Page 25 of Face Off
There. Clinical. Distant. A hundred miles from the real memory. The way his grin hooked sideways when he leaned over the boards, sweat dripping, eyes finding mine like he’d been searching all along.
I shake my head hard, try to physically fling the thought away. My job is not to swoon over players. My job is to document, analyse, inform. The team already thinks I’m the enemy. Sophie’s narrowed eyes, Mia’s disdain, even Dylan’s polite frostiness, it all screams the same thing. You don’t belong here. You’re only here to chase headlines and break hearts.
And maybe I deserve that. Maybe once, I was exactly the girl they think I still am. But that was before the fallout, before Ilearned the hard way that there’s nothing glamorous about being branded a tabloid cliché.
I hit send before I can overthink it again. The story whooshes into the digital ether, and I sag back in my chair. Done. Professional mask polished and delivered.
But my heart is still racing.
Because under the layers of detachment, there’s the echo of his voice in my ear, playful and warm. There’s the weight of that wink. There’s the tiniest part of me that thinks Ollie Taylor sees me, not just the headlines, not just the mistakes, but the person underneath. And that’s terrifying. Because if he sees me, really sees me, he could break me in ways no gossip rag ever managed.
I close my laptop with a snap.
The apartment is still quiet, but my head is roaring. I pad to the kitchen, pour myself a glass of water, and lean against the counter. My reflection in the dark window looks tired, hair pulled back haphazardly, skin pale. Not the girl the tabloids plastered in sequins and smirks. Just me.
The phone buzzes again, this time a one-line message from my editor.
Good. Keep it like this all season.
I laugh without humour. Becausethisis what I signed up for, clinical, detached coverage. The version of me that’s acceptable.
And yet.
I pad back to the desk, reopen my laptop, and in a blank document type the things I can’t send. The version of the story that will never see daylight.
He winked at me like we shared a secret. And for a second, I believed we did.
My fingers hover, then I close the file without saving.
I know better.
But when I finally crawl into bed, curling beneath the duvet, it’s not the game highlights I replay in my head. It’s the soundof his laugh drifting across the ice. The warmth in his eyes when everyone else was looking at me like I was poison.
And against every rule I’ve set for myself, I fall asleep smiling.
Mask on. Heart racing underneath.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
OLLIE
The rink feels colder than usual this morning, and not just because Coach has the air cranked low enough to freeze our lungs solid. There’s a tension hanging around the locker room like fog. You can taste it in the silence between chirps, in the clipped way Murphy’s lacing his skates, in how Dylan’s deliberately humming under his breath just to get a rise out of him.
“Can you not?” Murphy snaps, yanking on a shin guard so hard the strap nearly snaps.
Dylan grins like he’s been waiting all morning for that reaction. “What, this?” He whistles a few bars of some godawful pop song off-key, the kind that gets stuck in your brain until you want to drive into a wall.
Murphy’s jaw flexes. He looks about two seconds from snapping his stick across Dylan’s helmet.
Jacko, sitting on the bench next to me, calmly unwraps foil from a Tupperware box. The smell of cinnamon and sugar fills the air instantly, cutting through the sweat-and-leather stink.
“Cinnamon knots,” he announces, holding out the box like a peace offering. “Eat one, Murph. You’ll live longer.”
Murphy glares, but his hand goes out all the same. The guy might be brooding like a storm cloud, but he’s not dumb enough to turn down Jacko’s baking. He bites into the pastry like it’s offended him personally.
“You’re welcome,” Jacko mutters, shaking his head.
I hide a smirk and tug my hoodie off, folding it over my stall. The knot in my stomach’s been there since last night. The Raptors won, but you wouldn’t know it from Murphy’s mood. And I know exactly why.
