Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
TOLREK
The alarm went off at five thirty. I’d been awake since four.
Sleep had been a series of starts and stops, my brain refusing to shut down the way it was supposed to. Every time I’d gotten close, I saw Haley’s face in the hallway. Felt the moment her lips had brushed mine. Heard the sound of her deadbolt sliding home.
I’d stood in the corridor after she’d closed the door. The elevator had been a short distance away, but I hadn’t moved toward it. I was unable to make myself leave until I was sure she was safe.
My apartment was dark except for the kitchen light I’d left on. Beau lifted his head from his bed in the corner, his ears forward, waiting to see if this was real morning or the middle-of-the-night kind where I got up to stare at the ceiling from a different location.
I sat up. “It’s morning.”
He stretched, yawned, and trotted over. I lifted him onto the bed, and he wrestled with the energy of a dog twelve times his size. I tried not to let him win too easily.
Eventually, I got up, set him on the floor again, and took a shower. Brushed my tusks. Stared into the mirror longer than I should wondering what—if anything—a beautiful woman might see in me.
I left the bathroom without answers and strode into the living room, dropping down onto the couch. I’d mounted the sketch on the wall across the room, hanging it where I’d see it whenever I sat here.
Beau settled at my feet, looking up at me with his tiny, stubby tail spiraling and the expectation of someone who knew the routine and trusted it would be followed.
I grabbed his harness and leash and dressed him for the outdoors.
Outside, the cool air bit deeply. It was early enough that the streets were quiet, only a few cars and the occasional person heading to work or coming home from a night shift. Beau pulled me toward the park with his usual determination, and I let him lead.
Haley’s building sat across the street from mine. Five stories, brick, with narrow windows and fire escapes along one side. I didn’t plan to look at it while we walked past.
Until I did.
Her light was on. Fourth floor, second window from the left. The curtains were drawn but backlit. She was awake.
I kept walking.
The park absorbed us into its early morning quiet. Beau investigated the usual spots with the focus of someone conducting vital research. A jogger passed. An older man sat on a bench near the pond, feeding pigeons popcorn from a bag in his lap.
We did our loop. Beau did his business. We headed back, taking the long route.
The antique store sat on the corner four blocks from my building. I’d walked past it multiple times and never gone inside. The sign in the window said it opened at seven, which meant it had been open for fifteen minutes.
I stopped.
Beau looked up at me, confused by the break in routine.
Haley made art. She’d probably drawn more than Beau, which meant she had other sketches. Things she might want to frame. She’d said she enjoyed antiques.
This was practical. A thank you for the tape session. Nothing more complicated than that.
The bell above the door rang when I pushed it open. Inside, the space had been crammed with furniture, boxes, and shelves holding things that didn’t seem to follow any organizational system. A human man stood behind the counter, reading a newspaper.
He looked up, taking me in. “Help you find something?”
“Picture frames.”
“What size?”
I hadn’t thought about that. “Different sizes. A variety.”
He gestured toward the right side of the shop. “Got a bunch back there. Select what you want and bring them up here.”
The frames had been stacked in boxes and leaned against the wall in no order I could determine. I sorted through them, pulling out the ones that looked like something she’d use. Nothing ornate. I selected ten frames, ranging from small to medium, and I carried them to the counter.
The man rang them up and I paid. He wrapped them in old newspaper and put them in a bag.
“Gift?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He nodded like that explained everything.
Outside, Beau strained forward as we walked to my building, the bag of frames in my other hand. By the time we reached my apartment, I’d decided I wouldn’t wrap them. I’d leave them outside her apartment door with a note.
Wrapping them felt like making a statement I wasn’t ready to make. Not wrapping them felt like I was treating this casually when it wasn’t.
This was the shape of my morning.
Building operations occupied a windowless office in the basement, tucked between the equipment storage room and the loading dock. I’d never been inside. The door was open when I walked past at seven forty-five, and I stopped.
A man in coveralls sat at a desk covered in papers and coffee mugs, his heels braced on the corner.
He looked up when I filled the doorway. “Can I help you?”
“It’s about an office on the second floor.” I named the number I’d already noted on a tiny placard above her door.
He waited.
