Rejected by my Hockey Alpha, Claimed by His Rival

Chapter 5 The Woman I Did Not Know About

Sloane.

I sat frozen at my desk with the photo still glowing on my screen, my tea going cold beside me.

I scrolled back through the folder again, checking every corner of the image for a clue, a reflection in the mirror behind the bar, a face I might recognize in the crowd. There was nothing useful, just me laughing at something on my phone, caught from an angle across the room like someone had planned exactly where to stand.

I thought about calling Reyna and decided against it, because I did not know what I would even say. I thought about Emrys, and how easily he had shown up at the rink that afternoon with no real explanation, and I wondered if the two things were connected.

Whoever took that photo knew I would be at that bar. That meant they knew where I was staying, or they had been watching me since I landed in Frostbridge. Neither option let me sleep much that night.

By morning I had convinced myself the only way forward was to keep working and stay sharp, because falling apart would not help me figure out who was following me or why.

I got to the rink early, camera bag over my shoulder, coffee in hand, determined to bury myself in the job until my head cleared. I found Callum, one of the team's PR assistants, waiting near the entrance with a clipboard pressed to his chest and a nervous look on his face.

"Sloane, good, you are here early." He flipped through his papers. "Change of plans for today. Public relations wants shots of Torin with his fiancée for the season opener press packet. She just landed back from a shoot in Milan this morning."

The word landed like a slap. "Fiancée."

"Eva Calloway. She is a model, does a lot of promotional work for the league." Callum lowered his voice like he was handing me gossip instead of an assignment. "They have been engaged for almost a year now."

Almost a year. He had stood in that hallway with his hand around my wrist and never once mentioned a fiancée waiting for him somewhere else. My stomach turned over hard, and I hated myself for how much it hurt, considering everything he had already done to me once.

I found them near center ice twenty minutes later, and I almost stopped walking when I saw her.

She looked like she had stepped straight out of a magazine spread, tall and lean, legs that seemed endless under a coat that should cost close to my monthly income, her dark hair falling in waves too perfect to be natural. Torin stood beside her with one hand resting low on her back, and something in my chest twisted so tight it made it hard to breathe.

I lifted my camera because it gave my hands something to do besides shake.

"Mr. Vale, Ms. Calloway, I need a few shots for the press packet."

Eva turned toward me first, flashing a smile built for cameras, warm on the surface and something sharper underneath. "You must be the photographer everyone has been talking about."

"Sloane Hargrove."

"Eva." She offered her hand, and her grip was firmer than I expected for someone who looked so delicate. "Torin mentioned you joined the team for the season."

I glanced at Torin, who suddenly found the ice beneath his skates very interesting. "He did not mention much about you."

Something flickered across Eva's face, gone as fast as it appeared, replaced by that same practiced smile. "He is not much of a talker when he is stressed about a championship. I am used to it."

I raised my camera and got to work, framing shots of the two of them against the rink boards, telling Eva to tilt her chin, telling Torin to relax his shoulders, all the small directions I gave a hundred athletes a season without thinking twice. It was harder with him. Every time the camera clicked, his eyes found mine instead of hers, and Eva noticed it too; I could tell from the way her smile tightened at the edges each time it happened.

"You two know each other?" she said finally, her tone light but her eyes watching me carefully. "From before this job, I mean."

"We grew up in the same town," Torin said quickly, before I could answer.

"Interesting town." Eva's gaze slid between us like she was reading something neither of us had said out loud. "You get a little tense every time she raises that camera, Torin."

"I am always tense before an opener."

"Sure." She did not sound convinced, but she let it go, turning back toward the ice with a practiced grace that made everything about her look effortless.

We finished the shoot an hour later, and Eva excused herself to take a call from her agent, disappearing down the tunnel with her phone pressed to her ear. Torin lingered near the boards while I packed up my equipment, and I felt him watching me the whole time.

"Sloane."

"I have nothing to say to you." I zipped my bag shut harder than necessary. "You should go find your fiancée."

"It is not what you think."

"It is exactly what I think." I finally looked up at him, and whatever composure I had been holding onto all morning cracked right down the middle. "You had a fiancée this whole time, and you still grabbed my wrist in that hallway like you had some claim on me. What is wrong with you?”

"I don't know," he admitted, and the honesty in his voice caught me off guard. "I saw Kade's scent on you, and something in me just broke, Sloane. I know I have no right to feel that. I know what I did to you. I have known it every single day for eight years."

"Then why did you do it?"

He stepped closer, close enough that his scent wrapped around me again, cedar and frost and everything I had spent eight years trying to forget. "Because some part of me never stopped feeling like you were mine, even after I threw that away with my own hands."

"You don't have the right to say things like that to me."

"I know." His voice dropped lower, rough at the edges. "I know, and I am saying it anyway."

I told myself to walk away. I told myself I owed him nothing, that whatever he felt did not erase what he did, that I had a job to protect and a fiancée standing somewhere down that tunnel who deserved better than this. None of it stopped me from closing the last bit of distance between us, and none of it stopped him from cupping my face in both hands like he was afraid I might vanish if he let go.

His mouth found mine before either of us said another word, and for one reckless moment eight years disappeared completely.

That was the exact moment Eva's voice cut through the quiet behind us.

"I knew it."

We broke apart fast, but not fast enough. Eva stood at the mouth of the tunnel with her phone raised, the screen still glowing, and the look on her face was not heartbreak. She was already calculating.

"Smile for the camera," she said quietly. "Because I just got a very interesting picture, and I promise you both, this is going to cost her a lot more than it costs you."