Chapter 2 #3
He did, briefly thrown into detail—damp hair curling more with the rain, eyes a little tired and careful.
I reached up on instinct and killed the light before the door had fully shut.
Too bright. Too exposing. The dark rushed back in around us, safer even with the side windows tinted and the street outside wet and largely empty.
Silence.
My pulse thrummed in my fingers and behind the hollow of my throat. “So,” I said. “Is this another setup?”
His head turned sharply toward me. “No. Just… a coincidence.”
Was it? I held his gaze, long enough to catch a flash of something that might be tension, regret, calculation. Hard to tell, with him—I’d had it wrong before. The car felt too small, like all the air had escaped in a rush.
“So you… what?” I let it hang for a moment. “You actually work there?”
His mouth tightened, then softened into an uncertain curve that remained guarded. “I do now. Not when we first met, though.”
I huffed out a sharp, flat laugh. “When my ex hired you, you mean.”
Stellan hesitated, then glanced away, one shoulder coming up in a half shrug. The line of his profile against the nighttime street looked like a movie still. Fuck, of course he’d caught my eye. I just wasn’t usually stupid enough to let my gaze linger.
“So you’re just charming on command?” I asked when the quiet pulled tight between us.
He inhaled, slow and measured. “Not anymore.”
I made a small, humorless sound. “Meaning yes, that’s exactly what it was back then.”
“It wasn’t—” He stopped, eyes holding mine for a second before he looked away. It didn’t seem coy or playful, more like he was protecting himself. When he started again, it was much quieter. “Kind of. But it turned into more than that.”
“You expect me to believe that you… what? Lost your professional composure?” Bitterness rose hot. “That I was more than just a paycheck? Spare me.”
He tipped up his chin, and for a second, he looked like he might argue. Then he seemed to remember what this was, who we were, that he didn’t get to push back. As if he’d read my mood just like that morning with the Chicago skyline glinting in the sun. It made me inexplicably angry.
“Nothing?” I asked, sharp. “No charming quip, no funny little anecdote about fruit platters or a British accent you don’t have?”
“No,” he said simply. His right hand clasped his left wrist, thumb rubbing over the veins there, barely visible in the dark car. He stopped the moment he realized I’d caught him and met my eyes.
“You’re from here, then? You flew over just to make a fool out of me?” The moment it was out, I wanted to take it back. Too close, too fucking real.
“You’re not a fool,” Stellan said, a little more spark to him all of a sudden. “I just… It wasn’t all fake.”
“Or maybe that’s a lie,” I snapped. “Maybe you’re just damn good at what you do.”
His lips parted.
I kept going before he fed me another line. “How did Talia even find you?”
His response came slightly delayed. “Your ex, right? I, um. I read that you guys broke up. After.”
I barked out a harsh laugh. “No, actually. We broke up before you and I even met—it just hadn’t hit the papers yet. That happened after she handed me the pictures, then signed an NDA and walked away with some of my money.”
He flinched. “I’m sorry. I—uh. So it stayed between the two of you?”
“Like you care,” I said.
“I do.” He made it sound simple, no extra polish. “I didn’t know who you were—not until that fan walked up. When I did, when I realized you weren’t out, I tried to stop it.”
Right. I snorted. “Tell me another one.”
“It’s true.” He let it sit between us, and suddenly, sharply, I remembered the fan in his blazer, phone already out—remembered how Stellan’s face had changed, how quickly he’d pulled back.
“Sorry. I didn’t know who you were.”
Maybe.
Then I realized he still hadn’t answered how Talia had found him. Between us, silence spun out, rain a gentle drizzle on the roof, his body a faint warmth in the passenger seat.
“Okay,” I said, the word coming out hard. “Here’s what you did.”
He went completely still.
“You took a stupid, fleeting moment. One slip. And you turned it into leverage. Into something that could explode in my face.”
“Matt…”
“No.” I forced myself to move right past the quiet, careful way he’d said my name.
“Because, see, I don’t do this, okay? I don’t flirt with strangers.
I don’t give people anything they can turn into a story.
I don’t—” My voice tripped, and fuck that.
Fuck him. “I can’t afford to want that. Not with where I’m at right now. ”
I caught the way his breath hitched. He stayed quiet, though, and I turned my head enough to look at him for real.
“Do you get that?” I asked.
“I do.” It was small, tight. Sounded real enough, only I didn’t know what real even meant with him. And then my brain flared with the memory of his body against mine, the warmth of it, how it had made all of me go weak with something that I shouldn’t want.
