Silence. Max keeps looking at me. “I’m busy,” he says finally.
She smiles tighter. “Doing what?”
His gaze never leaves mine. “Trying not to ruin my life.”
My pulse stumbles hard. The blonde blinks. Anthony, unfortunately, chooses this exact moment to walk between us carrying two garment bags and the energy of a raccoon discoveringfireworks. “Oh my God,” he breathes. “That was the hottest and most emotionally concerning thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Keep walking,” Max says.
Anthony absolutely does not keep walking. Instead, he looks between us with naked delight. “Toni, did you hear that? Because if not, I recorded it emotionally.”
“I hate this team,” I mutter.
“You’re joining the family, though,” Anthony says brightly.
Security finally redirects the blonde back behind the barricade while Max moves toward the hotel doors. He slows down beside me. Walking close without touching. Which somehow feels more intimate now. “You okay?” he whispers. I should say yes immediately. Instead, my eyes betray me and flick once toward the crowd of women still openly staring at him. Max notices. Of course, he notices. The corner of his mouth twitches slightly. “Toni.”
“It’s nothing.”
“That looked like jealousy.”
“It was observational irritation.”
“That’s not a real thing.”
“It is to me.”
His grin deepens now. Slow. Dangerous. Exhaustingly handsome. “You jealous, coach?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
Heat climbs my neck instantly. I start toward the lobby before he can see how hard that landed, but Max catches the handle of my rolling bag first.My steps stop automatically.
"You don't have to worry about that," he says, his voice steady and certain. I look up before I can stop myself. The noise of the hotel entrance drops away around us for one suspended second. Players moving past. Fans yelling outside. Lobby music drifting through the revolving doors. None of it reaches me properly. Because Max is looking at me with that expression again. The private one. The one I haven't named yet, but feels dangerous because it belongs entirely to me.
Then Anthony appears over Max’s shoulder again, like a deeply irritating ghost. “Hey,” he says conversationally, “quick question. Are we all pretending that wasn’t basically a public declaration of yearning or?—”
“Dudek,” Trey says sharply from the lobby.
Anthony points at him triumphantly. “SEE? EVEN THE CAPTAIN FELT IT.”
I quickly retreat into the stairwell to the next floor and grab a different elevator. They were all too involved in their own banter to notice. Max probably noticed when he turned back around and I was gone, but he knows why.
Chapter Seventeen
Max Stevens
The hotel is the kind that costs the league money and has a bar that costs the players’ money and a gym that everyone intends to use at six a.m. and nobody actually does except Trey, who is genuinely not human. When I get my key at the front desk, everyone else is either still signing autographs outside or already in the elevator. Toni disappears after Anthony starts making a public joke about us. Logical. I take the elevator to the twelfth floor. Room 1214. The hallway is empty. Thick carpet. That pressed, recycled air that all hotels share, regardless of price point. I’m working the key card when the elevator opens again and I hear the specific click of her heels on the marble-to-carpet transition, and I don’t turn around because I will not manufacture a moment in a hotel corridor atten forty-five p.m.I will go to my room, go inside, and be a professional.The key card works on the second try.
“1216,” she says from behind me. I turn. She’s holding her key card up with the expression of a woman presenting evidence at trial. The room across the hall from mine. Of course. “Hm,” I say.
“The universe has a terrible sense of humor.”
“Or a great one.” I hold the door open. My room. She doesn’t take it as an offer. She crosses to her own room and presses her key card to the reader. Nothing happens. She tries again. Still nothing. “Do you want?—”
“No,” she tries a third time. The little light stays red. She tips her head back briefly, eyes on the ceiling in the manner of a woman who has run out of patience for things that don't work. “I can call down?—”
