Page 57 of The Assist
My stomach flips.
He doesn’t say a word. Just moves, slowly and deliberately, until he drops into the empty seat beside me. I keep my gaze out the window, but my heart is pounding so hard I’m afraid someone will hear it.
“You okay?” he asks, hisvoice low.
“Fine,” I say quickly, too quickly.
We sit in silence as the coach pulls away from the hotel and back onto the road home. Rain spatters against the window, and the scenery blurs into long, golden smears. I can feel the heat of his body and the subtle shift of his leg against mine when the coach jolts around a bend. He’s too close. But I don’t move.
His voice breaks the silence again. “About last night…”
I close my eyes. “Don’t.”
“Mia.”
“I can’t do this here. On the coach. In front of everyone.”
His jaw tightens. I can see it in the edge of my vision. That signature Diesel clench. The one that usually precedes a fight on the ice. Or an internal one in his head. “Nothing’s happening,” he mutters, sitting back slightly. “Nobody’s watching.”
“That’s not the point,” I whisper, finally turning to look at him. “I’ve worked my arse off to be taken seriously by this team. I can’t risk throwing it away because I can’t think straight when you look at me.”
That shuts him up and the silence stretches between us. And then he says softly, “You think I’d let anyone disrespect you?”
I bite my lip. “It’s not about whatyou’dlet happen, Dylan. It’s about how thingslook.How fast reputations are made and broken. I’ve worked too hard to have mine reduced to a punchline in the locker room.”
He looks past me and out of the window now, his jaw tight again. “You think I don’t get that?”
I swallow. “Do you?”
He doesn’t answer right away. Just exhales slowly. Then, quietly, “You don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve wanted something that isn’t just noise. And then you show up and it’s like something finally cuts through it all.”
My chest tightens. The way he says it, like it costs him something to admit it, undoes me a little. But still, I have to be the level-headed one here. “This job is everything to me,” I whisper. “I can’t mess it up. I won’t.”
We fall into silence again, the kind that’s awkward and heavy with everything left unsaid. He shifts slightly in his seat, angling his body toward mine just enough that his knee brushes mine again.
His mouth curves into the barest smirk. “I’m not giving up on this. Onyou.You might want to pretend there’s nothing here, but we both know that’s a lie.”
My cheeks burn, but I don’t pull away. I don’t argue because he’s right. Thereissomething here. Something dangerous and unstoppable. Like gravity.
But I can’t fall. Not yet.
Not when everything I’ve built could come crumbling down.
At the rink last night, I couldn’t think straight. He was everywhere; on the bench, on the ice, in my head. The way he looked at me before he got up from that hit…
I didn’t sleep last night, not really. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him again, with his jaw tight, and his hand gripping my waist like he needed something to hold onto.
And then the kiss.
God, that kiss.
Half restraint, half promise. Every nerve in my body was singing. I’d leaned in without even meaning to, instinct pulling me toward him like a magnet. If he hadn’t stopped it, I don’t know where it would’ve gone.
And that’s what terrifies me most.
Because I don’t trust myself when it comes to Dylan Winters.
Not when his voice gets low and sincere like it did lastnight. Not when his eyes go soft in moments no one else sees. Not when he makes me feel like maybe I do actually matter.
