Chapter 13 #3
“Is that like the Bloody Mary legend?” I asked, and he snorted softly just as people started clapping at some announcement I’d missed. Live auction, possibly. Maybe a signed team jersey, maybe an hour on the ice with me. All fine if it channeled real money into worthwhile causes.
Some of them got to take the stage next. A program that funded girls’ hockey clinics and early mentorship. Another that provided mental health support for teenagers in underserved neighborhoods. And then Naomi.
Ninety seconds. What the program did and why it wasn’t about clothes, not really, much more about confidence, about walking into a room with your head held high.
That four kids a month was a drop on a hot stone.
What scaling up could do. She delivered it with relaxed poise and stepped off before anyone could get bored, Stellan just off to the side, attentive without trying to steal focus.
Funny because mine still snagged on him.
Applause rose, warm enough to feel real. Cole angled close. “I like them. It’s small but real, you know?”
“Yeah.” I tried to sound pleased without veering into personal pride. “I saw them with the kids a couple of weeks ago. At the coffee shop where they run it.”
“You did?”
I kept my attention on the stage. “Yeah. Nothing flashy—just clothes, advice, time. But I could see those kids walking out half an inch taller than when they came in.”
Cole was quiet for a second. “That’s meaningful,” he said then.
“Exactly.”
He took another sip of wine. “How’d you even come across it?”
No suspicion, just curiosity—and why not? It was a normal thing to ask, and I had a ready answer. “I met Stellan in September. He fitted me for a suit, and we got talking.”
True enough.
Cole stifled a laugh. “You and a stylist got talking, wow. Now that’s a sentence I never thought you’d say. Is that why you got a couple of sweaters now that look like something you didn’t fish out of the donations pile?”
“Is that how you talk to your captain?”
“I’ve always struggled with authority.”
On stage, the auction started. A meet-and-greet with the whole team. Jerseys. A post-practice skate with our goalie. Someone paid just over two grand for coffee with me, which, cool. A little intense, but cool.
After that, the event opened up again. People drifted.
I did, too, shaking hands just like I was meant to, smiling just like I was meant to, stealing glances at Stellan like I was definitely not meant to.
He was quicker here, looser, more like the guy I’d met back in Chicago—the one who could make an entire room lean toward him with only a few easy words, who read moods the way good players read a rush. It wasn’t fake, though. Just fully on.
And every time I caught a glimpse, something under my ribs went hot and tight.
Mine.
Except, nope. Absolutely not.
I must have slipped up just a little because Joseph found me near the bar and followed my gaze the wrong way, toward Naomi in green. “So that’s what this is,” he said, grinning. “You could’ve just told us you had your sights set on her.”
I huffed out a laugh I didn’t feel and kept moving before he could make me answer.
By the time the first wave of post-program mingling thinned, I’d circled the entire room and somehow ended up back near Stellan and Naomi’s area.
Total accident. Just chatting with Cole, and oops, yeah, there we were. Funny, that.
Stellan was talking to a woman in creamy white and diamonds, with clever eyes and the air of someone who expected rain to part for her. Everything about her said “court me harder,” to quote Naomi, and when Stellan caught my eye for the tiniest moment, I sensed an echo of exactly that.
I crossed over before I could think of all the reasons not to, Cole trailing just behind.
The donor’s face opened as she saw us, and beside her, Stellan straightened almost imperceptibly. He only needed a foot in the door. I could give him that.
“Hi,” I said, offering the woman my hand. “Matt.”
“Of course.” Her smile grew pointed. “Josephine Kent. Josie.”
I made the usual nice-to-meet-you noises, Cole joining us with a smile. Then I gestured at the display board. “These two are doing good work. I’ve been to one of their styling sessions, and it’s the kind of thing that can change a kid’s life, just by helping them show up in a different way.”
Stellan’s gaze stayed on me for a beat too long, face cracked briefly open. Then he shifted his focus to Josie.
He took the opening and ran with it—talked about confidence, about job interviews and what it meant to dress in a way that stopped the world from viewing you as disposable.
Josie nodded and asked smart questions. Naomi stepped in with numbers and a clear, concrete vision they’d built in two weeks, camped out in my kitchen with Reid hammering away at them.
Fuck, I was proud of them. Proud of Stellan. And underneath, something worse. Something hot and possessive that I didn’t want to name.
“It’s small right now,” I tossed in. “But it’s about the idea of dignity. About helping them help themselves.”
Josie nodded, expression warm as she glanced from me to Stellan. “He’s a great ambassador for you, isn’t he?”
Casual comment, but it hit somewhere it shouldn’t—like I’d shown my hand by accident, stepped a little too close to the fire. Stellan’s gaze flickered to me, quick and just a little too naked if you knew where to look.
“He’s been very generous,” he said, smooth as silk.
Yeah. That was one way of putting it.
I moved along because I needed to. Because he was brilliant, and because he and Naomi had it covered. Next to me, Cole had gone oddly silent. We stopped and smiled for a photographer, then kept going.
“What?” I asked after a few steps, voice low for no good reason.
Cole hesitated, like he was weighing something. “Got a second?”
And—fuck.
Fuck.
Turned out that a second was pretty flexible in the charitable-event sense of the word.
We got waylaid by a couple of teammates first, then a sponsor who clearly wanted to impress a business contact. By the time we escaped to the edges of the event, where voices blurred into a polished swell, it’d been more like ten minutes, adrenaline bright in my bloodstream.
It was Cole. Just Cole.
Still.
“So.” I turned to face him and stopped just short of crossing my arms. “You wanted to talk?”
“Yeah,” he said. Then nothing.
I raised my eyebrows.
“Sorry.” His smile was a little too careful. “Just figuring out how to say this. I don’t want to put my foot in it.”
Chill. Might not mean a damn thing.
“Okay,” I said, breath steady. “Noted. I promise to assume the best of intentions.”