She stood up, and suddenly we were in very close proximity in a very small room. She moved behind me, her hands firm on my shoulders, adjusting my posture.
"Feel this?" She pressed her fingers against my obliques, and I became acutely aware that a beautiful woman was basically conducting a hands-on anatomy lesson on my body. "You wantto engage here during your butterfly, maintaining that rotational stability."
I was trying very hard to focus on her words rather than the fact that she smelled like something clean and athletic with an underlying hint of vanilla. Her hands were strong, confident, professional.
"So basically," I said, because apparently I couldn't shut up when I was nervous, "figure skaters and hockey players have very different ideas about what constitutes performance enhancement."
Her laugh was surprised and genuine, briefly transforming her severe expression into something warm and real. For a moment, I imagined what it would be like to make her laugh like that regularly, to crack through that controlled exterior and find whatever softness she was hiding underneath.
The door banged open with all the subtlety of a charging bull.
Nolan and Blake filled the doorway, their timing worse than a delayed penalty call. I stepped back from Mira so fast I nearly tripped over my own feet, trying to achieve a casual lean against the wall that probably looked as guilty as it felt.
Nolan's eyes narrowed in that captain way that meant he was cataloging everything for a future lecture. Blake was very pointedly staring at the floor, his ears already turning red.
"Just reviewing footage," I said, too quickly. "Technical analysis. Very professional. Nothing weird happening here."
Nolan's eyebrow rose. "I didn't say anything was weird."
"Right. Because nothing is. Weird. It's all very normal and professional."
"You're making this worse," Mira said calmly, and I was impressed by how unbothered she seemed. She turned back to her laptop like Nolan and Blake hadn't just walked in on what felt like the beginning of something far more interesting than video review.
"Thank you for your time, Jones," she said, dismissing me with the kind of professional efficiency that made me feel like I'd just been politely told to get lost.
Chapter 4: Mira
My phone alarm shattered the pre-dawn quiet at 4:30 AM, but I'd been awake for twenty minutes already, lying in bed and mentally preparing for what I was now calling The Bathroom Situation.
Living with three hockey players meant navigating three different schedules, three different morning routines, and presumably three different levels of bathroom cleanliness. I'd already started mentally preparing a color-coded schedule, because apparently I handled trauma through organizational systems.
The house was silent, which meant I might actually have time to shower in peace before the hockey players began their morning routines. I grabbed my toiletry bag and opened my bedroom door with the stealth of someone sneaking through enemy territory.
The bathroom door was closed. Light glowed from underneath.
I stood in the hallway, debating the merits of just waiting it out, when the door swung open and Blake walked out wearing absolutely nothing but water droplets and an expression of pure horror.
For one frozen moment, my brain completely short-circuited. I'd known Blake was big. I'd seen him on the ice, watched him body-check opponents into next week, observed how he had to duck slightly through doorways. But the sheer scale of him without clothes was something else entirely.
He was enormous. Not just tall, but built—like someone had carved him from granite and then decided to make him evenbigger just for fun. His body was a map of hockey violence: scars on his shoulders, his ribs, his arms. Old injuries telling stories of games past. He was built like the kind of person who could bench press a car but would apologize to the car afterward.
My training kicked in despite the mortification, cataloging everything with clinical detachment: the perfect balance of power and agility, the muscle structure that suggested both explosive force and surprising flexibility, the way his—
Blake made a sound between a squeak and a whimper.
His face turned the color of the Northbridge jerseys—a deep, mortified red that started at his neck and spread upward. He reached blindly for a towel on the rack, wrapping it around his waist with movements that were somehow both frantic and careful, as if he was afraid of making the situation worse.
The towel was comically inadequate for his size. We both realized this simultaneously.
My mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. I managed something that might have been words but sounded more like a dying computer trying to boot up.
"I'm sorry," Blake stammered, backing into the bathroom like he might be able to rewind time if he just retreated fast enough. "I forgot to lock—I'm not usually—"
"It's fine," I squeaked. "This is fine. Everything is completely fine."
Nothing was fine. Everything was actively terrible.
"I didn't expect anyone up this early," Blake continued, his eyes fixed somewhere over my left shoulder like eye contact might actually kill him. "Nobody's usually—I'm so sorry—"
