Page 9 of Ash and his Dragon

I hated it.

I hated that some traitorous part of me wanted to lean into it.

“I saw your face, Ash. That wasn’t a man showing up at a game. That was—”

“What, you’re an expert now?” I cut him off before he could finish, because if he finished, I might actually have to answer. “You read people so well, Renaud, is that it? Good eye for detail? Must be handy, keeping track of all the women who apparently know where you drink.”

It landed exactly the way I meant it to.

I watched something flicker behind his hazel eyes, quick and pained, gone almost before I registered it, and felt a small, mean satisfaction alongside the guilt, the way you felt when you landed a clean check and heard the other guy’s breath leave him even though you knew you’d pay for it later.

“That’s not—” He stopped himself, jaw working, and for a second, I thought he was going to let it go, retreat to safer ice the way I’d given him every excuse to.

Then his eyes narrowed slightly, and I realized I’d miscalculated, because Max Renaud did not retreat.

“This isn’t about Melanie.”

“Isn’t it?” I kept my voice light, bored even, like none of this actually cost me anything. “You spend half your life surrounded by women who look at you like you hung the moon, and you want to sit here and pretend you’re worried about my family drama. Forgive me if I don’t buy the concerned captain routine.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Nothing’s fair. Welcome to the league.”

I finally looked at him then because I needed him to see that I meant it, that the door was shut and bolted and there was no getting back in.

“Drop it, Max. I mean it. Whatever you think you saw last night, you didn’t. Family showed up, made a scene, security handled it. End of story.”

He held my gaze a beat too long, long enough that I felt the old familiar urge to look away first, to concede something just to make the pressure stop.

I didn’t.

I’d had a lot of practice not looking away from things that hurt.

“Fine,” he said finally, low, and there was an edge under the word that hadn’t been there before, not anger exactly, more like something bruised trying very hard not to show it. “Your call.”

“Always is.”

He turned back toward the front of the room without another word, and Coach Kinkaid cleared his throat at the podium, tapping the remote against his palm. The projector flickered to life with last night’s third period spread across the screen in replay.

I stared at it without seeing a single frame, aware of Max beside me, but further away than he’d ever been.

“Alright,” Kinkaid said. “Let’s talk about Vegas’s forecheck, because if we don’t clean up our zone exits, they’re going to eat us alive game two.”

The room settled into the familiar rhythm of clips and freeze-frames, Kinkaid’s laser pointer circling gaps in our coverage, Cole leaning forward with the intensity he brought to everything, Taz quiet as ever in the row beside us, watching more than the film.

I made myself take notes I didn’t need, made myself nod at the right moments, made myself into exactly the kind of unremarkable, unreadable presence that was my attempt at safety.

Beside me, Max didn’t try again.

But I felt him there for the whole session, close enough that our shoulders almost touched, radiating something that wasn’t quite frustration and wasn’t quite hurt but sat somewhere uncomfortably between the two.

I hated that some small, stupid, starving part of me wanted to lean into it anyway.

I didn’t.

I kept my eyes on the screen, my jaw locked, my hands still, and when the session ended and everyone started filing out to go home before we left for the airport the next day, I was already halfway out the door before Max could catch my eye again.

I was already running the math on studio apartments in neighborhoods where my father hadn’t learned my location yet, already three steps ahead into the next version of my life where I disappeared a little further, a little better, a little more completely alone.