Page 60 of Triplets for the Pucking Playboys
She doesn’t say anything, but I can tell she gets it. Maybe better than anyone. She reaches out to pat my arm, and our hands collide, fingers overlapping, warm and rough and uncertain. Neither of us pulls away.
For a moment, I think maybe I could just stay here forever. No cameras, no games, no next move to consider. Just this: thetaste of dark chocolate, the weight of her hand on mine, the way her breathing syncs up with my own.
I look at her, and she looks back, and for the first time in months, I don’t feel like I have to win.
She’s the first to break the spell. Sage stands, brushes a crumb from her shorts, and starts gathering the tray and her notebook like she can tidy away the entire hour. Her hands move fast, efficient, as if each motion reclaims a layer of distance that the silence and the chocolate and the accidental touch had dissolved.
“Thanks for the input,” she says, and the tone is professional again, but softer. “You’re a good test case. The rest of the team just tells me it’s fine and throws it out when I’m not looking.”
She tucks the tray under her arm, checks her phone, then turns toward the door with a finality that makes my stomach go hollow. For a second, I almost let her go. But something inside me—primal, stupid, resistant to all logic—doesn’t want the moment to evaporate. I close the gap in two strides, step into her path before she can reach the exit.
She stops, tray wedged between us, eyes wary but not annoyed. I take the tray from her hands, careful, and set it on the nearest bench. I can feel her watching every muscle in my face, waiting to see if this is a joke or a mistake or a test.
I don’t make a move right away. My heart’s in my throat. I scan her face for any sign that this is wrong. All I see is the rise and fall of her breath, the slight quiver at the corner of her mouth, like she’s trying not to speak and ruin it.
I raise my hand slowly, not touching her until I’m sure she’ll let me. A strand of her hair has come loose, curled against her cheekbone like it belongs there. I tuck it back, barely grazing her skin. Her face tilts into my hand like it’s instinct, like she doesn’t even realize she’s doing it. She’s so warm it hurts. So alive it knocks the ground out from under me. The gym seems to fallaway, everything except the shape of her, the shallow rise of her breath, the pulse I can see fluttering in her neck.
She doesn’t move. Not away. Not toward. Just watches me with eyes that look like they’ve already lived the ending of whatever this is and still want to try again. If I don’t kiss her now, if I let this moment slip past, it’ll be the kind of regret that wakes me in the middle of the night for the rest of my life.
So I do. I kiss her.
She gasps once, soft and startled, and then she’s kissing me back like she’s been waiting for the world to stop long enough to let her. Her hands grip my arms, nails catching in the fabric of my sleeves. Her mouth opens under mine, and I lean into it—her—like I’m drowning and she’s the only thing worth sinking for.
The noise of the gym is gone. The tension in my shoulders, the months of silence and missteps and almosts, it all melts under her mouth. Her body responds, chest to chest, nothing between us but the gravity we keep trying to deny. My hands slide to her waist, and I feel the tremor in her as she arches into me, like she’s fighting herself and losing.
But then she breaks the kiss with a soft exhale and a look that’s equal parts apology and promise. Her lips are flushed. Her voice barely a whisper. “I need to be somewhere else.”
She places her hand on my chest, fingers splayed, as if anchoring herself there for just a second more. Then she steps back, but her eyes stay on mine. And when she turns away, I swear I see the ghost of a smile, fragile and real.
21
GREY
The trick to hiding from a documentary film crew is to think like a cockroach. Find the darkest, least sanitary corner of the building and wait until the threat passes, or until someone flushes you out with a broom and a lot of expletives. After five months as the face (read: scowl) of the Storm franchise, I’ve learned a thing or two about eluding human bloodhounds carrying Sony 4K shoulder cannons. You want to survive the day without a sound bite? You go to ground.
Today, I slip the leash by ducking the perimeter hallway off the kitchen, doubling back through the staff entrance, and making a beeline for the only place in the building that hasn’t been turned into a sad facsimile of a tech startup: the storage wing. No motivational banners, nopositive mindsetpop-ups, just cracked linoleum, the tang of bleach, and a graveyard of obsolete exercise bands in plastic tubs that could double as bathtubs for large-breed dogs.
The storage area is poorly lit, a design flaw I have come to love. Most of the bulbs have burned out and been replaced with LED shop lights, which cast everything in a gentle, restorative gloom. The shelves run floor to ceiling and are packed like ahoarder’s IKEA: protein powders, single-use meal replacement goop, cartons of Gatorade bottles, a stack of unopened boxes labeledMouth Guards – Adult XL. There’s also an entire section devoted to medical tape, which I know for a fact is the unofficial currency of the Storm’s athletic training staff.
The best hiding spot is the narrow cut between shelving units and the outer wall, a place only accessible if you can squeeze your body into the space between a case of replacement shin pads and a rolling cart labeledEmergency Concussion Helmets – Do Not Tamper. I wedge myself into the gap, slide down to a low crouch, and wait. The whine of the HVAC is interrupted every so often by the heavy tread of a passing janitor, or the hiss of a far-off espresso machine, but otherwise it’s silent. Perfect.
That’s when I hear the sound of plastic wrap being sliced a little further down the aisle. Not a janitor. Too careful. Not a rookie—those guys move like they’re getting paid by the hour, and also, they’re terrified of this wing because they think it’s haunted. Which leaves: staff. Probably Moretti, since she’s the only person in the building more allergic to human contact than I am.
I edge around the corner and there she is, standing with her back to me, hunched over a shipping carton. Sage has a box cutter in one hand and her phone in the other, thumbed open to what looks like a spreadsheet app. She’s reading off a list of SKUs, cross-referencing the contents of the box with the data on her phone, and muttering to herself in a voice so low and even that it’s basically white noise. Her hair is up, but not in the tight, professional bun she wears in front of cameras; it’s loose and tangled, with a plastic pencil jabbed through it like a knitting needle.
I consider ghosting out, but she’s already clocked my reflection in the metal shelf. She doesn’t look up, just says, “Areyou stalking me, Grey, or did you get lost on your way to the fridge again?”
“Both,” I say, and lean against a shelf with enough calculated nonchalance to communicate that this is a zero-threat interaction. “You don’t strike me as the type who needs inventory help.”
She sighs, drops the box cutter on top of the carton, and turns. Her eyes are a little puffy, like she hasn’t slept, and the set of her mouth says she’s running on clever comebacks and caffeine, although that must, at some point, get exhausting. “I wouldn’t say no to an extra set of hands, if you’re offering. But you’ll need to pass the colorblindness test.” She tosses a roll of kinesiology tape at me. I catch it one-handed, squint at the label:Storm Blue, 1.75 inch.
“Is this the one that made the rookie break out in hives, or the one that’s secretly just painter’s tape?”
She gives a half smile, the first one I’ve seen from her in a week. “Surprise me. I’m behind on the reconciliation, and if we don’t log it by today, Ryland will send his angry elf in here to do it for us.”
I start slicing open boxes, dumping their contents onto the table, and lining up the tape rolls by color and size. She watches for a second, then resumes her own work, reading off SKUs and jotting down notes in a little spiral notebook that has seen better days. The silence is comfortable, except for the occasional interjection:
“Did you ever actually play with a torn groin, or is that just a myth they made up for PR?”
