Page 237 of Wild Card 13

Then my best friend took my empty coffee cup from me, because Naomi had been putting my pieces in the right place sincemiddle school, and we walked back to the parking lot without trying to solve the rest.

By the time I reached the arena, my hair had gone wild around the edges from the damp air, my eyes looked worse than they had in my apartment mirror, and Dottie had decided fresh snow was a personality trait.

I parked in the staff lot and sat for a moment with the engine running.

The arena rose in front of me, glass and steel and banners, the Frosthawks logo stark against the winter morning. Talon Arena always looked different before the day fully started. Less like spectacle. More like infrastructure. Loading doors. Security lights. A few early staff cars. The quiet machinery behind all the noise.

I had built a life in quiet machinery.

Systems did not ask you to forgive them.

Dottie whined from the back seat.

“I know.” I turned off the engine. “Some of us have jobs.”

She wagged like she considered emotional support a full-time profession.

Inside, the corridors were warm enough to fog my glasses for the first few seconds. The familiar smell of the arena wrapped around me: ice, rubber mats, old coffee, cleaning solution, cold air trapped beneath concrete. Somewhere far down the hall, a door shut. A cart rattled. The building was beginning to wake.

I let Dottie into my office first, filled her water bowl, then grabbed the garment bag from the hook on the back of the door and headed to the staff bathroom with my makeup pouch in one hand.

The bathroom mirror was cruel in fluorescent lighting. My face looked pale beneath the freckles that always came out more when I was exhausted. My eyes were puffy. The skin beneath them looked bruised with lack of sleep. My curls had given up on structure and chosen weather.

I set my makeup pouch on the counter and stared at myself.

For one second, I saw the girl on the porch.

I gripped the edge of the sink until the cold porcelain bit into my palms.

I washed my hands. Patted under my eyes with cold water. Pulled my curls back loosely, then let a few pieces fall becausefighting them would cost more energy than I had. I put on concealer carefully. Mascara. A little blush so I looked alive instead of professionally haunted. Tinted balm. Gold hoops. The delicate necklace I touched too often when I was trying not to feel anything.

Then I changed into navy trousers, a cream turtleneck, and my emerald blazer.

When I stepped back, I looked tired, but functional. Young, but not fragile. A woman who could handle a legal threat, a player schedule, a staffing gap, and a communications audit before noon. A woman who had not cried in Ty Burns’s kitchen hours ago while his dog-fur-covered couch sat in the next room and the whole lake pressed dark against the windows.

I slipped my glasses back on and squared my shoulders. “There,” I told my reflection. “Get in the game.”

My reflection looked unconvinced.

Dottie was sitting behind my desk when I returned, her front paws placed neatly on the rug, her head tilted toward the door like she was waiting for staff. Her tail thumped against the floor.

I dropped my tote beside the desk and started the day the only way I knew how. Email. Calendar. Player availability notes. Charlotte documentation, still organized into folders so aggressively labeled they looked like they had been prepared by someone trying not to have a breakdown.

My coffee from the park was gone, but my body still reached for it twice. The second time, my fingers closed around air and I frowned at my own hand.

I made it through six emails, two schedule confirmations, and one facilities note about a malfunctioning door near the south service corridor before there was a light knock on my open door.

Ty stood in the doorway in team-issued workout gear, damp hair pushed back from his forehead, cheeks still faintly red from cold or exertion. He looked like he had slept about as much as I had, though he was doing a better job hiding it behind broad shoulders and the irritating athletic ability to look alive under poor conditions.

In one hand, he held a lidded cup. In the other, a small paper cup with a tiny lid and a sticker on top.

Dottie went still. Then her nose lifted. I watched betrayal enter her body in real time. Her ears perked. Her tail began a slow,hopeful sweep across the rug. Her entire expression changed from office dog to woman of opportunity.

Ty’s mouth twitched, but he pressed it flat so fast I almost missed it.

He stayed at the threshold, one shoulder near the frame, both offerings held carefully in front of him like evidence he was not planning to use his hands for anything else. “Morning,” he drawled.

My pulse moved everywhere. “Morning.”