Atticus Finch had kissed a lot of people.
Fans. Strangers. People whose names he forgot before the night was over. Kissing had never meant anything to him just another transaction, another way to keep control, to keep distance disguised as intimacy.
So the fact that he wanted to kiss Sheila Feint badly, relentlessly, stupidly felt like a flaw in his system.
And flaws were unacceptable.
He noticed it first during drills.
She stood at the edge of the rink, coat pulled tight against the cold, tablet in hand. Focused. Always focused. She barely looked at him, except when she needed to. No starstruck awe. No fear. No fake smiles. Just observation sharp enough to slice through bone.
Atticus missed a shot.
The puck slammed into the boards instead of the net. A rare mistake. The rink went q
