Page 86 of Off-Limits as Puck

We’re doing it again—this careful dance around what we actually want to say. Circling each other like fighters looking for an opening, both of us too proud or too scared to throw the first real punch.

“They sent lawyers,” I tell him. “Cease and desist. I’m not allowed to talk to you anymore.”

“Since when do you follow rules you don’t like?”

“Since breaking them destroyed my life.”

“I destroyed your life.” He skates closer to the boards, close enough that I could reach out and touch him if the barrier wasn’t there. “Let’s be clear about that.”

“No, I destroyed my life. I made the choices. I knew the risks.”

“Did you? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you got blindsided by consequences you never saw coming.”

“I saw them coming. I just...” I trail off, not sure how to finish that sentence.

“Just what?”

“Just thought maybe they’d be worth it.”

The admission hangs between us like smoke. Reed’s eyes darken, and I see him processing the implications—that I chose him knowing it would cost me everything. That I’d make thesame choice again.

“Are they?” he asks quietly. “Worth it?”

“I don’t know. Ask me when the lawyers are done with me.”

“I’m asking now.”

“Now I’m unemployed, legally muzzled, and probably unemployable in professional sports. So no, objectively, it wasn’t worth it.”

“Objectively.”

“Objectively.”

“What about subjectively?”

I meet his gaze through the glass, see myself reflected in his dark eyes. See the woman who threw away everything for fifteen minutes in an equipment shed and the possibility of something real.

“Subjectively, I’m fucked either way.”

He laughs, sharp and bitter. “At least you’re honest about it.”

“Honesty’s all I have left. Might as well use it.”

We stand there in silence, him on ice, me on solid ground, both of us drowning in the space between what we want and what we can have. The rink feels bigger somehow, emptier, like it’s swallowing our words before they can reach each other.

“I’m leaving,” he says finally. “Chicago. The team. All of it.”

“Where?”

“Europe, maybe. Jerry’s working some contacts. Fresh start where nobody knows about us.”

“Us.” I taste the word like poison. “There is no us. There’s just a series of bad decisions that happen to involve the same two people.”

“Bullshit.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s bullshit and you know it.” He’s skating in small circles now, agitation making him restless. “This isn’t just bad decisions. This is—”

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