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I grab her hand and pull her toward the equipment office, shouldering the door open. The small space smells like leather and sweat, dim except for the light filtering through the frosted window. I lift her onto the equipment table, stepping between her legs as her clipboards scatter to the floor.

She pulls me down for another kiss, her legs wrapping around my waist. When I grind against her, she moans into my mouth that makes me lose my mind.

“We shouldn’t—” she starts, but I silence her with my mouth on her neck, finding a spot that makes her breath catch.

“We should,” I murmur against her skin. “We definitely should.”

Someone clears their throat from behind me. “Excuse me.”

Sage goes rigid in my arms. I turn slowly, still caging her against the table, to find the new PT standing in the doorway. Her expression is a mixture of shock and professional disapproval.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she says, though her tone suggests she’s anything but. “But this is completely inappropriate. Sage, I’m going to have to report this.”

Sage scrambles down from the table, her face flushed with embarrassment and panic. “Tanya, I can explain—”

“No explanation necessary.” The woman’s voice is crisp, authoritative. “Both of you need to come with me immediately.”

I study her for a moment—the way she holds her clipboard, the nervous energy beneath her stern facade. She’s trying to flex authority she doesn’t really have, trying to intimidate us.

I walk toward her slowly, deliberately, using every inch of my height and presence. She takes an involuntary step back.

“Here’s what’s going to happen, Tanya.” I keep my voice low, controlled. “You’re going to turn around, walk back to wherever you came from, and forget you saw anything.”

“I will not.” But her voice wavers slightly. “This is a professional environment with rules and—”

“Rules.” I smile, but there’s nothing friendly about it.

“You want to talk about rules? Let’s talk about patient confidentiality.

About how reporting this incident would require you to disclose details about my medical treatment.

About how that could open the university up to some very expensive legal problems.”

Her face pales slightly. I lean closer.

“This isn’t high school. I’m not some college kid you can threaten.” I glance at her name tag. “So, here’s my suggestion, Tanya. Turn around. Walk away. Pretend this never happened. Because the alternative involves lawyers, and trust me, mine are better than yours.”

She stares at me for a long moment, then glances at Sage, who’s standing frozen by the equipment table. Finally, she turns and hurries out of the room, her footsteps echoing down the hallway.

It’s silent for a moment as I crack my neck. Tanya ruined the one fucking moment I’ve been craving. But that problem is taken care of.

“Are you completely out of your mind?” Sage explodes the second we’re alone. “Do you have any idea what you just did?”

“I handled it.”

“You threatened her!”

“I didn’t fucking threaten her.”

Sage pushes past me toward the door, her movements sharp with anger and panic. “She’s my boss, Slater. My new boss who determines whether I keep this job.”

“So?”

She whirls around, her eyes blazing. “So, some of us don’t have trust funds and professional hockey contracts to fall back on! Some of us need our jobs to survive. I can’t just intimidate people and throw money at problems until they disappear.”

The words hit me hard. “I knew you had a fucking problem with me.”

Her voice cracks. “You live in this bubble where consequences don’t apply to you. Where you can do whatever you want because you’re Slater Castellano.”

Her chest is rising and falling rapidly. There are tears in her eyes and seeing them makes something twist painfully in my chest.

“This job matters to me,” she whispers. “This career is all I have. And you just—” She shakes her head. “You don’t understand. You can’t understand. You won’t ever fucking understand! You have no idea what you’ve just done.”

The words echo in the small space between us, each one landing like a physical blow. I watch her face, searching for some sign that she doesn’t mean it, that she’s just scared and lashing out. But all I see is conviction. Truth.

She thinks I’m just some spoiled rich kid who throws his weight around. Some entitled asshole who doesn’t understand what it means to lose everything.

If only she knew.

“You’re right,” I say quietly, my voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t understand.”

Something flickers in her eyes—surprise, maybe regret—but it’s too late. The damage is done.

She brushes past me toward the door, and I let her go. I don’t try to stop her, don’t call her name. I just stand there in the equipment room, surrounded by the smell of leather and sweat, listening to her footsteps fade down the hallway.

When I’m sure she’s gone, when the silence stretches so thick I can barely breathe, something inside me snaps.

My fist connects with the concrete wall with a sickening crack. Pain explodes up my arm, bright and sharp and somehow not enough. I hit it again, harder this time, feeling my knuckles split open.

Blood drips onto the floor, but it doesn’t touch the rage burning in my chest. Doesn’t touch the way her words keep echoing in my head.

You can’t understand.

She has no idea what I’ve lost. What I’ve given up. What I sacrificed.

But she’s made it clear—I’m just another privileged asshole who gets everything handed to him. Another rich boy who doesn’t know what real consequences feel like.

I stare at my bloody knuckles and wonder if she’s right.

Maybe I am exactly that.

If it wasn’t true, then why would she say it?