Chapter 5: The Exception

Lori

I wasn't here for training, and I definitely wasn't here for anyone.

Professor Thompson needed a batch of the players' physical files pulled from the sports medicine office, and he could have walked over himself, but he was much better at handing his errands to students. I didn't argue. He held my internship recommendation in one hand and my future in the other, and besides, I needed something to do with myself. Anything to keep my hands busy.

I hadn't slept. Not because I was heartbroken. The tearing part had already peaked the second I dragged Austin's number into the blocked list last night. What came after was just this hollow, scooped-out nothing. Two years. I'd built two years of my time, my energy, my whole career plan around one person, and then I'd deleted him out of my phone myself. Now there was a blank where all of that used to be, and I didn't know what was supposed to fill it.

Walking into the athletics building, I tugged the brim of my cap down without thinking. Dark baseball cap, plain hoodie, jeans. Nothing that would make anyone look twice. Hockey practice should've ended already, but I couldn't be sure Austin wasn't still around, and I didn't want to see him. Didn't want to see his teammates, didn't want to see anyone who might drag last night back up into the daylight.

I went in through the side door, cut fast through the hallway, signed for the folder at the sports medicine office. Five minutes, start to finish. Clean.

For the way back I picked a corridor I never used—the one connecting the rink's side wall to the parking lot exit. Usually empty except for the odd athlete cutting through between ice slots. I kept my head down, eyes on the white tile and the gray anti-slip stripes.

Then I saw the wrist guard.

It was lying at the corner, black, with that snug elastic build and a small label stitched on the inside. My steps slowed. Occupational habit, I guess—I can ID sports gear on reflex now. This wasn't a drugstore compression sleeve. High-stretch compression fabric, silicone cushioning along the inner wrist, the kind built to take the shock off the joint from repetitive impact and stick-handling. Hockey gear.

I crouched, picked it up, flipped it over. No name on the label. Model and size, clear as day.

Whose bag does something like this fall out of? Practice had just let out; there were still a couple of guys drifting toward the lot with gear bags slung over their shoulders. My first thought was Austin, and my stomach pulled tight. I almost put it straight back down. Not mine. Not my problem.

But I didn't.

Because ten yards ahead of me, a tall figure was walking off fast. Black hoodie, bag slung across one shoulder, side pocket gaping open. Long stride, controlled but rushed, like he was getting away from something.

Not Austin.

Wrong height, wrong build, wrong walk. Austin ambles, kind of rolls when he moves. This guy went in a straight, hard line.

I placed the back of him in about half a second.

Bastien Galloway.

My steps hitched.

Last night surfaced on its own—him crouching to pick up the bills Catherine had thrown on the floor, quiet about it, like it was the most ordinary thing in the world. No pity when he handed them over. No looking down at me. Then making Catherine apologize.

My fingers closed tighter around the guard. I didn't want anything to do with Bastien. Not because he'd done something wrong—the opposite, honestly. What he did last night was the only human thing at that entire party. But he was a Galloway. Austin's cousin. Getting tangled up with him meant more complications, more knots, a whole web I'd never be able to cut myself out of.

Put it down, I told myself. Turn around.

Except the guard was already in my hand, and one of Thompson's rules kept surfacing: an athlete's gear is tied directly to their physical condition. This wasn't a fashion accessory. It protected the wrist joint and the forearm muscles a hockey player literally can't do without. Train or play without it, and you're looking at strain, tendinitis, the slow-build injuries that end careers.

So it wasn't a question of whether I wanted to help Bastien. It was a question of whether a sports medicine student walks past an athlete's dropped gear and pretends she didn't see it.

I bit the inside of my lip. Fine. Return it and go.

I sped up, folder tucked under one arm, guard in my other fist.

"Hey—"

My voice bounced around the empty corridor. He didn't react. Earbuds in, pace unbroken.

"Galloway—"

Nothing.

I was half-jogging now, cap brim flipping up in the air. His legs were so much longer than mine that ten steps barely closed the gap. He was about to turn into the locker room tunnel, the players-only stretch, and if I didn't catch him here I'd have to hand it to the front desk or drop it in some lost-and-found box and pray it made it back.

Last second, I reached out and grabbed his forearm.

Three things happened at once.

His body reacted before he did—shoulder dropping, arm already swinging outward, like something in him had tripped an alarm. Second, he was still in his skates, just skate guards over the blades, and those things have zero grip on tile. My pull wasn't even hard, but it was enough to finish tipping a balance that was already gone. Third, I saw he was going down.

His weight lurched sideways, guards sliding out from under him. If he cracked the back of his head or his shoulder into the tile at that angle, with that mass behind it, it was not going to be nothing.

My first instinct wasn't to jump clear.

I let go of his arm, dropped the folder and the guard, and threw both hands out—one behind his neck where it met the base of his skull, the other bracing his shoulder. Pure conditioning. You do not stand there and watch an athlete's head hit the floor.

I completely underestimated his weight. He had almost a full head on me, hockey-player shoulders, all of it coming down at once. My brace didn't stop him—it just changed the angle. Instead of pitching backward he came forward into me, my spine slammed the tunnel wall, and I slid down it with him on top.

The corridor went dead quiet for a second.

His chest was heaving against mine, breath hot and fast at the side of my neck, still carrying the heat of a hard workout. One of my hands was still cupped behind his neck, fingers pushed into the damp hair at the back of his skull. The other was pinned under his shoulder. Too close. Close enough to see the base of his lashes and the sweat sliding off his brow, close enough to smell cold rink air and sweat and some faint woodsy laundry thing under all of it.

He didn't push off me.