“The raspberry tarts look a tad pale today, Zoey,” he announces.
“They’re exactly the same as every day, Harold,” Zoey says, her voice flat. She doesn’t look at him as she slides a tart into a small white box.
“Hmph. My eyes aren’t what they used to be, but my taste buds are infallible.” Harold’s gaze flicks to me, then back to Zoey.“Though I suppose somedistractionsare worth a slightly under-baked tart.”
Zoey’s spine goes stiff as she hands him the box. “Tell Millie I said hi.”
Harold leaves, and when the door closes, Zoey finally looks at me. Her eyes are still guarded and wary, like she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like she expects me to say I’ve changed my mind, that I’m catching the next flight to New York.
It fucking guts me.
“I, um, I gotta head to The Den.”
Her expression doesn’t change, she just hums as if it's the best thing her racing mind can fester right now.
"I didn't wake her," I add, nodding toward the stairs. "Figured she could use the sleep after last night. One day off school won't hurt, right?"
Zoey's hands still on the coffee cup she's cleaning. For a second, I think she's going to tell me that Morgan's attendance record isn't my concern, that I don't get to make those calls.
Instead, she just exhales. "Yeah. One day won't kill her."
"I'll be back in a couple hours," I say, grabbing my jacket and sliding Morgan's drawing in the internal pocket. "Just need to check in with the trainers, maybe do some light work on the ice."
I cross the bakery floor and move behind the counter before she can dodge me. I lean in and press a soft kiss to her cheek, my lips lingering against her warm skin.
She freezes, her hands going still on the towel she’s clutching.
As I turn for the door, I hear her whisper, so quiet I almost miss it.
“Be careful on the ice.”
I glance back, but she’s already turned away, scrubbing at the counter like her life depends on it. And I know, right then, I’d give up every arena in the world to be right here, to ease her quiet worry, to stay with the kid sleeping upstairs.
I'll do anything to stay in this tiny kingdom she's created.
I sit in my SUV in the players’ lot of The Leopard Den, engine off, staring at the massive purple and gold leopard head logo above the main entrance.
This building has been my home for two years. The ice inside is where I’ve bled, sweated, laughed, and lost. It’s where I’ve performed for crowds of thousands, where I’ve chased pucks and approval with equal desperation.
It’s also where Gabe Devereaux shattered my entire fucking world with a single, devastating hit.
I close my eyes, and the memory surfaces: the blinding pain, the tunnel vision, the panic as I realized I couldn’t get up.
And then… her.
Zoey, sitting in my hospital room with a box of blueberry muffins and no idea what to say. For the first time in my life, someone saw me as just a guy in a bed, not an asset or an opportunity.
Those weeks of recovery that followed… The frustration, the uselessness, the fear that maybe this was it. The dark thoughts that maybe I’d peaked and this was the slow, quiet slide into obscurity…
They were hell.
But then Delaney assigned me to Butter Batch. And suddenly, I had a reason to get up in the morning that wasn’t just another set of rehab exercises.
I pull out my phone. My thumb hovers over my agent’s contact. The man who’s been negotiating my contracts sinceI was eighteen. The man who called the New York offer 'the opportunity of a lifetime.'
I tap the call button, and it rings twice.
“Colt! My man. I was just about to call you. New York is getting antsy. They need an answer by end of day. But I think we can squeeze another half mil out of them if we play hardball. What do you think?”
