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"You like me," he'd said.

I hadn't denied it.

But what was I supposed to say? No? That would've been a lie, and I was a terrible liar. Always had been. My face gave everything away. Mila had told me a hundred times that I'd be terrible at poker. I could have said yes, but that was a different kind of dangerous, one that would have opened a door I wasn't ready to walk through.

The truth was worse than either option. I didn't like him, but I also didn't know him. I knew his name and his address, and that he played hockey. I knew he ordered iced coffees, and that he had a jaw that could cut glass and hands that knew exactly where to go. That wasn't liking someone. That was noticing someone.

But the way my skin had felt under his thumb. That wasn't noticing. That was something else. Something I didn't have a word for.

I didn't sleep well. I woke up twice, once from Cooper getting off the bed and once from a sound outside that turned out to be the maple tree rustling in the wind. Both times I lay there in the dark, my mind looping back to the porch, to the kiss, to the way his hand had felt on my face. The callus on his thumb, the warmth of his palm, the way he'd held me.

By morning, I'd decided that it wouldn't happen again. I'd told him it wouldn't, and I meant it. The kiss was a mistake I blamed on the wine and the loneliness.

I had common sense, and plenty of it. I had survived Brett and a move across the country with everything I owned in the back of a car. Common sense had gotten me here, and common sense was going to keep me safe.

Morning came faster than I wanted. I got up and made a strong black coffee and let Cooper out into the backyard, where he did his business in his usual corner over by the hydrangeas. He came back inside with grass on his paws, looking for his breakfast. I fed him and then sat at the kitchen table with my laptop and opened the design software and looked at the Henderson kitchen mockup, and then the boutique hotel proposal that was due Friday.

Work was waiting, and I needed to focus because that was all that mattered right now. I turned my attention to my computer, drank my coffee as I went over things, and didn't look out the window until eight thirty when I glanced up from my laptop and saw Marshall walking toward his car in track pants and hoodie, a gym bag over his shoulder, his hair still damp. He got into the truck, backed out of the driveway, and drove away.

CHAPTER SEVEN

MARSHALL

I was supposed to focus on hockey; we had a game against Philadelphia in four hours, and instead of going over plays, the only play I was going over was the way her mouth had opened under mine. That was the only thought while I laced up my skates. It had been four days, and I still hadn't been able to get that kiss out of my head.

We had flown in this morning. Normally we'd make the trip by bus, but since we had a game the next night in Pittsburgh we'd decided on the flight.

I should have been studying plays on the plane. I should've been visualizing my positioning, running the sequences in my head the way Coach Briggs taught us. Instead, I sat on the plane staring at the back of the seat in front of me, thinking about the sound Lillah had made in the back of her throat when I'd pressed her against the wall. That small, sexy, involuntary sound I hadn't been able to get out of my mind.

The thing about the kiss was that it shouldn't have been as good as it was. It was against a brick wall, outside of a very loud party, with a woman who'd told me to stay away from her more than once in three separate conversations. It was messy and unplanned, and it lasted all of ten seconds. By any objective metric, it was a mediocre kiss in mediocre conditions.

Yet, I couldn't forget the feeling of her hands, the way she'd gripped my shirt, the way she'd pulled me closer instead of pushing me away. The way she'd kissed me back, like she was angry at herself for doing it, which only made the kiss hotter, more charged.

I couldn't shake it. I'd tried. I'd done extra conditioning this week, gone for a run through the neighborhood at six in the morning, and even called my brother, which I do whenever I was trying to distract myself. Chase had a way of talking for an hour about absolutely nothing, making you forget whatever was bothering you, but none of my usual tricks worked. My brain kept looping back to the porch and her face in the porch light, to her words "that will never happen again" as her voice cracked.

"Get your head right, Hayes." I muttered to myself.

The game started at seven. I hit the ice for my first shift with Ashford on my left and Jeremy on the right. I tried to find the focus I'd had during my first home game, but it wasn't there.

I misread a pass and drifted too far into the neutral zone, giving their center a two-step head start on a zone entry. During my second shift, the puck came to me on a breakout. Jeremy fed it to me from behind our net. It should have been a simple transition, but I held it for half a second too long. That was all it took. Their defensemen read my hesitation and stole the puck. Philly turned that steal into a two-on-one rush on the net that Ryan barely stopped.

Coach Briggs didn't say a word, but I saw his jaw tighten from the corner of my eye when I sat down, which was worse than anything he could have said.

The second period was the same. My passes were arriving late, and the decisions I was making in the offensive zone were awful. I'd read the play, see the opportunity, but then I'd hesitate. I took a hit along the boards during the second half of the second period, one I should have been able to avoid. I'd seen it coming, all six-two, two hundred and fifteen pounds of him coming right at my left side. Instead of moving or pivoting, I stood there as if my skates were glued to the ice.

The hit drove me into the boards, shaking the glass. He hit me so hard the air punched out of my lungs, and it felt like he had broken my ribs. The same spot that had been hit during the home game. I shook it off and skated to the bench.

"Get your head in the game, Hayes!" Briggs barked from behind me. His voice cut through the arena noise like a blade, and two guys on the bench flinched. His face was red and I could see the disappointment.

I nodded to him, but said nothing. When I got back on the ice, I tried to be better.

I wasn't.

During third period, I had one scoring chance. A breakaway that I rushed into. I took a weak wrist shot, and the goalie caught the puck clean. We lost the game four to two. I knew that I'd played the worst sixty minutes of my professional career because I hadn't been able to stop thinking about a woman who'd told me to leave her alone.

The locker room was heavy after. Nobody wanted to be the first person to say anything, so everyone stayed quiet. Coach Briggs walked in and made his way around the room. He looked at each of us, said nothing, and walked out.

I sat in my stall and peeled off my gear. My ribs were sore on the left side, the bruising had deepened from yellow-green to a darker color, and my right knee was aching again. But those were physical things, and those healed. What bothered me most was the fog I was under.