Page 57 of Blocked Shot
His chest rises and falls with ragged breaths, tension radiating off him like heat despite the frigid temperature. His whole body is wound tight, like a storm held barely at bay. His fingers grip the shovel handle with such force, she half-expects it to crack beneath the pressure.
“Jake, I’m sorry.” Her voice is quieter now, the words curling into the cold air between them. “About this morning. I didn’t mean to make you feel?—”
She hesitates, unsure how to finish.
Jake exhales sharply, leaning on the shovel, his breath ragged.
“How do I feel, Natalie?” His tone is sharp, demanding. “Do you even know?”
Natalie swallows hard.
“Rejected,” she says finally. “Frustrated.”
“Try invisible,” he grits out, the bitterness in his voice cutting through the air like a blade. “Like what I want—what we both want—doesn’t matter. Like I’m supposed to sit here and pretend this thing between us doesn’t exist because it doesn’t fit into your neatly organized life.”
She flinches, the truth of his words hitting too close. “That’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t fair,” he growls. “You of all people should know that. If it was, we wouldn’t have met through your brother. You wouldn’t be off-limits. We could just be Jake and Natalie, two people who?—”
He breaks off, his grip tightening on the shovel as if restraining himself.
“Two people who what?” she asks, her reckless heart urging her to push, even though she knows she should let it go.
Jake’s blue eyes lock onto hers, intense and stormy, as if he’s barely holding back a storm of feeling just beneath the surface. His voice drops, quiet but firm. “Two people who can’t seem to stay away from each other, no matter how many reasons they should.”
The raw honesty in his words steals her breath. It knocks something loose inside her. Something she’s been trying to keep tightly bound. Because he’s right. Every argument she’s made in her head, every reason she’s listed for why this can’t work, crumbles the second she looks at him. No matter how hard she’s tried to keep her distance, she always finds her way back to him.
It dawns on her that she didn’t just bring him home from the hospital out of kindness. She needed him close. She needed him safe. That’s what she told herself. But now, in the heavy silence of his gaze, she sees the truth with aching clarity. She wants him here because she can’t bear to be without him. Because having him under her roof, within reach, makes it easier to pretend this isn’t impossible.
She didn’t give him a choice. She had made it all about him needing someone to care for him, when it was really her who needed it—him. And now she sees how selfish she was. How unfair. Because Jake, for all his quiet strength, is already carrying more than his share. And she, without meaning to, only added weight to his shoulders.
Jake turns and leans the shovel against the brick wall, his shoulders sagging like the weight he’s been carrying finally won. He stays there a moment, head bowed, chest rising and falling with slow, deliberate breaths.
When he finally faces her, his blue eyes are heavy with regret.
“I’m sorry,” he says, voice low. “About what I said this morning. About Jesse.”
His hand scrubs across his jaw, rough and restless.
“I was... upset,” he adds, glancing around as if the right words might be hiding somewhere in the falling snow. “But I get it, Natalie. He’s your family. And I understand your choices will always need to take him into account.”
The apology lands, soft and raw, and her guilt swells immediately,curling around her ribs like a vice. But underneath it—rising slowly, undeniably—is something else. Something stronger.
Because with snow falling in thick, silent sheets around them, the cold brushing her cheeks, and Jake standing there with his heart laid bare, she doesn’t want to pretend it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t want to keep building walls just because they’re easier to hide behind.
Not when being near him is the only thing that feels right.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she admits, her voice small.
Jake’s expression softens slightly. “Do what?”
“Want something that might hurt people I care about.” She looks down at her gloved hands. “Want something that might hurt me.”
“You think I’d hurt you?” he asks, his voice low, as if the very thought wounds him.
Natalie looks up at him. “Not intentionally. But I’ve seen how it goes with hockey players. The trades, the roadtrips, the short careers. It’s not exactly conducive to stability.”
Understanding dawns in Jake’s eyes. “This isn’t about Jesse at all, is it? Not really.”
