CHAPTER 7 — THE KISS IN THE RESTRICTED HALLWAY
POV: Damon Blackwood
Hartwell's arena had the kind of ice I hated: surface good enough that nobody complained out loud, but rough around the edges, beaten up by rushed maintenance and lit by spotlights that gave everything a sickly yellow tint, as if the rival university had skimped on dignity itself.
The stands were packed for a preseason scrimmage, which said less about the game's importance and more about the pleasure any campus took in watching Northaven bleed on the road.
I knew that hunger. I'd used it against entire teams.
The problem was that tonight, I couldn't give the crowd the full show.
Noah's recovery plan had turned me into an edited version of myself: fewer minutes on the ice, less contact, less freedom to crush any player who thought testing my left side was a good idea.
My body was taped up under the uniform, shoulder bound by recommendations I hated following and a pain that hadn't yet decided if it was a warning or a threat.
Worse than all of that, Noah was on the bench with his clipboard, watching my every move like he had some claim on my limits.
I felt his gaze even when I wasn't looking.
It was irritating, physical, almost indecent.
Noah tracked my posture, my recovery time between shifts, the way I used my arm on contact, my breathing when I came back to the bench.
He didn't need to touch me to take up residence in my entire body.
Just being there was enough—Northaven jacket zipped to his chin, hair tossed carelessly, that focused expression pretending to be purely professional.
I knew it wasn't. After the hallway in the penthouse, after the photo, after his mouth an inch from mine, neither of us had the luxury of pretending otherwise.
“Blackwood, short shift,” Coach Bennett shouted as I jumped back onto the ice, his tone carrying that borrowed-dad authority that irritated me almost as much as the idea of obeying. “No unnecessary contact.”
No unnecessary contact. The phrase would've been funny if Noah hadn't spent forty minutes before the game adjusting the wrap on my shoulder with hands too steady and breathing too controlled, like his touch hadn't left a trail burning under my uniform.
I could still feel his fingers near my collarbone, his thumb pressing the tape into place, his low voice telling me to let him know if it tingled.
On paper, the contact had been necessary.
In my body, it had been something else entirely.
The puck dropped, and the world finally snapped into motion.
Skates carving ice, sticks clashing, bodies closing in around me, Hartwell's defense trying to shove me out of the play with the dumb bravery of guys who still don't understand that reputation isn't built on exaggeration.
I took a pass from Mason on the wing, pushed through the blue line, and felt the defender coming at my left side with every intention of testing the injury.
I shifted my weight, shielded the puck without giving up my whole shoulder, and blew past him with less force than I would've liked.
Obeying Noah saved the play. That detail pissed me off so much I shot with more precision than I should have, and the puck buried itself in the lower corner before the goalie read the angle.
The visiting section erupted, our bench exploded in cheers, and Mason skated over to tap his glove against mine with almost offensive satisfaction.
I glided toward the bench without looking at Noah, because looking at him after scoring a goal on his terms would be admitting he'd had a hand in it.
But he was there, and I knew exactly what expression I'd find: relief masked as assessment, pride he had no right to feel, and enough concern to leave me irritated.
“See?” Mason said, bumping his helmet against mine as we headed back to the bench. “Modern miracle. You followed a medical instruction and nobody died.”
“There's still time,” I replied, dropping onto the bench, and only then did I let my eyes drift to Noah.
He was on a video call with Marjorie on his tablet, probably going over my movements like my body was some committee-supervised project.
The glow from the screen caught the side of his face, highlighting the curve of his mouth and the focus in his eyes.
When he sensed me watching—because apparently his body had that same damn antenna—Noah looked up.
For a second, nothing moved. The game went on in front of us, the crowd roared, the whole bench buzzed with another play, but his attention found mine like a touch I hadn't given permission for.
He made a small gesture with his fingers—two taps on his own shoulder, silently asking if I was okay.
I should've ignored it. Instead, I gave an almost imperceptible nod.
His mouth relaxed for half a second, not quite a smile, but something dangerously close to relief.
