Chapter 9:

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He took his time with that too.

At some point I pressed my wrist against my mouth, remembering where we were, and felt him pause and look up.

“Can you be quiet for me, princess?”

He asked it the way you ask something when you already know the answer and find it more interesting than inconvenient.

He went back to what he was doing.

The answer was approximately no.

LENNOX

After, I turned off the shower and stood in the quiet.

The steam was thinning. Beckham was leaning against the opposite wall, watching me — not the performance of watching, just actually looking, in that direct way I was starting to recognize as simply how he paid attention to things.

U𝘱da𝘁𝘦𝗌 𝗲𝘃𝖾𝗿y 𝘸ee𝗄 𝗼𝗇 𝗀𝘢𝘭ոo𝘷еl𝗌.𝗰o𝗆

“Did I make you come?” he asked.

He already knew. He wanted to hear me say it.

“Maybe,” I said.

He smiled. Not the rink smirk — the small, constructed one he aimed at people like a question. This was something he had not decided to do. That difference was not lost on me, and I wished it had been.

I reached for a towel.

The thing I had been sidestepping all day was sitting in front of me now: this morning I had been actively irritated by this person. We had covered a significant amount of ground since then, and my body had apparently found the pace acceptable even when the rest of me had reservations.

Beckham Cole was a heartbreaker. That was not a rumor — it was a pattern, two years documented, visible to anyone who paid attention. I was not naive enough to believe I was exempt from it. And I was not sure, standing there, that I even wanted exemption, which was its own problem.

Everyone outside that door had watched him bring me here. They had drawn conclusions. Those conclusions were not wrong.

Through the wall I could still hear his teammates. The music was louder now. Someone had taken over the reenactment and was apparently doing voices.

I toweled off and told myself this was the last time.

I said it clearly and meant it, the way you mean things when you are still close enough to the moment that you cannot yet see what you will actually do.

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