Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Hailey
The Puck is Still in Play
This is . . . not my usual morning routine. Nope. I wake up warm, which is weird.
I never wake up warm. Every morning I find myself sprawled out like a starfish on full display, limbs flung in every direction, blankets kicked off as if they personally offended me. My body treats sleep like a full-contact sport, which means I wake up in shambles, searching for warmth that isn’t there.
Not today.
Today, I’m not just under the covers—I’m completely wrapped up in them. Tucked in, snug, like someone made sure I stayed warm all night. Which is already alarming, but then I feel it.
Things that are very different from my usual morning: an arm draped over my waist, a slow, even breath near my temple, a chest—broad, warm, and very male—beneath my cheek.
My fingers twitch. I shift the tiniest bit, and—oh, God. Firm muscle. Hard lines. An entire wall of body that definitely does not belong to me.
Panic spikes through me.
Oh, no.
No. No.
What did I do?
Did I drink too much tequila? Lose all sense of judgment? Wake up in some alternate reality where I make terrible life choices—again?
No. No, that doesn’t make sense.
Greece flashes in my mind, but that’s not it either. That guy didn’t hold me like this. Didn’t make me feel this . . .
Okay, Hailey. No time like the present. Take stock. Assess. Gather intel.
My lashes flutter open, my heart already picking up speed, because I know exactly where I am. Exactly who I’m wrapped around.
Leif.
Not just next to him. On him. Practically welded to his chest. My leg is slung over his like I’ve claimed him in my sleep, one of my hands gripping the elastic of his gray sweats—even unconscious, I refused to let go.
Oh my God. What did I do?
A frantic checklist runs through my head. Clothes? On. Dignity? Questionable. Self-respect? Hanging by a very thin thread.
If I stay still, maybe—just maybe—he won’t notice that I’ve latched onto him like an emotionally unstable koala.
A deep chuckle ruins that plan. “Morning, Sunshine.” A lazy warmth lingers in his voice, teasing, amused, entirely too smug for someone whose best friend is literally draped over him.
Heat rushes up my neck, straight into my face. My body refuses to move, like it already knows something my brain refuses to admit.
I don’t just like being here. I want to be here. A slow shift of his arm. A pause. Then . . . he kisses me. Not on my lips. The top of my head. Soft. Thoughtless. Like it’s something he does all the time, something that shouldn’t send my entire system spiraling.
Then another. This time against the tip of my nose.
I stop breathing.
He’s so close, his breath skimming over my skin, warmth lingering where there should be space. It’s barely a kiss, barely a touch, but it sinks into me like it belongs there. My heart stumbles, then drops into free fall, pulled by something I don’t want to name.
I could tilt my chin, close the gap, take what’s right there—what I know he’d give me. But I don’t.
Because this?
This is deliberate. Measured. A quiet promise pressed into my skin, as if he’s been waiting for this moment longer than I can imagine.
“You’re awake,” I manage, my voice raw from sleep, my brain still clawing its way through the fog.
Then it all slams back in. The crying. The breaking. The way he caught me before I could fall too hard. But then I remember that before the wreckage—before the ugly, gut-wrenching sobs—there was something else.
A kiss.
Leif kissed me.
I kissed him back.
And I didn’t just like it. No—craved it.
The memory of it lingers beneath my skin, wrapped in the warmth of his arms, in the way he holds me like I belong here. The ache of something unfinished presses into me, something reckless and consuming that I tried to bury beneath fear.
Leif isn’t just safety. He isn’t just comfort or familiarity. He is a shifting tide, pulling me in before I even realize I’ve lost my footing. The warning before the storm rolls in.
The pause between inhale and exhale, that moment when everything stills—right before you fall. I pull back just enough to look at him, my cheek still brushing against his chest. He’s watching me, eyes dark and unreadable, like he’s holding something back. Or maybe letting something slip. Either way, it’s there now, threading through the space between us, shifting the air, making it impossible to look away.
Not sure what it is, but it makes my stomach flip.
Now the question is, how do I get out of here without making it uncomfortable? Without . . . Oh, fuck.
Am I going to lose him?
“You slept like a baby,” Leif murmurs, interrupting my tiny meltdown.
I lick my lips, too aware of how close we are, of the way his thumb is lazily tracing circles against my back like he has every right to touch me like this. Like this is his favorite place to be.
Dangerous.
“Well, not sure if anyone has told you before, but you’re very comfortable,” I say, the words coming out softer than I mean them to.
His lips twitch. “You’re not just comfortable, you’re everything to me, Hay.”
I press my palm against his chest, trying to push up, to get some kind of control over this situation—over myself. It’s not working. The heat of his skin seeps into mine, and my body has the audacity to react like it wants to stay right here.
