Chapter Fourteen
SUIT AND TIE TORTURE
Zayden
Ihate these things. Team banquets, sponsor schmoozing, whatever you want to call it—it’s all the same. Uncomfortable suit, forced small talk, and rich people eager to shake your hand so they can brag to their golf buddies that they met a hockey player.
My collar is too tight. I’ve loosened my tie twice already, but it still feels like it’s strangling me. I’d rather be home with Maisie, watching Bluey for the nine hundredth time and eating chicken strips off paper plates.
Instead, I’m standing in a ballroom at the Waldorf, nursing a sparkling water and trying to look like I want to be here. Coach made it clear that attendance is mandatory—something about “building relationships with key partners” and “representing the organization.”
So here I am. Representing.
The room is packed—players in suits, wives and girlfriends in cocktail dresses, sponsors in expensive watches checking their phones.
Logan is working the crowd like he was born for it, dimples on full display as he charms a group of older women who are probably donors.
Banks is lurking near the bar, looking like he’d rather be literally anywhere else, which makes two of us.
And Tori...
Tori is across the room, talking to Coach Reynolds.
She’s wearing a black dress that shouldn’t be affecting me the way it is.
It’s not even that revealing—high neck, sleeves to her elbows—but it fits her perfectly, hugging every curve and I can’t stop looking.
Her hair is down for once, dark waves falling past her shoulders, and I keep thinking about what it felt like threaded through my fingers.
Stop it. She made herself clear.
It was a mistake.
I drain the rest of my sparkling water. The bubbles burn my throat, sharp and cold. Not cold enough to put out the fire she started.
I force my eyes somewhere else. Anywhere else. It’s been ten days since the kiss. Ten days of clinical sessions and professional distance, her treating me like I’m just another patient with a shoulder problem. Ten days of giving her exactly what she asked for.
It’s killing me.
“You look like someone ran over your dog.”
I glance sideways. Banks has materialized next to me, drink in hand, his face as unreadable as ever.
“I don’t have a dog.”
“Hence the metaphor.” He follows my gaze across the room—to where Tori is now laughing at something Coach said—and makes a low sound in his throat. “Ah.”
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was going to ask how your shoulder’s doing.” He takes a sip of his drink. “But sure. Let’s talk about the PT you’ve been moping over.”
“I’m not moping.”
“You’re standing in a corner glaring at everyone who talks to her. That’s textbook moping.” He shrugs. “No judgment. She’s hot. I get it.”
I shoot him a look that would make most people back off. Banks just raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. The man has the emotional range of a glacier and apparently the observational skills of a hawk. It’s an annoying combination.
Banks claps me on the shoulder—the good one—and heads toward the buffet line, leaving me alone with my sparkling water and my bad decisions.
The universe, apparently, has a sense of humor.
Because ten seconds later, Tori appears at the bar next to me.
“Hey.”
My whole body goes tight. “Hey.”
She’s not looking at me. She’s looking at the bartender, ordering a glass of white wine with the kind of casualness that tells me she’s just as aware of me as I am of her.
The bartender hands her the glass. She doesn’t leave.
Silence, the kind that’s so thick you could choke on it.
“So,” she says finally, still not looking at me. “Hannah started, right?”
Right. The nanny. Normal small talk. I can do normal small talk.
“Yeah. Last Monday.” I take a sip of my water, needing something to do with my hands. “Maisie likes her. She makes a good grilled cheese, apparently. That’s Maze’s metric for trustworthiness.”
Tori’s lips twitch. Almost a smile. “Smart kid. Grilled cheese is important.”
“She ranked the last three nannies by their grilled cheese quality. Hannah’s currently in second place, behind Mrs. Hendricks.”
“What about you? Where do you rank?”
“Dead last. My grilled cheese is, and I quote, ‘too crunchy and kind of sad.’”
She laughs. It’s quiet, barely there, but it’s real—and hearing it after ten days of nothing feels like stepping into sunlight after a long winter.
Then the laughter fades, and we’re back to silence.
She’s close enough that I can smell her perfume. Something warm, a little sweet. I want to bury my face in her neck and inhale.
“This is ridiculous,” she says quietly.
“What is?”
“This. Us.” She finally looks at me, her eyes bright with something I can’t name. “The way we’re acting like strangers when we’re not. I hate it.”
My jaw tightens. “You said it was a mistake.”
“I know what I said.”
“So what do you want me to do, Tori? You set the rules. I’m following them.”
She flinches slightly, and I hate that I’m the one who put that look on her face. But I’m also tired—tired of pretending I don’t think about her constantly, tired of acting like that kiss didn’t matter.
“I don’t know,” she admits. “I don’t know what I want. But I know this—” she gestures between us, small and frustrated— “isn’t it.”
I set down my drink.
“Come with me.”
She blinks. “What? Where?”
I don’t answer. I just take her hand—her fingers are cold, trembling slightly in mine—and lead her through the crowd. Past the donors, past the sponsors, past Logan, who raises an eyebrow but has the good sense not to say anything.
