Page 87 of Off-Limits as Puck

“This is what? Love? Destiny? Some romantic bullshit that makes the destruction worth it?”

“This is real. The realest thing either of us has ever had.”

“Real doesn’t pay my bills, Reed. Real doesn’t rebuild my reputation. Real doesn’t fix what we’ve broken.”

“No, but it’s something. It’s more than the scheduled, sanitized life you were living before.”

“That scheduled, sanitized life was mine. It was good. It was safe.”

“It was killing you.”

My stomach drops like I’m on a damn rollercoaster. Because he’s right, isn’t he? I was dying in that life, suffocating under expectations and schedules and the constant need to be perfect.

“Maybe,” I admit. “But at least I was dying professionally.”

“Jesus, Chelsea. Listen to yourself.”

“Dr. Clark,” I correct automatically, then laugh at my own stupidity. “Sorry, force of habit. Though I guess it doesn’t matter anymore since I’m neither.”

“You’re still Chelsea.”

“Am I? Because I don’t recognize this person. This woman who throws away careers for sex in equipment sheds. Who lies to her father, destroys teams, gets cease and desist orders delivered to her apartment.”

“This woman who finally did something for herself instead of everyone else.”

“This woman who destroyed everything.”

“This woman who chose something real over something safe.”

We’re shouting now, our voices echoing off empty seats and rafters. All the careful control we’ve maintained for months finally cracking, spilling truth and rage and desperate want across the ice between us.

“And look how that worked out!” I gesture at the empty arena, at the ruins of our respective careers. “Look what choosing real got us!”

“It got us honest. For once in our fucking lives, we were honest.”

“Honest about what?” I mock.

“About wanting each other more than we wanted to be good. About needing something that scared us. About being willing to burn it all down for fifteen minutes of feeling alive.”

“Fifteen minutes that cost us everything.”

“Fifteen minutes that were worth everything.”

He skates off the ice then, stepping through the gate that separates his world from mine. Suddenly we’re on the same level, same surface, nothing between us but air and poor judgment. But he’s tall. Much, much taller wearing those skates.

“Don’t,” I warn, backing up. I have to crank my neck to look at him.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t look at me like that. Like you want to—”

“What? Touch you? Kiss you? Remind you what it felt like when we stopped pretending?”

He’s closer now, close enough that I can smell ice and sweat andhim. Close enough to see the gold flecks in his brown eyes, the scar on his chin from a puck to the face three seasons ago.

“We can’t.”

“Why not? What’s left to lose?”

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