Page 53 of Power Play
My heart breaks open.
I press my hand to the plexiglass, right where his is, matching him palm to palm with only the rink wall between us.
His forehead rests on the glass for a second. Just long enough for the cameras to catch it. Just long enough for every wall I’ve ever built to come crumbling down.
Then he skates back to the bench, teammates pounding him on the helmet, cheering. He doesn’t look smug and for once he doesn’t showboat. He just keeps looking back, at me.
And I know.
We are so far beyond pretending now. We’re the real thing.
And I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.
After the game, the buzz of victory is still thick in the air, as I make my way down the corridor toward the locker rooms, Mia beside me. She’s got her gear slung over her shoulder and that unmistakable post-game glow of someone whose team just won.
“He’s going to be insufferable after that goal,” she says with a grin.
“He earned it,” I reply, breathless just remembering it.
As if summoned, Murphy rounds the corner, fresh from the showers, hair damp, a towel slung around his neck, his grin cocky and uncontainable, until he sees me. It softens instantly.
“Hey, you,” he says, walking straight to me, ignoring the wolf whistles from Jacko and Ollie behind him.
He pulls me close, arms sliding around my waist, and dips his head to press a kiss just behind my ear. “You look like a dream. Could see you from the ice. Thought I’d go blind.”
I laugh against his chest, fingers curling into his shirt. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Ridiculously in love with you,” he murmurs. And I melt. “Come on,” he says. “I want to take you home.”
“You just played an entire game. Aren’t you exhausted?”
He leans in. “Not even a little. I’m wired and all I want is you.”
And when he takes my hand and leads me out of the rink, it’s not just as some PR stunt, not just as friends pretending.
It’s as Murph and Sophie.
The real thing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
MURPHY
We don’t say much on the way back to mine. We don’t need to. Sophie’s hand is in mine, warm and sure, and the adrenaline from the game is still fizzing in my blood. My body’s knackered, muscles already stiffening, but my mind? It’s wide awake. Lit up.
She’s next to me in the passenger seat, wrapped in her coat, cheeks pink from the cold, and hair tousled from cheering like mad. And I can’t stop glancing over, like I’m trying to make sure she’s really here. That this isn’t some post-goal fever dream.
Because tonight was different.
Not just the goal, though, Christ, what a goal, but the way I knew where she was the whole time. The way I could feel her, even when I wasn’t looking. Like she was a lighthouse, and I was skating toward her without even thinking. That heart I made on the glass? Didn’t even plan it. Just felt like the only thing that made sense in the moment.
And now she’s here, biting her lip as she watches the streetlights roll past. Maybe she’s nervous too.
“You cold?” I ask, even though the car’s warm.
She shakes her head. “No. Just thinking.”
“Dangerous.”