My chest tightened somewhere that had nothing to do with the injury, and I looked away before anyone noticed that one simple gesture from him had done what hits on the ice couldn't: knocked me off balance.
Hartwell tied it up in the second period with a garbage goal, the kind that comes from a blown blocking call and a rattled goalie.
The game got more physical after that, and Coach Bennett started cutting my minutes with a discipline I knew came as much from Noah as from him.
Every time I hopped the boards to head back to the bench, I felt the frustration building under my skin.
I wasn't built to ration my presence. I was built to dominate, to crush the other team's rhythm, to make the entire arena bow to the fact that Damon Blackwood always found a way to win.
Sitting there watching other men fight for ice that should've been mine was its own kind of punishment.
It was during the break between the second and third periods that Elias Ward decided to make an appearance.
Hartwell had a handsome captain, irritatingly aware of it, with dark blond hair pushed back, the smile of someone who collected trouble, and a skating style that looked elegant right up until he buried his shoulder in someone's ribs.
I knew him from past games, championship parties, and enough rumors to know Elias liked winning on and off the ice with the same lack of modesty.
What I didn't know—until Mason mentioned it on the bus with poorly feigned casualness—was that Elias had already spent nights with Noah at some convenient point in his college years.
Noah didn't owe me explanations about who he'd been with before coming back to Northaven.
That was the rational argument. The problem was that my body had zero interest in rationality when Elias glided past the bench, pulled out his mouthguard with two fingers, and looked at Noah like he was savoring a memory far too pleasant for the middle of a game.
“Bennett,” Elias said, leaning his stick against the boards, voice loud enough for several players to hear. “Nobody told me Hartwell would be getting VIP treatment from Northaven today. You only handling the broken ones now, or do you still take desperate cases?”
Noah looked up from his clipboard slowly, and I knew that movement.
It was how he chose composure before responding to someone who deserved less.
The problem was that Elias smiled like he knew it too, and the familiarity on his face cut into me like a blade.
Mason, sitting beside me, went suspiciously still—clearly planning to watch the disaster unfold while feigning innocence.
“You keep confusing physical therapy with neediness, Ward,” Noah replied, not moving from his spot near the bench. “For the first, I can refer you to someone on your team. For the second, I recommend therapy or a less humiliating hobby.”
Elias laughed, and I hated how easy the laugh came.
I hated that Noah had responded so quickly, with the old intimacy of someone who knew exactly what kind of provocation Elias was offering.
I hated even more how my shoulder seemed to stop mattering for a few seconds, replaced by a hot, idiotic, territorial anger that had no right to exist. I had no claim to jealousy.
Not with Noah. Not after four years of hatred I'd cultivated with discipline.
Still, the feeling tore through my chest with a brutality that almost made me stand up.
“Therapy didn't make me as happy as you did,” Elias said, the words accompanied by a lazy smile, deliberately ambiguous. “But maybe Blackwood needs your touch more than I do. He looks tense.”
My body moved before I finished thinking.
Mason grabbed my right forearm hard enough to keep me from shooting to my feet, and the gesture brought me back to the bench, to the game, to the cameras, to the fact that I was in uniform, injured, with an entire arena watching.
Noah looked at me at the same moment. His expression shifted—just a quick flash of warning, like he knew exactly what Elias had done and how I'd reacted.
That made everything worse. I didn't want Noah reading me.
I didn't want Elias to have hit a nerve.
I didn't want to feel anything resembling possession over someone I still accused of abandoning me.
“Ward,” Coach Bennett called, approaching the boards with the dry authority of someone who didn't tolerate theatrics during a game. “Get back to your bench before I ask the ref to remind you where yours is.”
Elias raised his hands, smiling, and glided away—but not before looking at Noah one more time.
The gesture was small. A nod of his chin, a shared memory, a calculated provocation aimed at me.
My hand clenched around my stick so hard I felt my fingers protest inside the glove.
Noah looked back at his clipboard, but the tension in his shoulders said the conversation had hit more than one target.