Just drink your beer, Cupcake.
There’s a side door near the back. I push through it, pulling her with me, and suddenly we’re in a hallway. It’s empty and quiet, the noise of the party fading to a dull murmur behind us.
“Zay—”
I kiss her.
Not soft this time. Not careful. I kiss her like I’ve been starving for it—which I have—backing her against the wall, one hand on her hip, the other cupping her jaw.
She makes a sound against my mouth, surprised and wanting, and then she’s kissing me back, fingers twisting in my lapels, pulling me closer.
“Calice.” I breath against her mouth. “Do you have any idea what you do to me?”
She tastes like wine and want and everything I’ve been trying not to think about for ten days. I angle her head, deepening the kiss, and she responds by arching into me, her tongue stroking mine. Rational thoughts vanish.
My hand slides from her hip to her lower back, pulling her flush against me, and she gasps into my mouth. I swallow the sound, greedy for it, greedy for her. Her fingers find my hair, tugging slightly, and I groan—low and rough and completely beyond my control.
“Zayden.” My name comes out broken, breathless, and hearing it like that does something to me.
I’m already hard, straining against my suit pants, and when her body presses into mine, she makes this soft sound of surprise that turns into something hungrier. I’m hard—instantly, embarrassingly hard—and there’s no way she doesn’t feel it.
I should be embarrassed. Should pull back, apologize, give her space.
I don’t.
Because her hips roll forward—a tiny, instinctive movement—and the friction makes us both gasp. Her head falls back against the wall, exposing the long line of her throat, and I can’t resist. I drag my mouth down her jaw, her neck, finding that spot beneath her ear that makes her shiver.
“Zay—” Her voice is wrecked. Broken. The most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.
I groan against her mouth, something low and desperate, and I think I say her name but the rest comes out French, the accent I usually hide slipping loose because I can’t control anything right now, least of all myself.
My erection presses into her stomach, but she doesn’t retreat. She grinds against me, slow, just enough to make me groan.
“Tor.” I pull back just enough to look at her. Her lips are swollen, her eyes dark, her chest heaving. She looks wrecked in the best possible way. “That wasn’t a mistake,” I say.
She swallows hard. “No. It wasn’t.”
“I need—” I can’t finish. I press my forehead to hers, breath ragged, hands flexing on her hips.
“Six years, Tori. Six years of nothing, and now I can’t think straight.
Can’t sleep. Can’t look at you without wanting—” My voice breaks off.
“Tell me this isn’t just me. Tell me I’m not losing my mind. ”
Her hand comes up to rest against my chest, right over my heart. “It’s not just you,” she breathes.
I lean my forehead against hers, breathing her in. “You’re killing me, you know that?”
“I know.” Her hand comes up to rest against my chest, right over my heart. “Believe me, it’s killing me too.”
We stay like that for a long moment. Foreheads touching, breath mingling, the muffled sound of the party filtering through the walls. I want to stay here forever. I want to take her home. I want to do a lot of things that aren’t appropriate for a hallway at a team banquet.
Instead, I wait for my body to chill the hell out.
“We should go back,” she says finally.
“Yeah.”
Neither of us moves.
“Separately,” she adds.
“Yeah.”
Still not moving.
She laughs—quiet, shaky—and pulls back, straightening her dress, touching her hair like she can smooth away the evidence of what just happened.
“Five minutes,” she says. “You wait here. I’ll go first.”
“Tori.”
She pauses, hand on the door.
“This isn’t going away,” I tell her. “Whatever this is between us. Pretending it doesn’t exist isn’t working.”
“I know.” She meets my eyes, and there’s something raw in her expression.
Then she’s gone, slipping back through the door, leaving me alone in the hallway with a racing heart and the taste of her still on my lips.
· · ·
I give her ten minutes instead of five. Partly to be safe. Partly because I need the time to get myself under control.
When I walk back into the ballroom, I don’t look for her. I make myself talk to sponsors, shake hands, and do the schmoozing thing Coach wanted. I laugh at jokes that aren’t funny and nod along to conversations I don’t care about.
But I feel her.
Every time I turn, I know exactly where she is in the room. Near the dessert table. Talking to Dana. Laughing with Logan about something.
And every now and then, our eyes meet.
Just for a second. Just long enough for my pulse to spike and my skin to heat and the memory of her mouth to flash through my brain like lightning.
She looks away first. Every time.
But she always looks back.
Banks appears at my elbow again near the end of the night. “You seem less like someone ran over your dog.”
I smirk. “Told you. I don’t have a dog.”
“And yet.” He studies me with those sharp eyes that see too much. “Something changed.”
“Nothing changed.”
“Liar.” But he doesn’t push. Just lifts his glass in a silent toast and walks away.
I watch Tori say goodbye to Dana, gather her coat, and head for the exit. She doesn’t look at me as she leaves.
This is going to get complicated. I know it is. She’s my PT. She has rules. I have a daughter who can’t handle another person walking in and out of her life.
There are a hundred reasons why this is a terrible idea.
But for the first time in years, I’m not sure I care.