Page 390 of Power Play

Cade nodded reluctantly. “Call me.”

“I will.”

“You mean it?”

“Yes.”

He pulled me into another hard embrace. Briggs joined because boundaries had never stopped him before. Rider added his hand to the back of my neck, and Easton struck my shoulder. My boys held me inside the happiest moment of my life while understanding it was also one of the worst.

When they released me, I looked toward the people waiting to celebrate.

“Go party,” I told them. “Make Gray put on pants before somebody photographs him.”

“No promises,” Hollis said.

Gray opened his jacket. “The professional body is art.”

“Your body isn’t professional,” Waters told him.

Laughter returned, and I let it follow me through the corridor, past the darkened rink, and toward the exit.

The Milwaukee contract sat inside the folder beneath my arm. A new city waited at the end of the Frost season, offering a clean apartment without roads I’d driven with Charm beside me, a bookstore where she’d never touched a first edition, and a kitchen where she’d never danced barefoot. There would be no bedroom where I’d learned what it felt like to wake beside someone and believe she would remain.

Milwaukee was close enough to my boys and far enough from her. I’d signed with every intention of moving there the second the Frost season released me.

Tonight, I would return alone to the lodge I’d built as a surprise for a woman who never got to see what I made for her. One dream had finally come true while the other died before I could tell her about it.

29

Ryan

The Uber left me beneath the resort lights with Milwaukee’s contract tucked beneath my arm and enough silence waiting inside the main lodge to make me regret sending everyone away.

I’d handed Rider my truck keys outside the arena because he and Briggs planned to stay at Ember’s until Gray either found his pants or got arrested. Cade and Easton would leave early with Bliss and Aura, which meant nobody had to cut their night short to bring me back. It made sense when I arranged it. I told the guys I needed a few hours alone to understand how one of the best nights of my life could hurt this fucking much.

Now the taillights disappeared down the drive, and being alone felt different from wanting it.

Snow crunched beneath my dress shoes as I crossed the parking lot. The travel suit was required after every game, but it had become another thing I wanted off my body. The collar pressed against my throat, my tie felt too tight, and the bruise beneath my eye pulled every time the cold touched it.

Milwaukee’s logo was stamped across the black folder in my hand, and my signature waited inside it.

I had fucking made it.

The thought lifted something beneath my ribs before everything surrounding it dragged me back down. I’d played the best game of my life in front of three professional organizations. I signed the contract I’d wanted since I was eight years old. A team looked at every jagged piece of me and decided I belonged in its future.

After every goal, I still searched the stands for Charm.

I unlocked the lodge and stepped into the dark. The celebration remained everywhere. Bottles covered the counter beside half-eaten pizza. Frost-colored streamers hung from the beams, and Briggs’s flashing blue cowboy hat sat crooked on the dining table. Someone had left music playing quietly through the speakers, and the song was upbeat enough to feel insulting.

I placed the contract on the counter and stared at it. The numbers hadn’t changed, and neither had my name.

Loosening my tie didn’t relieve the pressure around my throat. Taking it off felt like admitting the night had ended, and I wasn’t ready for that yet. As long as I wore the suit and the folder remained closed, I could stay inside the moment before this became my real life.

I was a professional hockey player moving to Milwaukee and building a future that no longer included the woman I once expected to follow me into it.

I gripped the edge of the counter and lowered my head. My reflection hovered inside the dark kitchen window, a bruised face above an expensive suit, looking like someone who belonged in a life I hadn’t learned how to wear.

A cabinet closed behind me.