“Leif—”
“Hailey, I know what you’re going to say.” He exhales, gaze pinning me in place. “That this won’t work, that we’re not—” He pauses, eyes flicking over my face like he’s debating something. Then he shakes his head. “But you’re wrong. We’re good together. We’ve always been.”
I suck in a breath.
“I know this might make you run away before I finish the speech, but I’m in love with you.”
My entire body locks up.
“Like madly in love,” he continues, like he hasn’t just detonated my entire existence. “I’ve loved you for as long as I can remember. The only reason I never told you is because you’re . . .” He tilts his head. “Fidgety.”
“Fidgety?” I gawk at him. “That’s—what does that even mean?”
His mouth curves in that way that makes me want to kiss him and punch him in equal measure. “It means you don’t like when people love you, because then you’re afraid you’ll fuck it all up.”
My throat goes dry.
“But after yesterday . . .” He exhales, eyes darkening. “We can’t go back.”
“We could,” I offer weakly, even though I know damn well we can’t.
Leif lets out a low laugh. “Really? Because I gave you a massage and . . .” His smirk widens, slow and lethal. “I could hear you all the way to my room. The moans, the screams, everything. You want me, babe.”
My entire body goes nuclear.
“No, you didn’t.”
“Oh, I did.” His voice drops to something downright dangerous. “You touching yourself . . .” He says it like he’s commenting on hockey stats. Like it’s not the most mortifying thing that’s ever happened to me. “That was interesting.”
I stop breathing.
I blink at him. Hard. How do I get out of here without losing him?
“We’re not discussing what you think you heard.” My voice is a strangled, barely-there whisper.
Leif just leans in, close enough that I can see the exact moment amusement turns to something darker. Something that makes my skin prickle and my thighs clench. I’m getting wet and he hasn’t done anything—no touching and I’m already wanting him to . . . Stop, Hailey .
“I heard you, Hailey.” His lips brush the shell of my ear, the bastard. “You screamed my fucking name while doing it.”
Oh my actual—fuck, this can’t get worse.
Except it does, because my entire body lights up in ways that are absolutely not okay. The memory crashes into me—the way I ached last night, the way my toy and fingers weren’t enough, the way I gasped his name because my mind wouldn’t let go of the way his hands felt on me.
I want to die.
I want to sink into the mattress and never resurface.
I want to. . . and why am I turned on right now?
For fuck’s sake, Hailey, what is wrong with you?
Can we talk about the kiss instead?
No. Because then I’d have to admit how I nearly melted in his arms. How I practically sprinted to my room, thighs pressed together, shaking, pretending I didn’t need him. Pretending I didn’t want to fall apart beneath him.
“You—you weren’t supposed to hear that,” I stammer, horrified, defensive, so painfully aware of the way my pulse is hammering in my throat.
He just shrugs, too damn smug, too damn calm. “Thin walls.”
I groan, slapping my hands over my face. “You paid a lot of money for this place, and they couldn’t put in thicker walls? You should ask for your money back.”
Leif laughs, rich and deep, and I hate that it makes my stomach flip all over again. I am so unbelievably screwed.
His fingers skim up my back, slow, deliberate, and I feel it everywhere. “You were definitely thinking about me,” he says, voice low, smug, impossibly sure.
I want to argue. I want to deny it, however, it’s impossible. He knows me too well and right now I think I’m running a fever. I’m delirious. Does the book say something about fever while being horny? Damn, I should be reading those pregnancy books more often.
I make a small, strangled noise, shoving my face back into his chest. “Can we pretend this conversation isn’t happening?”
He chuckles, and I feel it beneath my cheek, deep and amused.
“Do you want to pretend last night didn’t happen too?”
I freeze.
Because that’s the real question, isn’t it? The one neither of us is willing to say out loud. The one I don’t have a safe answer to.
We kissed.
And not the kind of impulsive, barely-there, oops-did-our-lips-just-brush kiss you can laugh off in the morning. No, we kissed like a match striking gasoline. Like years of restraint going up in flames; like we had been waiting for an excuse to lose control and burn together.
The worst part of that kiss is that it wrecked me and put me back together. Not just that, but I want to do it again. I want to shove my fingers into his hair and taste every inch of his mouth until I’m drunk on him. I want to press up against him, let my hands roam over the broad, solid lines of his body. I want to feel him react to me, to us. I want to tear down whatever wall we built between us and climb him like a personal Everest I’ve been too cowardly to scale.
Oh, I want him.
My eyes flick to his lips, and just like that, the temperature in the room skyrockets. My breath goes shallow, my brain goes offline, and the only thought looping in my head is yes.
