4
1137 Words
Keira
The gala was easier than I expected.
I'd braced myself for a long night of forced smiles and awkward silences, but Ryder played his part well. He kept a hand at the small of my back when we walked in, introduced me to donors by name, laughed at my jokes like they were actually funny. By the second hour I'd almost forgotten I was being paid to be there.
"You're doing great," he murmured at one point, leaning close enough that a photographer nearby lifted his camera. "Relax your shoulders. You look like you're waiting for someone to arrest you."
"I feel like I'm waiting for someone to arrest me."
"Nobody's arresting anyone. Smile."
I smiled. It felt fake at first, and then, somewhere around the third glass of sparkling water, it didn't.
That was the strange part. The longer the night went on, the more I let my guard down, not because of Ryder exactly, but because of everyone around him. His teammates treated the whole event like a rowdy family reunion, and it was hard not to get swept into it.
Jaxon found me near the dessert table and threw an arm around my shoulders like we'd known each other for years. "So you're the one who's been putting up with this guy," he said, jerking his thumb toward Ryder. "Brave woman. He snores, you know. Sounds like a busted furnace."
"I do not snore," Ryder said.
"You absolutely snore," Jaxon told me solemnly, and hugged me again before wandering off to steal a plate of shrimp.
A few minutes later I nearly went down in my heels on the marble floor, and a hand caught my elbow before I could embarrass myself in front of half the donor board. Liam, steady and unbothered, straightened me back up like it was nothing. "Careful. These floors have ended careers."
"Thank you," I said, laughing despite myself.
"Anytime."
Later, when the air conditioning dropped the ballroom into a chill that raised goosebumps along my arms, Noah appeared out of nowhere and draped his jacket over my shoulders without a word, then disappeared back into the crowd before I could even thank him properly. Mason ran interference for me twice, once steering an overly aggressive reporter away from our table with nothing but a look, and Asher, the loudest of the group, demanded a selfie with me at the bar specifically because, in his words, "it'll drive Ryder insane," grinning the entire time like this was the best joke he'd told all year.
None of it meant anything. It was easy, harmless, the kind of teasing warmth I imagined came standard with any close-knit team. By the time Ryder drove me home, I felt lighter than I had in weeks, like maybe this arrangement wouldn't be the disaster I'd expected.
I should have known better.
***
My phone woke me up the next morning, buzzing against my nightstand so hard it nearly vibrated off the edge. Then it buzzed again. And again. By the fifth buzz I gave up on sleep and grabbed it, squinting against the screen brightness.
Forty-three notifications. All from Dani.
*girl*
*GIRL*
*call me right now*
*have you seen twitter*
I sat up so fast the blanket slid off the bed. I opened the app with a knot already forming in my stomach, and the knot turned into something closer to full panic the second the page loaded.
There I was. Everywhere.
A photo of Jaxon's arm around my shoulders, cropped so it looked like we were sharing some private joke, captioned *Jaxon and the mystery girl, looking VERY cozy 👀*. Another of Liam's hand on my elbow, edited with a heart emoji sticker, some fan account calling it "the moment Liam caught more than just Keira." A picture of Noah's jacket draped over me had somehow become "proof" that we were secretly together, alongside screenshots of people analyzing our body language like it was forensic evidence. Mason's protective stance near our table had been turned into a slideshow titled "Mason Would Die For Her," complete with dramatic music in the video version. And the selfie with Asher, the one he'd taken purely to annoy Ryder, had over two hundred thousand likes on its own, captioned "the audacity, and we're HERE for it."
Someone had strung all five photos together into a single post. Six, counting Ryder. Six players. One girl. A caption that read: *she really said catch me if you can.*
The hashtag #QueenOfHockey had over eighty thousand posts already, and it was climbing while I watched the number update in real time.
My phone rang before I could process any of it. Dani, obviously.
"Please tell me you didn't actually flirt with the entire Wolves roster in one night," she said, half laughing, half horrified.
"I didn't! Jaxon hugged me, Liam caught me before I fell, Noah gave me his jacket because I was cold, that's it, that's all of it—"
"I know, I believe you, but babe, the internet does not care what actually happened. Have you seen the fan edits? Someone made a whole moodboard."
"A moodboard."
"With music."
I put the phone on speaker and set it on the bed so I could keep scrolling with both hands, each new post worse than the last. Fan accounts were shipping me with every single player individually, arguing in the comments about which one I "belonged" with, as if I were a prize instead of a person. Someone had made a poll. Forty thousand votes. I was losing to Asher, which felt like an insult on top of the injury.
Then my phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number, and something about the timing made my stomach drop before I even opened it.
*Turn on channel 9. Now. — R*
I grabbed the remote with shaking hands and flipped to the sports channel, where two anchors sat behind a glossy desk, one of them gesturing animatedly at a screen full of the same photos I'd just been staring at on my phone.
"—and if last night's gala was any indication," the anchor was saying, grinning like this was the best story of her career, "this mystery woman has done what no single player could do alone. Sources are calling her an instant fan favorite, and honestly, we don't blame them. She's managed to capture the hearts of all six Wolves in one night."
The other anchor laughed. "Move over, captain. Looks like the whole team's competing for her attention now."
I sat frozen on my bed, jacket-less, humiliated, staring at a television telling the entire city that I'd somehow seduced a hockey team overnight, and all I could think, with a strange, dizzy kind of dread, was that this was only day one.
- Writer
