. I can hear the soft tick of the wall clock, the distant hum of the building's ventilation system, the sound of my own heartbeat as I lose myself in his gaze.
Then something catches my eye through the window behind him, breaking the spell. I blink, focusing past his shoulder at the view outside.
"Is that... snow?" I ask, squinting at the white specks dancing under the haloed streetlights.
"Huh. Guess it is." He checks his phone. His eyes go wide. "Whoa. It's late. Past eight."
The laughter dies in my throat, replaced by a sudden, sharp chill. Eight? We've been in this room for hours. It felt like twenty minutes.
"I should... I need to get home. I live a good twenty minutes from here—"
Before I can finish, my phone buzzes violently. An alert.
EXTREME WEATHER WARNING: BLIZZARD CONDITIONS. TRAVEL NOT ADVISED.
"It's not safe to drive. I'm not letting you die on a highway," Garrett says, already standing.
The conference room suddenly feels suffocating.
"There has to be another option—"
"There is." He steps closer, his presence suddenly magnetic, dangerous.
"My place is five blocks from here. The roads are shot, but we can walk it."
My pulse thuds in my ears. "Garrett, I can't. If anyone saw us—"
"No one's seeing anything in a blizzard, Sloane." His voice lowers. "It's this, or you sleep on the couch in the marketing office. Your call. With that big scarf of yours, no one'll recognize you anyway."
My throat tightens. "This is a bad idea."
"It's the only idea left." His gaze holds mine. "Let me get you home safe."
I give a short, sharp nod before I can change my mind.
The surrender feels monumental—like stepping off a cliff.
A few minutes later he holds the heavy exit door, and we step into a wall of white.
The wind hits like a fist. Snow slashes across my face with needle-point intensity. Within seconds, visibility drops to near-zero.
My dress pants are soaked by the first block.
“Stay close!” Garrett shouts, grabbing my elbow. His grip is steady. Anchor-like.
I slip once—ice hidden under fresh snow—and he catches me before I fall, his arm solid around my waist. The cold cuts through my professional blazer like tissue paper. My fingers are already numb despite my gloves.
By the third block, I'm breathing hard, each step a fight against wind that wants to knock me sideways. The visibility is nearly zero—just swirling white chaos and the occasional ghostly glow of a streetlight. Without Garrett's steady presence beside me, guiding me forward, I'd be completely lost.
“Almost there,” he says, his voice barely audible above the storm.
When his apartment door finally swings open, warmth hits me like salvation.
I step inside and stop short, dripping snow onto hardwood.
This is not what I expected.
Exposed brick. Industrial beams. But softness woven through—worn rugs, warm lighting. A cast-iron radiator hums in the corner. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the Mississippi, now lost in the swirling white.
The air smells like old paper, cedar, and something faintly sweet—vanilla and... bread?
“You bake?” I ask, incredulous.
He laughs, hanging our coats by the door. “You sound shocked.”
I am shocked.
One wall is covered in books—paperbacks with cracked spines, hardcovers dog-eared and leaning. Hemingway next to Dostoevsky. Atlas Shrugged bookmarked three-quarters through.
But what stops me is the mantel.
Snow globes.
A dozen of them. London. Paris. A tiny Zamboni in a miniature rink.
“You collect snow globes?”
“My grandmother started it. Left them to me.” He touches one, gently. “Seemed wrong to pack them away.”
Something in my chest pulls soft and tight.
“Hungry?” he asks, already heading to the kitchen. “I was gonna stress-bake sourdough tomorrow, but I’ve got stuff.”
“You stress-bake?”
“Don’t sound so shocked.” He opens the fridge. “Pasta okay?”
I nod, still stunned.
We fall into rhythm. I chop. He simmers. We move around each other like it’s instinctual. Familiar.
At one point he reaches for the same cabinet I do and boxes me in. He pauses.
Our eyes lock.
His gaze drops to my lips. I feel the heat radiating off him, that same clean scent wrapping around me.
For a second, no one moves.
Then he steps away slowly, leaving me breathless and wanting.
Jazz music drifts from hidden speakers—something soft and complex that I never would have imagined Tank Sullivan listening to.
This isn't 'Tank' Sullivan's space. It's the space of a man with a quiet, hidden world, and I feel a sudden, sharp pull to map every corner of it.