Yes, yes, yes.
Instead, I force myself to take a mental step back. To inhale. To look him in the eye even though I already know how this is going to end.
“I don’t regret it,” I admit, my voice quiet but unwavering. “The kiss.”
His expression shifts—not a flicker, not a twitch, but something deeper, something tectonic. A loosening. A letting go. It’s as if he had been holding his breath for a lifetime, and only now, with those words, does he finally exhale. His shoulders drop a fraction, the tightness around his mouth dissolves. Relief, raw and unguarded, rushes in like a tide pulling away from the shore.
For a moment, he just looks at me, like I’m something he never thought he’d have, something he never let himself want too much. His Adam’s apple bobs. His lips part. But he doesn’t speak. He doesn’t need to.
Because I feel it.
The way the air between us hums, charged with something electric, something inevitable. The way his eyes darken, like the moment before a storm, and I know—I know—if I reached for him now, he wouldn’t pull away.
“But I don’t know how to do this,” I continue, swallowing against the panic tightening in my throat. “I don’t know how to be with you—like that.”
Like wanting him isn’t an earthquake shaking up everything I thought I knew about us. Like this isn’t dangerous in a way that has nothing to do with kissing and everything to do with how easy it would be to fall.
“And I—I don’t want to lose you.”
He watches me for a long moment, like he’s cataloging every crack in my resolve, every unspoken thought I don’t have the guts to voice.
Then, he exhales, long and slow, his fingers brushing against my cheek. A touch so careful it makes me ache, like he knows exactly how close I am to unraveling.
And maybe I am.
Maybe I’ve been unraveling since the second his lips touched mine.
“I get it,” he says, and I know he means it.
I close my eyes for a beat, exhaling slowly, feeling his touch like it’s the only thing anchoring me.
“I don’t trust myself with you,” I whisper.
His thumb drags across my bottom lip, slow, teasing. “Good. Because I don’t trust myself with you either.”
I open my eyes, meeting his gaze head-on. “So what do we do?”
His lips curve. “Well, you clearly have some needs.”
I groan, smacking his arm, but he just laughs.
“I’m serious,” he says. “You want me. I want you. Why are we pretending otherwise?”
“Because it’s complicated.”
“If there’s something I’ve learned from the moment I met you, it’s that everything with you is complicated, Hailey.” His tone is fond, teasing, maddening. “You’re my favorite complication.”
I glare. “You think you’re cute, don’t you?”
“I think I’m right.”
Damn it.
I push myself slightly away from him, trying to ignore the way my body still hums with awareness, still aches for him. Hormones. That’s all this is. Stupid, irritating hormones.
I let out a slow, self-deprecating sigh. “I hate this.”
He grins. “You hate that you want me. Well, at least you accept that part.”
I groan, tossing my head back. “Fine. Yes. I do.”
His smile deepens, and he leans in, his breath a whisper against my skin. “So let’s fix that.”
I blink, suddenly too hot, too aware, too everything. “Fix what?”
“You,” he says simply. “And your needs.”
Oh.
Oh.
My thoughts tangle, slipping through my grasp like sand, impossible to hold onto. Heat curls through me, slow and relentless, sinking deep, making it hard to breathe. My pulse kicks hard, a silent answer to something I don’t fully understand yet.
I should say something. I should laugh it off, turn away, pretend this moment isn’t pressing itself into my skin. But the way he’s looking at me—calm, certain, like he already knows how this will end—leaves me no room to hide.
“You can’t think this will work out,” I suddenly find my excuse. “I’m a poor judge of character who can’t be with anyone. You know my dating track record.”
“It’s because you don’t know what you want,” he says with a cocky grin.
“And you think I want you?”
“Nope, but . . . and hear me out before you push me,” he warns me. “We date . . . but skip the nonsense of your four dates before sex.”
“What?” I squeak.
“Date with benefits,” he supplies smoothly. “I take care of your body. You take care of my battered heart—because it has to survive without your love. No complications.”
I stare at him. “That sounds like the definition of a complication.”
He shrugs. “Only if you make it one.”
I bite my lip, every inch of me screaming yes, yes, yes, while my rational brain tries to keep up.
This is dangerous.
This is reckless.
But somehow I know that this is exactly what I need.
I exhale sharply, shaking my head. “I don’t like you right now.”
“You don’t?”
“I don’t,” I confirm.
His fingers brush my thigh, his grin slow, knowing. “So is that a yes?”
I groan. “Yes.”
His eyes darken. “We should start now, because something tells me you’re already wet for me, aren’t you, baby?”
And just like that—we’re screwed.
And I don’t even care.