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The bitter part was that most of those photographs existed because I'd wanted them to.

I'd spent years carefully creating the version of Max Renaud I wanted the world to see, and now I was discovering how difficult it was to object when people believed me.

Two fingers touched my elbow.

I didn't need to look to know it was Ash.

“Keep moving,” he murmured, his voice low and steady enough that only I could hear him.

The irony almost made me laugh. Four days ago, I'd been saying the same thing to him while his father shouted his name in a tunnel, and now Ash was the one quietly guiding me through a crowd while strangers tried to turn the worst decisions I'd made about protecting myself into evidence of something uglier.

I glanced sideways.

Ash didn't look back at me, and he didn't grab my arm or try to steer me. He simply kept his hand close enough that I could feel the occasional brush of his fingers against my sleeve as we walked.

He stayed there until we were safely through the doors.

It was barely fifteen seconds of contact, offered so casually that nobody watching would have thought it meant anything, but Ash wasn't someone who touched people without a reason. He certainly wasn't someone who offered comfort easily.

Four days ago, I'd steadied him through a crowd.

Today, when I was the one who needed it, he'd remembered.

And somehow that mattered far more than fifteen seconds should have.

Chapter nine

Interference - A penalty called when a player illegally impedes an opponent who doesn't have possession of the puck.

Max

“You coming over?”

The question was out before I had fully decided to ask it.

Ash had been walking toward his truck in the players’ lot, his bag slung over one shoulder, and he stopped before turning back to me. “To your place?”

“That is generally what coming over means.”

“I know what it means. I just assumed after Vegas you might want some space.”

I nearly laughed at the absurdity of it because space was what I had wanted for years.

Space had been the whole point.

I had built a life around it, choosing apartments instead of houses because apartments were temporary and hookups instead of relationships because they ended, and eventually buying a farm in another country that I could retreat to when hockey was finished and nobody expected anything from me anymore. For years, I had convinced myself space meant safety.

Then Ash had slept curled against my chest for one night and made every empty room I had ever chosen feel exactly like what it was.

Empty.

“I’ve had enough space.”

He studied my face for long enough that I wondered whether I'd pushed too far, but then his gaze shifted toward my truck.

“Pizza?”

I nodded. “Pizza.”