My Hockey Heartthrob: A Promise in Overtime

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Dominic Voss finds her in the media workroom two days later, dropping into the chair across from her desk with the same easy, unhurried confidence he's brought to every previous interaction, though something in his expression suggests he already knows the answer to the question he's about to ask.

"You never got back to me," he says. "About that drink. I believe I offered, weeks ago now, and you said you'd think about it."

"I did think about it."

"And?" His grin is easy, unbothered, though Mara catches something more genuine underneath it, a real question rather than just performance.

"I think you already know the answer," she says, gentle, choosing honesty over deflection. "There's a lot happening with Cole. Old history that's — resurfaced, I guess is the word. I don't think it would be fair to you to say yes to a drink while all of that's still unresolved."

Voss studies her for a moment, something thoughtful replacing his usual easy charm. "I suspected as much. For what it's worth, I don't think I was ever really competing with him. I think I was just enjoying being around someone who actually challenged me in conversation, which is rarer than you'd think in this business. Most people either want something from me or are too intimidated to be interesting."

"I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong impression."

"You didn't. I'm a big boy, Bennett, I can read a room." He leans back, entirely unbothered, and Mara finds herself grateful, watching him, that Selene had insisted from the start he wasn't a villain in any version of this story. "For what it's worth, whatever's happening with Cole — I hope it works out. He's a good player. Tough competitor. I've watched him closely enough over the years to know there's real substance under all that careful composure, even if it took me until this tournament to see much evidence of it cracking."

"You noticed that?"

"Everyone in this tournament's noticed it. Man played half his group stage like a ghost was following him around the ice, then suddenly starts looking like himself again right around the time certain rumors about a certain reporter started circulating." Voss's grin returns, knowing but not unkind. "I'm observant. It's part of what makes me good at my job too."

Mara laughs despite herself, some of the tension in her shoulders easing. "You're annoyingly perceptive."

"It's a gift and a curse." He stands, gathering himself to leave, and pauses at the door, something more sincere entering his expression. "For what it's worth, Bennett — whatever happens with Cole, you're a good journalist. One of the best I've dealt with this tournament, and I've dealt with a lot of reporters. Don't let whatever personal history is unfolding overshadow that. You earned your seat at this table on your own merit, not because of who you used to date."

"Thank you," Mara says, genuinely touched by the sentiment. "That means a lot, actually."

"I'm full of surprising depth, despite the charming exterior." He winks, easy again, and heads for the door. "See you at the final, presumably. I intend to be there. Preferably having beaten your captain, no hard feelings intended."

"He'd say the same about you."

"I'd expect nothing less." Voss disappears down the corridor, and Mara sits alone at her desk for a moment, feeling something warm and grateful settle in her chest — grateful for a rival who turned out to be, underneath the charm, genuinely decent about the whole complicated situation, and grateful, too, for the clarity of finally, definitively knowing where her own heart actually stands.

She tells Adrian about the conversation that evening, over a quiet dinner arranged in a small restaurant away from the tournament's usual press haunts — their first real date, if it can be called that, since everything came out between them, careful and tentative in the specific way of two people rebuilding something on new, more honest foundation.

"Voss asked me to a drink weeks ago," she admits, watching his expression carefully. "I told him I'd think about it. Today I told him no."

Something flickers across Adrian's face — not quite jealousy, but adjacent to it, an old, familiar tightness that Mara recognizes from the team PR conversation weeks ago. "How did he take it?"

"Gracefully, actually. Better than I expected. He said some genuinely kind things, about my work, about hoping things work out with you. He's not who I expected, honestly — I think I had him pegged as more of a rival than he actually is."

"He's a good guy," Adrian admits, somewhat reluctantly. "Good player, good captain, from everything I've observed over the years. I don't actually dislike him personally. I think I've just spent so long defining myself against him competitively that it's hard to separate the two." He pauses, something more vulnerable entering his voice. "Can I ask — why did you say no? I don't want you to feel like you owe me anything, given everything still unresolved between us."

Mara considers the question carefully, wanting to give him an honest answer rather than a comfortable one. "Because as complicated and unresolved as things are between us, I don't want anyone else. I've spent five years telling myself that wanting you was a wound I needed to heal rather than a truth I needed to honor. I don't think that's true anymore. I think I've just been afraid to say it out loud, because saying it means actually risking something again."

"I'm scared too," Adrian admits, quiet. "Not of you. Of myself, honestly. Of making the same mistake again, panicking under pressure, choosing fear over honesty the way I did five years ago. I don't have proof yet that I've actually changed enough to not do that again. I just have intention, and intention isn't the same thing as proof."

"I don't need proof yet," Mara says, honest. "I think I just need us to keep choosing honesty, one day at a time, and see what actually grows out of that. Isn't that what Selene told me, more or less? That's all any of us can really do."

"That sounds like good advice," Adrian says, something warm and hopeful entering his expression for the first time all conversation. "I think I'd like to try that. If you're willing."

"I'm willing," Mara says, reaching across the table to take his hand, the gesture feeling, for the first time in five years, less like reopening an old wound and more like tentatively, carefully, beginning something new.

They finish dinner slowly, talking about easier things now, the heaviest part of the conversation behind them, and when they finally part for the evening, walking together as far as the street corner where their paths diverge toward separate hotels, Adrian pauses, looking at her with something searching in his expression.

"Can I kiss you?" he asks, quiet, careful, giving her every opportunity to say no.

Mara doesn't say no.

It's careful, at first, both of them cautious with something they've broken once before, and then, slowly, it deepens into something more certain, five years of longing finally, genuinely finding its way home. When they finally break apart, both of them a little breathless, Adrian rests his forehead against hers, exactly the way he did on a stairwell six years ago, and Mara feels something in her chest settle into place that she hasn't felt whole in longer than she can remember.

"I've missed that," he says, quiet.

"Me too," Mara admits. "I've missed you. All of you. For a very long time."

"I'm here now," Adrian says, and means it, standing on a street corner in a city neither of them chose, finally, honestly, choosing each other instead.