15. Ryan #2
It wasn’t just the wanting, though there was plenty of that.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the things I wanted to do with her, the things she’d just promised.
Underneath it was steadier, and that was the part I kept circling back to.
I loved how she was with all of them. Trading insults with Cole, pulling forty quiet minutes out of Eli, reading Griffin’s moods before he had them.
She was the center of gravity in every room she walked into, and somewhere along the way she’d become the center of mine too.
The wanting and that had stopped being separate things.
That was the problem. Or it wasn’t a problem at all, depending on how brave I was willing to be about it.
Dee slid a fresh one across the bar. She picked it up and started to turn back toward the table and I said, quiet enough that only she could catch it, “You’re the most beautiful woman in the room, and I’ve been thinking about getting my mouth on you since you walked in.”
She stopped. Her shoulders dropped, then went deliberately still, like she was reigning herself back in. She didn’t look back at me.
“Ryan,” she said, low, and I heard the effort it took to keep her voice even.
She licked a slow line of salt from the rim, her eyes on mine the whole time.
Then she took a small sip, dragged her tongue across her bottom lip, and turned to walk back to the table like she hadn’t just lit me on fire in the middle of a crowded bar.
I groaned, low and entirely internal, and watched her walk away, my eyes dropping to the sway of her hips because I was only so strong.
Two could play at this. She was just better at it.
I was still standing there counting to ten when Eli materialized at the bar beside me, apparently also in need of something.
He said nothing. He didn’t look at me. He ordered a club soda from Dee with a single gesture and stood there waiting for it with the economy that was Eli, no wasted movement, ever, and I stared at the wall.
Eli collected his drink and went back to the table without a word, and I had the distinct sense he had logged whatever he’d just witnessed in the same internal ledger he kept on everything else, to be produced at a later date entirely at Eli’s discretion.
I waited another five seconds and followed.
Griffin had wandered off toward the bar ten minutes earlier and come back with company. A woman in a red dress, dark hair in careful waves, who he'd apparently fallen into conversation with while waiting on his drink and who he was now steering toward our table.
"Ryan," he said, dropping back into his seat. "This is Tiffany. Tiffany, Ryan. He's the captain."
He said it like he was handing me a gift.
Across the table, Maren was deep in a story with Paige, hands going, Paige laughing. She hadn't clocked any of it.
Tiffany slid into the empty chair beside me and turned the full force of her attention on me. "The captain," she repeated in a purr that made me deeply uncomfortable. "I read about you."
"Hey," I said, and reached for my water.
She was talking before I'd set it down. About the season, about a power play sequence she'd apparently rewound twice, about how she'd never met a hockey player before but had always wanted to. Her knee found mine under the table. I shifted. She didn't.
A few minutes in, Maren stood up. "Bathroom," she said to Paige, and headed toward the back.
She passed close enough behind my chair that I caught the scent of her, and she didn't look down at Tiffany or at me, and I couldn't tell if she'd seen the situation at the table or simply hadn't registered it yet.
I made myself nod at the right places while Tiffany talked, and the whole time I was watching the bathroom hallway and doing the math on how long Maren had been gone.
I was doing great.
Tiffany's hand moved to my thigh under the table. She leaned in closer, her chin near my ear, and she smelled like expensive perfume and ambition.
"I've been watching you play all season," she said. "You're not from here, right? Minnesota?"
"Originally." I shifted my leg. Her hand stayed where it was.
Across the table, Cole had gone completely still. He caught my eye over Tiffany's shoulder.
Help.
I couldn't make a scene. Not here, not with Griffin beaming about it from across the table and half the roster watching, not without it becoming the kind of story that got back to Maren sideways, secondhand and distorted, and could hurt worse than the truth.
So I sat there and counted the minutes until I could end the conversation without looking like a total asshole.
Griffin was up at the bar again, and when I glanced over he caught my eye and gave me a thumbs-up. Big, dorky, delighted with himself, like he'd personally engineered the best night of my life.
He had no idea.
The thought of Maren coming back and seeing any of this, Tiffany's knee against mine and her brother beaming about it, made my stomach churn.
I looked at the bathroom hallway. It opened.
Maren came out pulling her hair back over one shoulder, phone going into her pocket, and eyes moving toward the table.
