Puck Me Harder

CHAPTER 12

BLAKE

The away game in Boston is brutal.

We lose 2-1. I play like garbage. My shoulder— the one I injured when I was being reckless is still not right, and it's affecting my game, and I can't focus because I'm thinking about Elle in the stands, watching me play badly, and it's making everything worse.

By the time we get back to the hotel, I'm vibrating with frustration and desire and something I don't have a name for.

I'm walking back to my room around midnight when I see her in the hallway.

She's alone. She's in sleep clothes—soft-looking pants and a tank top. And she's wearing a shirt that stops me cold.

It's my old team shirt. From five years ago. Faded blue with white lettering. A shirt I haven't seen since... since before she left.

"You're wearing my shirt," I say, and I don't mean for it to come out like an accusation. It just does.

Elle looks down like she forgot what she had on. She looks small in it. Young. Like a version of herself that I haven't seen in five years.

"I—" she starts, and then she stops.

I step closer, and she doesn't move away. She just watches me approach like she's waiting to see what I'm going to do.

"You remember what this feels like?" I ask quietly. "Being near me?"

Her breathing changes. It becomes shallow. Faster. I can see her pulse point in her neck, and I can see the moment her body responds to my proximity even though her mind is still trying to maintain distance.

I back her slowly against the wall. Not aggressively. Just inevitably. She has room to move, but she doesn't take it.

"Blake—" she whispers.

"Yeah," I say, and that's all. That's the only acknowledgment I'm going to give her. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I feel it too. Yeah, this is happening.

Her hands are at her sides, and her breathing is shallow, and she's looking at me like I'm the only thing that exists in this hallway, in this hotel, in this entire city.

I want to touch her. I want to pull that shirt over her head and taste every inch of skin underneath. I want to press her harder against the wall and make her remember exactly what it feels like to be wanted this much.

But I don't.

Instead, I step back.

Elle's eyes go wide. She was bracing for something—contact, intensity, me crossing a line—and instead I'm just... leaving.

I turn and walk toward my room, and I don't look back, even though every cell in my body is screaming at me to go back to her and finish what I started.

Behind me, I can hear her breathing. Heavy. Shaky. The sound of someone trying to remember how to function.

That's all I need to know.

FIVE YEARS AG

We're at a vintage shop in the Pearl District, and Elle is browsing through racks of old band shirts and concert tees.

"Come here," I say, and I hand her a shirt. It's my old Forge practice jersey. Faded. Worn. The kind of thing you'd normally throw away, but the lettering is still visible: DELVALLE across the back.

"Why are you giving me this?" she asks, holding it like it's precious.

"So you can wear me when I'm not there," I say, and I'm only half-joking. I pull her against me from behind, wrapping my arms around her waist. "So when I'm at practice or a game, you're still wearing me. You're still close to me."

She leans back against my chest, and she holds the shirt like it's the most important thing she's ever owned.

"I'll wear it all the time," she says softly.

And she does. For the next several years, Elle wears that shirt constantly. She sleeps in it. She wears it around the apartment when she's alone. She wears it to hockey games under her jacket. She wears it like it's an anchor, keeping her tethered to me even when I'm choosing other things over her.

Even when I'm choosing hockey. Even when I'm choosing to be silent. Even when I'm making her small.

She wears it like it's the only way to keep me close.

PRESENT DAY

Elle stands alone in the hallway, and she's shaking.

She's been keeping that shirt in her suitcase for five years. Not in her apartment. Not in some box of memories. In her suitcase. Packed. Ready. Like she's always been preparing for the possibility that Blake Delvalle would come back into her life and she would need to have something of his to hold onto.

She pulls the shirt tighter around herself, and she understands something with crystal clarity: she's still in love with him.

Not because he's good for her. Not because he's made her happy. Not because loving him makes any kind of sense.

She's in love with him because she's always been in love with him. Because five years of distance and hurt and anger and betrayal hasn't been enough to kill it. Because walking away was supposed to save her, but it just left her half-alive, waiting for him to come back.

And now he's here. He's backed her against a wall. He's asked if she remembers what being near him feels like. And he's walked away, leaving her shaking in a hallway outside her hotel room, wearing his five-year-old shirt like it's the only thing keeping her from completely falling apart.

The realization that she's still in love with him is worse than any rumor. It's worse than losing her job. It's worse than any public humiliation.

Because loving Blake Delvalle is choosing to be destroyed by him over and over again. It's choosing to make herself small. It's choosing to exist in his orbit, dependent on his attention, devastated by his silence.

It's choosing to be the person she swore she would never be again.

She slides down the wall until she's sitting on the carpet in the hallway, and she pulls her knees up to her chest, and she buries her face in the faded fabric of his shirt, and she lets herself break.

Because she's still in love with him.

And that's the worst thing that's ever happened to her.