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When his mouth crashes into mine—I forget how to breathe.

This isn’t sweet.

This isn’t patient.

This is him unmaking me—ripping through every shield I’ve put up since the night I let a stranger pull me apart with his mouth and call me greedy.

But he isn’t a stranger.

He never was...and I’ve been pretending otherwise for too long.

He pulls back, breath ragged, his cheek brushing mine.

“I don’t want a woman who fits into a picture, Kat,” he says. “I want you.”

I flinch.

Not because I don’t want him to say it.

But because I do.

Too much.

“But this isn’t real,” I whisper. “You don’t have to pretend anymore. There’s no one watching.”

“No?” he asks.

I should tell him.

Right now.

Before this goes any further.

Before I forget my name again and let him touch me like I’m his to keep.

Before this turns into something I can’t claw back from.

That I’m not some mystery.

Not a maybe.

That I’m the girl from the masked play party—the one he dragged off the edge on shaking knees with nothing but filthy promises and a hand on my throat.

But I don’t.

Because I didn’t know his name then.

And I don’t know what he’ll do if he finds out now.

What happens if this blows up in my face?

If it gets out—if word slips to the wrong locker room, or a teammate overhears something they shouldn’t?

I stop being the team nutritionist.

I become Griffin Novak’s little sister.

The puck bunny who blew a rookie in a black-tie sex den—then showed up on payroll.