23. Scottie Reed
Scottie Reed
Ivy: Blink twice if you’re in love with him.
Me: I’m blocking you.
***
The hotel carpet is a dizzying pattern of maroon and gold spirals, and I have been staring at the exact same gold loop by the baseboard of Room 412 for nineteen minutes.
I know it’s nineteen minutes because my phone has buzzed four times with automated email notifications from the agency’s central server, and every time I check the screen, the digital clock reminds me that I am actively losing my mind in a public hallway.
My hand goes up. My knuckles hover exactly two inches from the dark wood of the door. Then I drop my arm, turn around, walk five steps toward the ice machine, stop, and march right back.
I am standing outside Finnian O’Connell’s hotel room at ten o’clock on a Tuesday night and my heart is hitting my ribs like a puck rattling around a blender.
It’s been a week since the commentary coach disaster. We survived the play-by-play drills, we survived the early morning rush, and we officially wrapped up the last scheduled training session this afternoon.
The shoulder is pristine. The anxiety that brought us out here should be gone.
Instead, it’s been replaced by a different kind of tension.
The kind that’s been building ever since that karaoke bar, ever since that jazz club, ever since I decided that the best way to handle my growing, terrifying attraction to my star client was to simply pretend it wasn’t happening.
Except the human brain can only sustain that level of delusion for so long before it starts fracturing at the seams.
I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and bring my knuckles down hard against the wood before I can talk myself out of it again.
Knock, knock, knock.
The door flies open so fast I actually jump back a step.
Cash is standing in the doorway, wearing a pair of gray sweatpants and a green t-shirt that stretches tight across his shoulders. His hair is damp from the shower, sticking up in dark blonde, messy spikes, and he’s holding a plastic television remote in his left hand.
“Finally,” he says, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe.
“What?”
“You’ve been pacing out there for twenty minutes. The shadow under my door has been doing laps.” He tosses the remote up a few inches and catches it. “I was starting to think I was going to have to come out there and rescue you.”
My face instantly heats up.
I stammer, my tongue suddenly feeling twice its normal size. “I—I wasn’t pacing. I was checking emails. The reception in my room is terrible.”
“Right. Sure.”
“Anyway,” I say, my voice squeaking slightly.
I clear my throat, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, hyper-aware of how close he is, how warm the air moving out of his room feels.
“Do you want to… uh… I mean, I was thinking about the schedule, and…” I trail off, my brain totally blanking.
He’s just staring at me with those ridiculous, clear eyes, enjoying my breakdown.
I shake my head, taking a step back toward the elevators. “You know what? Never mind. Forget it. Go back to your movie.”
I turn on my heel, ready to sprint down the maroon-and-gold carpet, but before I can take a single full stride, a large, warm hand clamps down on my shoulder.
“Hey,” Cash says, his grip firm but gentle as he easily catches me, his fingers sinking into the soft fabric of my sweater.
He guides me back around until I’m facing him again. His expression has softened, the smug smirk turning into a genuine smile. “I’m kidding. Come here. What did you want?”
I look at his hand on my shoulder, then up at his face. The casual touch makes my stomach do that stupid, familiar flip.
I let out a defensive sigh, crossing my arms over my chest to keep myself from reaching out to touch him back.
“We have three free days,” I say, the words coming out in a rush. “Before we have to start the drive to Nashville. So… I was just wondering if you wanted to do something. Like, anything that doesn’t involve an ice rink or an older man screaming about municipal zoning.”
“Come inside. Let’s look at the options.”
I hesitate for a grand total of one second before I walk past him.
His room is identical to mine—king-sized bed, generic beige curtains, a desk covered in sports drink bottles and laptop chargers—but because it’s Cash’s, it feels smaller, dominated by his presence.
I sit down on the edge of the desk chair, pulling my knees up toward my chest, while Cash drops onto the foot of the bed, leaning his back against one of the wooden posts.
“Three days,” he repeats, looking up at the ceiling as he thinks. “No skates. No coaches. No video review.”
