Page 110 of Stand Your Ground

And he was right. I did know the safe words.

But I didn’t reach for them.

Instead, I leaned over the edge and into the free fall, intohimand everything he was promising.

My past screamed the whole way down, begging me to reconsider.

But it was too late.

I was his.

I only hoped it was warm, welcoming water at the end of that dive and not cold, hard concrete.

Spinning Out

Carter

It wasn’t lost on me that the bike fan wasn’t the only thing spinning out.

Like a cannon blast from a barrel, the season had shot back into action just two days after Will and Chloe’s party. The 4 Nations Face-Off was complete, the season resumed, and like a break hadn’t even happened at all, we were back in the race for the playoffs.

It was easy for the week to fly by, a blur of practice, travel, and games. Whatwasn’teasy was keeping my mind on hockey when all I wanted was to get wrapped up in Livia Young.

She’d come home with me the night of the party, neither of us satiated by the quick, frenzied claiming of one another against the side of Will’s house. I’d kept her up until well into the morning hours, and it still hadn’t been enough. And when she was leaving the next day, her lips swollen from me and eyes a happy kind of tired, I hadn’t wanted to let her go. I’d kept pulling her back into me for another kiss, like everything we’d whispered to each other would disappear the moment she walked out the door, the spell broken.

And it was beginning to feel that way.

Here we were a week later, and I hadn’t seen her since that night.

It made sense. I’d jetted off to St. Louis and then to Jacksonville with the team, and as soon as we’d returned to Tampa, it was with just enough time to prepare for tonight’s game — which we’d lost. It was brutal, to be within reach of the playoffs, but also teetering on the edge of not making it. Every loss felt dire, every win like just a Band-Aid trying to hold together a wound that clearly needed stitches.

And I knew I wasn’t the only one busy.

Livia had been struggling to keep her head above water even before the party. It was the sole reason I’d taken her out to the springs, to clear her mind and give her a little rest. Even on our lazy day off together, she’d had to field calls from the office, as if they couldn’t function without her for even twenty-four hours.

Now, here I was on a bike in the team gym trying to flush out my legs after a grueling three periods, but it was my head doing all the sweating.

Livia hadn’t been at the game tonight.

It wasn’t unusual for her not to attend. She had work, a life, responsibilities bigger than sitting in an arena watching me chase a puck. But still… a part of me hoped she’d want to see me after I’d been away for our travel games, that she’d take any excuse to be with me just like I would with her.

I felt her empty seat like a bruise.

When I texted her afterward, she answered immediately, and for all I could tell, nothing was off. She met my humor with her own and eased a bit of my worry with her use of a kiss emoji, but I still felt a chasm between us.

I asked if I could see her soon, and she’d hit me with:Of course, Rook. Just give me a few days to get some things in order. I have some business to take care of.

Business.

A few days.

My legs pumped harder, the flywheel whining under the pressure.

Was I supposed to read between the lines? Was she pulling away? Or was she actually just busy and I was being the neurotic asshole who couldn’t handle space?

A few days wasn’t that long, but it felt like a decade after already not seeing her for a week.

Could she honestly not find a spare moment to see me?