And she saw it. Tiffany pressed close, Tiffany's shoulder against mine, her hand now on my arm, the whole shape of the situation.
It lasted less than a second. Her eyes went flat and her chin came up a fraction and she crossed the room and dropped into her chair beside Paige and said something that made Paige laugh, and she did not look at me again.
Paige looked at me. Once, level, and then away.
I moved my leg again. Tiffany followed it.
The next ten minutes felt like thirty and were the longest of my professional life.
Griffin came back and stayed standing, holding court about Calgary's defensive line to anyone who'd listen.
Theo argued with him about it. Cole tried twice to redirect the conversation toward me and got nowhere.
Tiffany kept talking, kept touching, kept finding reasons to lean in, and every time she did it I moved and every time I moved she closed the distance again like it was a game we'd agreed to play. Which we had not.
And Maren sat six feet away and laughed at things Paige said and did not look at me one single time.
I knew what that cost her. That was the part I couldn't stand. She was doing exactly what we'd agreed she'd do, holding up her end perfectly, and it was costing her something I could see from across a table and couldn't say a word about.
"So," Tiffany said finally, her knee still against mine. "Are you seeing anyone? Because I'd very much like to change that if you're not." She smiled. "Or even if you are."
Her hand came to rest on me again, and I picked it up by the wrist and set it back in her own lap. Obviously I should have done that to begin with but again, I was trying not to make a scene.
"I have a girlfriend," I growled.
Maybe I didn't growl, but I was trying to get the point across.
"Oh." Tiffany sat back. "Lucky her." She turned toward Cole, recalibrating.
I looked up before I could stop myself.
Maren was turned toward Eli, elbow on the wood, her back three-quarters to me, and Griffin was still going about Calgary two feet from her ear, and the jukebox had picked that exact moment to come back up.
She hadn't heard a word of it.
I had said it, out loud, in a room, and the one person it belonged to had been looking the other way.
Only Eli heard it.
Down the table he looked up from his club soda. Eli, who had two expressions and used neither of them generously, raised an eyebrow at me. And then, the part that should have alarmed me, he smirked.
The man did not smirk. I'd seen him stone-faced through a playoff-clinching game. But he'd heard the word and he was looking at me like he'd just won a bet with himself.
I held his eyes and gave him nothing. He went back to his drink, still smirking.
And I sat with what had just come out of my mouth.
I have a girlfriend.
I hadn't planned to say it. It was just true, and it had come out before I could think about whether to say it.
We'd never put a word to it, never had that conversation.
Somewhere between the family skate and now I'd decided she was mine, and the word had been sitting there ever since, waiting for me to catch up to it.
Girlfriend. I turned the word over. I had no interest in taking it back.
In fact, I had every interest in her hearing me say it.
Griffin dropped into his seat and caught the tail end of Tiffany turning toward Cole. "Are you serious," he said to me, low. "She was right there."
"I'm good, Griff."
"She literally—"
"I know." I picked up my water. "I'm good."
Griffin shook his head and turned to hand Maren a drink she hadn't asked for, easy and oblivious, and she took it and thanked him and was completely normal with him, and I watched her actively avoid making any eye contact with me. Fuck. I’m in trouble.
I knew that posture. I'd watched her use it in her kitchen the morning after our first night together. Putting a wall up.
I couldn't do a single thing about it. Not at this table, not with Griffin two feet to my left.
That was the deal. That was what we'd agreed to.
I hadn't felt the weight of it land quite this hard before.
Griffin was holding court, talking to the table about something I wasn’t even listening to for at least another fifteen minutes. At some point I looked up and Maren's chair was empty.
I scanned the bar. Bathroom hallway, patio door, the cluster near the jukebox. Not there.
I got up and took Maren's empty chair beside Paige. It was the only way to ask without it looking suspicious.
"Where'd she go?" I didn’t waste any time getting to the point, and I was ninety-nine percent sure Paige knew the score between me and her best friend anyway.
Paige held my stare. "Home."
"When?"
"Ten minutes ago." She picked up her drink. "You were talking to Griffin."
I hadn't seen her leave. Hadn't seen her say goodbye to anyone, hadn't seen her at the door. She'd just left.
I stared at the door.