“It’s cold,” I said. “The heating doesn’t work properly. This affects staff performance and needs to be corrected.”
He picked up a clipboard and flipped through pages. “We’ve had that request logged multiple times. We adjust it, it drifts back.”
“Then fix it so it doesn’t drift.”
He looked at me again, processing what I wasn’t saying.
“It’ll get handled,” he said, his feet thudding on the floor.
“Today.”
“Today’s full.”
I stepped into the office.
He blinked and made a note. “I’ll send someone up right away. We’ll get it sorted.”
I nodded and left, heading to the locker room, where I suited up for practice. After three grueling hours, we took a break. I went to the equipment room for spare mouthguards.
My skate guards thudding on the floor, I passed the computer supply room along the way.
I spotted Haley inside and came to a stop, peering through the glass.
I opened the door and stepped inside. The computer room smelled like dust and warm electronics.
Haley had wedged herself between a shelf unit and a cart and was reaching for something on the top shelf. She stretched, her fingers brushing a flat rectangular case nearly out of reach.
I crossed the space in quick strides. “Let me.”
She startled, turning fast enough that her shoulder hit my chest. “I just need to…” She reached past me again for the drive, her arm crossing in front of my chest. She leaned, rising on her toes. The movement brought her close enough that I could smell her shampoo, faint and floral.
She paused, looking up at me.
I didn’t decide to kiss her. I decided not to stop the thing that was already happening.
Her mouth met mine and the rest of the room disappeared. She made a soft sound, and I swallowed it. I lifted my hand to the back of her neck, tilting her head to deepen the angle.
She tasted like coffee and vanilla.
My tongue found hers, and she opened for me. One of my tusks caught her lower lip and she gasped, the sound going straight to my cock. I forgot where we were, everything but what we were doing.
Her back hit the shelf behind her, and I followed, pressing my body against hers.
She pulled me closer, holding me like she’d thought about this as much as I had.
When I finally pulled back, she blinked up at me, her lips swollen, her eyes dark.
I stepped away fast, putting distance between us that felt both inadequate and necessary at the same time.
She straightened her skirt. Her blouse. Rebuilt the professional version of herself I’d sent into disarray.
I lifted the drive off the shelf and handed it to her.
“Thanks for grabbing that.” The husky tone in her voice shot through my body, centering in my groin. I’d made her sound like that.
“Yes,” I said.
We left the room. She went toward her office. I went toward the equipment room, where I grabbed three mouth guards from the bin marked with my name.
I made it back to the ice before the full weight of what I’d done hit me.
I’d kissed the coach’s daughter. In the computer room where anyone could have walked in.
Then I stepped out onto the ice and played the cleanest hockey I’d managed since arriving in Boston.
Apparently I played better when I was furious with myself.
Practice was a methodical thing. Positioning drills. Gap control. Breakout patterns we’d run until they became automatic. I tracked every player on the ice, noting where they were and where they’d be. The patterns formed and dissolved around me.
I also tracked Haley in the box.
This wasn’t new. I’d been conscious of her location during every practice since I’d arrived. What was new was that she knew I knew she was there. I knew she knew. The footage she was logging right now would show me playing with a controlled aggression that had nothing to do with the opposing team.
Crim noticed, though he didn’t say anything. He just played harder, testing me in ways that weren’t part of the drill.
I matched his every move.
We went back and forth for at least twenty minutes, pushing each other hard. It probably looked productive from the outside. The coaches seemed pleased. Crim did not seem pleased, but he concealed it well.
Coming off the ice after the last session, Brashe fell into step beside me.
“Good practice,” he said.
“Yes.”
We walked a few more steps.
“Haley’s office was warm today.”
The statement hung between us, but I didn’t respond.
His silence was worse than anything he could have said. He’d noticed, assembling the pieces into a picture I hadn’t given him permission to see.
We reached the locker room, and he veered off toward his stall. I continued to mine.
Neither of us said anything else.
After showering and dressing, I did some leg work in the gym and left.
Since the building emptied by five, it was quiet. Most of the staff and players were gone by now, headed home or to whatever they did when they weren’t here. I stayed late because that was me. I did film review on my own. Strength training in the weight room.