“Strictly civilian activities,” I agree. “I can book us a museum tour, or there’s a really highly rated steakhouse downtown—”
“A hike,” Cash says, cutting me off instantly. He looks over at me, his eyes bright with a sudden, terrible enthusiasm. “We’re in Atlanta, Scottie. We should head up north into the Blue Ridge Mountains. Get some real air into our lungs before we get stuck in the humidity.”
I stare at him.
The silence stretches between us for three full seconds before I let out a flat, horrified laugh.
“Oh, fuck no.”
“Why not?”
“Cash, look at me,” I say, gesturing wildly to my entire body. “I am the least athletic person on the North American continent. My entire identity is built around sitting in air-conditioned offices and signing things with expensive pens.”
“You’re an athlete’s representative,” he points out. “You have to understand the physical relationship with nature.”
“I understand the physical relationship with a comfortable couch,” I shoot back. “If I go into the wilderness, I will die. A squirrel will look at me funny and my brain will simply shut down. Choose something else. A movie. A very safe, indoor movie with reclining seats.”
“We’re going on a hike,” he says.
He stands up, walking over to where I’m sitting, towering over the chair until I have to tilt my head all the way back to look at him.
“Come on, Scottie. It’s just a trail. A walk through the woods. I’ll carry the water. I’ll protect you from the squirrels.”
“I don’t have the footwear for this, O’Connell,” I argue. “My sneakers aren’t meant for hiking. They’re meant for style. I will snap my ankles within forty yards of the trailhead.”
Cash doesn’t even hesitate. He walks over to his luggage, flips open a smaller duffel bag, and pulls out a pair of thick, gray woolen hockey socks and an extra pair of cross-trainers he uses for off-ice warm ups.
He drops them at my feet.
“Wear these,” he says. “They’ll be huge on you, but if we tie the laces tight enough, you won’t sink into the mud. No excuses.”
I look at the giant sneakers, then up at his ridiculous, handsome face.
He looks so genuinely excited, so completely free of the dark cloud that has been hanging over his head since his injury in January.
I let out a long, dramatic groan, burying my face in my hands. “If a bear eats me, my ghost is going to sue your estate for every single dollar of your signing bonus.”
“Deal,” Cash laughs. “Be downstairs at seven AM. And bring a jacket.”
***
The drive up north into the mountains takes over an hour, and for the first forty-five minutes, I am a model of silent, resentful protest.
I sit in the passenger seat of our vintage van, wearing Cash’s giant gray sneakers—which make my feet look like two oversized cinder blocks—and a black sweatshirt that I stole from his bag.
The sun is coming up over the dense, rolling ridges, painting the sky in sharp, blinding streaks of pink and orange.
It looks beautiful, but I refuse to acknowledge it out of principle.
“You’re missing the scenery.”
“The scenery is an aggressive display of incline that my lungs are not prepared for,” I mutter, staring straight ahead at the upright, flat dashboard. “Why is everything so high up? Why can’t nature happen at sea level?”
“Because then it wouldn’t be a challenge.”
We drive for another ten minutes, moving deeper into the thick forest until the highway noise fades away, replaced by the crunch of gravel under our tires. The trees are massive out here, towering over the van like green walls, blocking out most of the morning sun.
It’s quiet.
A heavy, isolated kind of quiet that makes the back of my neck prickle.
Cash pulls the van into a small, deserted dirt turnout marked by a weathered metal sign that reads: CHATTAHOOCHEE GAP LOOP - TRAILHEAD.
There are no other cars here. No park ranger station. Just a narrow gap in the dense trees that disappears into the shadows of the ridge.
“We’re the first ones here,” Cash says, sounding incredibly pleased with himself as he kills the ignition. The van’s engine settles into a metallic tick behind us. He hops out of the van, the crisp mountain air rushing into the cabin through his door.
I step out onto the dirt, my giant sneakers sinking slightly into the soft earth covering the ground. I shiver, crossing my arms, watching Cash go to the back of the van to grab a single backpack. He throws a couple of water bottles inside, a bag of trail mix, and his phone.