“But you—just.” My throat burned. “You were good at it.”
“I know.” He paused, quiet for a beat. “It paid well, and I told myself I wasn’t making anyone do anything. Just… creating an opportunity for people to make a bad decision. Their choice, not mine.” His voice dropped. “And then I met you, and I couldn’t justify it anymore.”
“That’s a beautiful line,” I said. “Do you write them down somewhere?”
“It’s not a line,” he said, a little sharper now. “It’s…” He trailed off and shook his head, gaze sliding to the world outside. “Never mind, I guess.”
Christ. A small part of me believed him. Wanted to believe him, maybe—and that, right there, was a reason to walk away before he could fool me all over again.
I tipped back against the headrest, heart too heavy in my chest. He was trouble. But it had been seven months, and there’d been not a single whisper, no rumors about my sexuality. He’d kept his mouth shut. At least he’d done that.
“You said you’d tried to stop it.” My voice came out hushed, less certain than I would have liked. “How?”
“I… don’t think I can answer that.” His attention flicked to me, eyes a charcoal gray in the night. “I wasn’t working alone, you know? But I can’t tell you everything. Like how it works, or how your ex found us.”
“What a convenient excuse.”
“It’s not.” He exhaled. “Your ex isn’t the only one who signed an NDA, and I—I lucked out, landing the job I have now.
” His tone gained the faintest note of urgency, subtle, less like he was begging and more as if he showed me just a glimpse of his hand on purpose.
“The people who employed me before—they could pull the kind of strings that get me fired.”
I could pull the kind of strings that get you fired.
I thought about it—nasty and true, a quick, easy way to get my revenge. I didn’t want to be that kind of guy, though. Turning me into that would hand him power he didn’t deserve.
For a long moment, I let silence twist between us, heavy and unresolved. Then I met his eyes across the dark sliver of space that divided us. “You made me feel seen,” I said. “And then it turned into blackmail material.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated.
“Sorry doesn’t fix a damn thing.”
“I know.”
It wasn’t slick or pretty, just a soft admission, his voice tired like he’d lost his charming persona in a hotel lounge back in Chicago and hadn’t managed to relocate it.
I turned away so I’d stop noticing details like the unsure tilt of his head or the way he’d knotted his fingers together in his lap.
Could all be part of the performance. Woe is me, bullshit dressed up as guilt.
But there were exactly three people in my orbit who knew I was gay: Talia because she’d hired Stellan to turn suspicion into evidence; Reid because I’d told him when things went to shit; and Stellan, next to me right now, the guy who’d posed as a small, harmless risk that exploded in my face.
I didn’t trust him. Not even a little.
But he already knew. And walking away would leave him lodged like a splinter somewhere under my skin.
I turned back to him and made my choice, knew I might regret it even as I did so. Because—fuck. I didn’t do this. I played hard and fast on the ice and kept it safe everywhere else. And then there was him.
“Thursday,” I said. “The final fitting. You’re coming.”
He blinked, eyes wide. “Matt—”
“I mean it.” I leaned in just enough to make the point, voice steady. “I want you where I can see you.”
His shoulders tightened, chin tipping up as he met my eyes. Defiance? Trepidation posing as a challenge? Who the fuck even knew with him.
“Okay,” he said, voice quiet but firm, and something close to a thrill burst hot in my belly.
Thursday.
“We.” Reid stopped for a dramatic pause. “Will sue him out of house and dog.”
I cracked an egg and watched the shell split clean in two. Outside, rain streaked the floor-to-ceiling windows and blurred the city into a wet shimmer of lights and streets, drowning the world below. Gray mornings like this turned my place into an isolated bubble suspended above reality.
Reid sat on one of the stools at the kitchen island, espresso in hand, looking like he’d been awake since three a.m. simply because he could. Friend, manager, human hurricane—all in a day’s work.
“Reid,” I said, reaching for the salt. “Calm down.”
“I will not.” He slid off the stool and pivoted on the kitchen tiles, his free hand gesturing at nothing in particular. “Seriously. Does he have a dog? A cat? A baby hamster? Whatever it is, he better wave it goodbye.”
I whisked the eggs—pre-training routine, predictable. “Predictable is sexy.” Stellan’s voice in my mind, like a replay loop I hadn’t asked for. I shook it off and glanced at Reid. “One, I don’t think he has much money. And two, you and I both know I can’t sue him.”
Reid stopped pacing long enough to shoot me a dark look. “He fucking owes you.”