Page 13

Chapter 13

Hannah

I watch Declan go with my stomach twisting itself into a painful knot, unable to get the look on his face out of my head.

“What was that all about?” Aaron asks, and he starts to sit down across from me like he’s been invited to my time and didn’t just crash my meal with Declan, but I jump to my feet, and he raises his eyebrows at me. “Where are you going?”

“I’ve got homework to do,” I say and brush past him before he has the chance to try to talk me out of it. I can’t leave things like this with Declan. He moves just as fast off the ice as he does on it, and I catch a glimpse of him through the window striding around the corner back toward where he parked his bike, so I hustle out after him.

Aaron calls after me, but I ignore him as I push out the door and run around the corner. I spot Declan halfway across the parking lot to his bike.

“Declan, wait!” I call, but he doesn’t stop walking, so I run as fast as I can to catch up with him. He’s just kicking a leg over his bike when I reach him, but I grab him by the elbow. He turns to face me, his jaw clenched, and glares down at my hand, so I let go of him.

“I didn’t know you had a boyfriend,” he says with an edge to his voice as he reaches for his helmet.

I shake my head hard. “I don’t. Not anymore.”

Declan stares at me as if weighing the truth of my words. “Does he know that? He sure wasn’t acting like it.”

“Listen, just let me explain. It’s not what you think. He’s an alumnus of the law program I’m in, and we met at school. We did date for a while, but we broke up like eight months ago.”

“Then why is he still calling himself your boyfriend?” Declan asks as he lifts his helmet to put it on, but I grab it from him and hold it under one arm so he can’t take off.

He looks me up and down and I can’t tell if he’s impressed or annoyed, but either way, it doesn’t matter. As long as he can’t leave without hearing what I have to say, that’s all I care about.

“He’s been wanting to get back together lately and asked me to take him back. But that doesn’t mean we are together. I never said yes.”

Declan dismounts his bike, and I step back to make room, but he moves with me, closing the distance between us and stealing back his helmet. He hooks it on the handlebars, then locks his intense gaze on mine.

My heart hammers in my chest because I’m not sure what he’s doing, but he’s so close to me that all I can focus on is him. The way he smells like cedar and spice, the quiet confidence in the way he stands, the almost effortless way he snatched his helmet from me—the same way he could just as easily take whatever else he wants from me. The breeze catches his dark, wavy hair, and his intense, amber-flecked brown eyes bore into mine, robbing me of my breath.

“Do you want to date him again?” he finally asks, and my tongue flicks out to moisten my lips. My heart stutters at the way he’s looking at me, like he can see right through to the truth I’m trying to hide.

“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “I—I feel like I should. My parents really like him, and we made sense together.”

Declan lifts a brow at me but doesn’t back away. “You made sense together?” His hand rises to the side of my face where he drags the back of his finger down my cheek with deliberate gentleness. “Did this Aaron guy treat you like a princess? Pay attention to every little detail about you?” His finger traces the edge of my jaw. “Could he make you fall apart until you were a shaking, breathless mess?”

I swallow hard. Declan has somehow moved even closer to me without me realizing it, but how could I focus on anything other than the words dripping like honey from his mouth and the fire of his finger on my skin?

The worst part is that the answer to every single one of those questions is no, but somehow, it still feels fucking impossible for me to tell him that.

Because as much as the answer is burning on the tip of my tongue, I’m afraid of what comes after if I say it.

I feel like my body is at war with my brain. I’ve never been so attracted to anyone the way I am with Declan. It’s like there’s this switch in me that only he knows how to flip, and he doesn’t even have to do anything to make it happen. Every time I’m around him, my entire body feels electrified, almost like there’s some sort of magnetic current between us pulling us inexorably together.

Even now, as he stares at me with unmistakable hunger while he waits for an answer that he probably knows isn’t going to come, every hair on the back of my neck is standing straight up and lurching toward him like he has a gravitational pull.

But as loud as that feeling is in my brain, and as much as he makes me feel like my body’s catching fire from the inside, neither sensation is loud enough to drown out the voice that’s shrieking at me to keep my distance.

I did everything I could to keep these worlds separate for a good reason. But now that they’ve collided, it’s like I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.

Because honestly? If it weren’t for the fact my dad is his coach, I wouldn’t have a problem with any of this. And I probably would’ve let Declan repeat all the things he’s done to me already and more by now.

But my dad is his coach, and he’s made it abundantly clear that all hockey players—but especially ones on his team—are off limits.

It’s an impossible situation. Declan’s doing too well on the team to get traded, and my father isn’t anywhere near retirement age. So where the hell do Declan and I go from here?

Even if I wanted to give him a chance—and god help me, I do, as much as I’m trying not to let it show—I can’t.

We can keep doing this sexy, fun, back-and-forth dance on the edge of a knife all we want, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’re going to keep coming back to square one.

“Aaron’s not right for you,” Declan says, shaking his head softly. My heart pounds even harder as if fighting to break free of my chest.

“Why not?” I ask, even though I’m not sure I should. But I need to hear his answer. I need to hear him say what I already know.

My breath comes in ragged fits through my nose while I wait, and he smirks as he rests his hand on my collarbone. His thumb traces the outline of it, making me shiver. My skin burns from his touch like it’s red-hot, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear it’s searing me. But Declan finally breaks the silence.

“Because no one is right for you but me,” he says, his voice low and full of the same heat that’s been radiating off him since I stopped him. “And I think you know it as much as I do, you just can’t admit it—yet.”

Every inch of my body is alive with awareness, from the places where his skin touches mine to the spaces between us that ache to be closed. And my heart is hammering in time to the word that’s on repeat in my mind.

Yes, yes, yes, yes .

But almost as quickly, my rational brain takes over, and I shake my head at him like I’m about to make a case in a courtroom. “You don’t know that. We spent one night together, and it was amazing, but that doesn’t mean we know each other. For all we know, we’d be terrible together.”

Declan flashes me a devastatingly confident smile. “You don’t believe that.”

His hand moves down my arm to my wrist, which he takes in one hand and lifts to his mouth to kiss the tender underside. His lips barely touch my skin, but it’s still enough to ignite a fire inside me and catapult me right back to that night six months ago.

All at once, I feel his hot lips and breath all over my body, peppering it with kisses while he makes his way down my torso…

His mouth hovers above my skin, and when his hot breath breezes against it again, goosebumps ripple away from the source and drag me back into my body. It feels incredible, and at some level it scares me that something so small can have such a huge effect. But this is what he does to me. Ever since I crashed into him that night at Opal and Oak, ever since he kissed me the first time, I haven’t been the same, and I’m starting to wonder if I ever will be.

Maybe I don’t want to be.

Declan lightly kisses my wrist again, creating a fresh wave of goosebumps, and when I shiver, he smirks and raises his eyebrows at me.

“See?” He drops my arm and takes my chin lightly between his thumb and forefinger, gazing right into my eyes. “You can lie all you want, hummingbird, but your body can’t.”

My heart stutters in my chest. How the fuck does he see through me so easily? Somehow, this man knows me—can read me—in a way that goes far beyond our one night together.

The world seems to slow to a halt around me as the tension and truth explode between us like a supernova. And before I have any conscious awareness of what I’m doing, my body takes control.

I surge onto my tiptoes and crush my lips against his.