Chapter Twenty-One
PLAYING THE GAME
Zayden
We’re careful.
Polite nods as we pass each other. Kill me.
Professional distance during team meals. Slowly.
No lingering looks when anyone might be watching. Torture.
No touching, even when my hand itches to find the small of her back. The worst kind of torture.
She treats me like any other player when we’re around the team—professional, distant, all business.
At least, that’s the plan.
The reality is messier. The reality is me tracking her across the hotel lobby like some lovesick idiot, pretending I’m checking my phone while I watch her talk to Dana about tomorrow’s schedule. The reality is catching her eye for half a second and feeling it everywhere.
“You’re staring,” Banks says, dropping into the chair next to me.
“I’m not staring.”
“You’re absolutely staring.” He doesn’t even look up from his phone. “You’ve been staring since we landed.” For a guy with the resting expression of someone plotting violence, Banks is annoyingly perceptive about other people’s emotions.
“Mind your business.”
“This is my business. You’re my ride or die, Bish. If you crash and burn, I have to hear about it.” He finally glances at me, one eyebrow raised. “You two being smart about this?”
“We’re being careful.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I don’t answer, because the truth is I don’t know anymore. Smart would be keeping my distance. Smart would be waiting until the season’s over, until she’s not technically part of my medical staff, until there’s no risk to her career.
Smart went out the window somewhere around the third time I kissed her.
“Just... don’t get caught,” Banks says quietly. “For her sake, if not yours.”
“I know.”
He nods once and goes back to his phone, and I return to not staring at Tori across the lobby.
She’s wearing that gray sweater again. The soft one that slips off her shoulder sometimes. I want to put my mouth on that shoulder. I want to do a lot of things I shouldn’t be thinking about in a hotel lobby surrounded by my teammates.
She glances over. Our eyes meet.
One corner of her mouth twitches—barely there. A secret meant just for me.
Then she turns back to Dana like nothing happened, and I remember how to breathe.
· · ·
The in-between moments are where we live now.
The hotel hallway at midnight, when everyone else is asleep, and I “happen” to need ice from the machine near her room.
She opens her door on the second knock, wearing an oversized T-shirt and sleep shorts, her hair loose around her shoulders. Her eyes widen when she sees me.
“Zayden, what are you—”
I crowd her backward into the room, kicking the door shut behind me.
“Five minutes,” I say, my hands already finding her waist. “Just give me five minutes.”
“Someone could have seen you.”
“No one saw me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Tori.” I tip her chin up, forcing her to meet my eyes. “Five minutes. Then I’ll go.”
She stares at me for a long moment. Then her shoulders drop, and she fists the front of my shirt, pulling me closer.
“Five minutes,” she says. “And then you’re gone.”
I kiss her before she can change her mind.
She tastes like toothpaste and something sweet, and when she sighs against my mouth, her whole body softens into mine.
I forget every reason this is a bad idea.
My hands slide up her back, pulling her flush against me, and she makes a quiet sound that I want to hear on repeat for the rest of my life.
“Missed you,” I murmur against her lips.
“You saw me three hours ago.”
“Too long.”
She laughs, breathy and warm, and I walk her backward until her knees hit the edge of the bed. She sits, then scoots back, and I follow, stretching out beside her on the crisp hotel sheets.
For a moment, we just lie there, facing each other, close enough that I can count the flecks of gold in her brown eyes. Her hand comes up to rest on my chest, right over my heartbeat.
“This is dangerous,” she whispers.
“Probably.” I bring her hand to my mouth and press a kiss to her knuckles. “Can’t seem to make myself leave.”
She watches me with an expression I can’t quite read. Then she shifts closer, tucking herself against my chest, and I wrap my arm around her like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
We lie there for a while—her head on my shoulder, my fingers tracing lazy patterns on her arm. The room is dimly lit, except for the glow from the desk lamp and the city lights filtering through the curtains.
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Your rule. The no-players thing.” I keep my voice soft. “Did that come from somewhere?”
She goes still against me—not pulling away, just... bracing.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I add. “I just figured—we’re lying here in the dark, spilling secrets. Seemed like the right time to ask.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. Then she exhales, her breath warm against my chest.
After a beat, she says, “His name was Jason. He was the starting quarterback at my college.”
I keep my arm steady around her.
