Page 121 of Her Player

“Is fine.”

“Rhett—”

“Victoria.” I leaned my forearms on the top of the boards between us, bringing my face level with hers. “We won.”

Something cracked open in her eyes. Fast and unguarded, the way things only showed when she forgot to hold them back. Her jaw worked. She pressed her lips together.

“I know,” she said quietly.

“Ryan’s team won the championship.”

That was the one that got her.

I watched her face crumple for exactly one second, just one, before she pulled it back together with the iron will of a woman who had been pulling herself back together for fourteen years. But her eyes stayed bright. Dangerously bright.

“Don’t you dare make me cry in this arena,” she said, her voice only slightly unsteady.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Miss C.”

She reached across the boards and straightened my collar with two fingers, a completely unnecessary gesture given that I was in full hockey gear, which I think we both understood, and then her hand stilled against my chest.

I covered it with mine.

“The whole world is watching,” she said quietly.

“I know.”

“Every camera in this building.”

“I know.”

“The PHL conduct committee is probably already drafting⁠—”

“Victoria.”

She looked up at me.

“Do you trust me?” I asked.

She held my gaze for a long moment. Long enough that I felt the weight of everything it contained. Three years and a dead husband and a franchise she built from grief and a photograph in gray morning light and a phone flipped face down on a kitchen counter.

“Yes,” she said.

I leaned across the boards and kissed her.

Not a quiet kiss. Not a careful, controlled, scripted kiss designed for anyone’s approval or PR strategy. A real one. The kind that had three years of patience behind it and no intention of apologizing for itself. I felt her hand curl into my jersey. I felt her lean into it despite everything her brain was probably telling her.

The arena lost its mind.

I was fairly certain Jett’s voice was the loudest thing in the building.

When I pulled back Victoria’s eyes were still closed for half a second before she opened them. Her glasses had gone crooked again. I reached up and straightened them with one finger the way I always did and she let out a breath that sounded like something being set down after a very long time of carrying it.

“Well,” she said.

“Well,” I agreed.

“I suppose we’re doing this publicly then.”