“Alright,” he says. He looks down at my feet, letting out a soft chuckle. “How are the shoes holding up, Bigfoot?”
“They have no traction, Cash. I feel like I’m walking on two loaves of sourdough bread.”
“You’ll be fine.”
He turns and steps onto the trail, his sneakers clearing the first root with an easy, athletic stride. I take a deep breath, mutter a quick prayer, and follow him into the trees.
***
The first twenty minutes aren’t completely terrible.
The trail slants upward at a moderate angle, the path clear enough for me to avoid twisting my ankles on the rocks protruding from the dirt.
The air is incredibly clean, smelling sharply of damp earth and green canopy, and as my legs get used to the strange rhythm of walking on something that isn’t concrete, I actually start to relax.
Cash stays about three paces ahead of me. He keeps looking back over his shoulder, checking on me every few minutes with a quiet, observant look that he tries to pass off as casual.
“You doing okay back there, Sharky?”
“I am currently sustaining life,” I pant, my chest heaving slightly. “But if you increase the speed by even one mile per hour, I am going to lie down on this rock and let the moss claim me.”
He laughs, stopping on a small flat ridge to let me catch up. “You’re doing great. Look at the view.”
I stand beside him, leaning my hands on my knees as I gasp for oxygen. I look out through a break in the trees, and my breath catches for a completely different reason.
The valley spreads out below us, a massive, unbroken sea of green canopy that stretches all the way to the horizon, where the rolling blue ridges are covered in a faint mist. The sky above is a deep, impossible blue.
“Okay,” I admit. “It’s slightly better than an office cubicle. I’ll give you that.”
“See?” Cash says. “Told you. You just have to get out of your own head, Scottie.”
I look sideways at him.
In the bright, unfiltered morning light, he looks incredible. The sharp lines of his jaw, the faint scar near his eyebrow from a stray stick during his rookie year, the way his dark eyes reflect the deep tones of the ridge.
He turns his head, catching me staring. The easy, playful banter drops away, once again replaced by that heavy, magnetic heat that has been circling us for weeks.
His gaze drops to my lips, lingering there for a long, quiet second, and my heart starts beating even faster than it did during the climb.
I clear my throat quickly, pulling my eyes away and stepping back onto the trail. “Alright, let’s keep moving before my muscles freeze into solid blocks of ice.”
Cash lets out a soft, low sound—half-laugh, half-sigh—and steps back into the lead.
As we move higher, the trail starts to change.
The clear dirt path gives way to larger, sharper rock formations, and the incline gets significantly steeper. The trees get thicker, their branches weaving together overhead until the bright morning sun is blocked out, plunging the trail into a dim, greenish twilight.
The temperature drops fast.
“Cash,” I call out. “Is the trail supposed to get this narrow?”
He doesn’t answer right away. He steps up onto a large boulder, looking ahead into the dense gray shadows of the woods.
The path in front of us has disintegrated into a messy field of loose gravel and fallen logs, the painted trail markers on the trees disappearing.
He pulls his phone out of his pocket, staring at the screen for a moment before flipping it around. “No signal.”
“What do you mean, no signal?” I step up beside him. “How is there no signal?”
“The ridge walls are too steep,” he says, his voice perfectly calm, though his shoulders have gone slightly rigid.
He looks around, his eyes scanning the dense, identical trees that surround us on all sides.
“The trail must have split back by that rock ridge. We took the higher path instead of the loop.”
I look back the way we came, but a thick fog has started rolling down from the upper crests, a heavy, white wall of mist that is rapidly swallowing the forest behind us. The path we just walked up is gone, erased by the gray haze.
A sharp, freezing drop of rain hits my cheek, followed immediately by another.
“Cash,” I say, my voice trembling slightly as I look at the dark woods closing in. “We don’t know where the path is?”
He looks back at me, his expression serious, his dark eyes fixed on mine as the first sheets of a mountain storm begin to crash down through the trees.
“Yeah,” he says. “We’re off the grid, Scottie.”