“I played soccer,” she continues. “Division I. We met at some athlete mixer freshman year. He was...” She laughs, but there’s no warmth in it. “He was the golden boy. Charming, good-looking—everyone knew him, everyone loved him. I thought I was so lucky that he picked me.”
My jaw tightens, but I stay quiet.
“It started small. A text I saw on his phone. A story that didn’t add up. I confronted him, and he apologized, said it would never happen again.” She exhales slowly. “And I believed him. Because I wanted to. Because it was easier than admitting I’d been stupid.”
“You weren’t stupid.”
“I was. Because it happened again. And again. And every time, he’d apologize, promise to change, and I’d stay.” Her voice goes flat. “For two years, I stayed. Watching him charm everyone while I made excuses, telling myself it would get better.”
I want to find this guy and break every bone in his body.
“What finally made you leave?”
“I walked in on him with a freshman from the volleyball team.” She shrugs against me, a small, tight movement. “Hard to make excuses when it’s happening right in front of you.”
“Tori...”
“But the worst part wasn’t the cheating.
It was what happened after.” She finally looks up at me, her eyes dry but hard.
“When I ended it, he told everyone I was the crazy ex—obsessive, jealous, making things up. And people believed him. Because he was Jason—star quarterback, the golden boy, everyone’s favorite. And I was just the girl who dated him.”
My arm tightens around her.
“I watched my reputation disappear overnight,” she says quietly.
“I wasn’t Tori Wells, soccer player, good student, a person with her own life.
I was ‘the girl who dated Jason.’ The cautionary tale.
People looked at me with pity, as if I should have known better than to think someone like him would actually want someone like me. ”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Maybe. But it’s also how the world works.” She settles her head back on my shoulder. “That’s when I made the rule: no athletes. No one who could turn me into a story instead of a person. No one with that kind of power over my reputation again.”
I press my lips to the top of her head and hold them there.
“He was an idiot,” I say against her hair. “A complete and total idiot who didn’t deserve a single second of your time.”
I tilt her face up to mine and press a soft kiss to her mouth.
She’s quiet for a moment, her fingers tracing absent patterns on my chest. “There was something else, too.”
“Yeah?”
“My first job out of grad school. A sports medicine clinic that worked with a college basketball team.” She exhales slowly. “There was another trainer there—Carla. She was good. Really good. Better than me, honestly. She’d been there for years.”
I wait, worried I know where this is going.
“She started seeing one of the players. Kept it quiet, thought she was being careful.” Tori shrugs against me. “Someone found out. I don’t even know who or how. But within a week, she was gone. No formal termination, no big announcement. Just... quietly removed. Like she’d never existed.”
“What happened to the player?”
“Nothing.” Her voice goes flat. “He finished the season, got drafted, moved on with his life. Meanwhile, Carla couldn’t get a reference, couldn’t explain the gap in her resume without the story following her. Last I heard, she had to take a demotion just to find another job.”
My jaw tightens.
“This rule isn’t just about protecting my heart.
It’s about protecting everything I’d worked for.
” She looks up at me. “Women in sports medicine—we’re already fighting to be taken seriously.
One wrong move and you’re not the talented trainer anymore.
You’re the cautionary tale. The one who couldn’t keep it professional. ”
I release a long, heavy exhale, hating that part of me knows she’s right.
She stares at me, eyes searching. “Your turn,” she whispers.
“My turn?”
“Fair’s fair. I showed you mine.”
I almost smile. Almost.
Then I think about Sienna, and the almost-smile dies.
“Maisie’s mom... Sienna.”
Tori waits. Her hand finds mine in the dark, fingers intertwining.
“We met at a charity event. She was beautiful, charming, knew all the right things to say.” I stare at the ceiling. “I was twenty-two and naive, thinking I’d found the real thing.”
“What happened?”
“She got pregnant. I thought that meant we were building something, you know? A family.” The words come out flat. “Turns out we had very different definitions of that word.”
“How so?”
“Sienna didn’t want to be a mom. She wanted to be a hockey wife—the glamour, the money, the lifestyle. She thought a baby would be... I don’t know, an accessory. Something cute for Instagram photos.”
Tori’s hand tightens on mine.
“When she realized that motherhood was actually hard—the sleepless nights, the crying, the mess—she checked out. She hired nannies and started traveling for ‘work.’” I make air quotes in the dark. “She’s an influencer now.”
“And Maisie?”