Page 30 of The Assist
She shrugs, deadpan. “I don’t want it going to your head. You’ve already got fans throwing bras onto the glass.”
“That was one time.”
She tilts her head, unimpressed. “It was two. I counted.”
I huff a laugh, shaking my head. “Were you watching me?”
She doesn’t answer right away. Her gaze flicks to her glass of water, then back up. “I always watch. You know that.”
Something in my stomach twists. “I meant off the puck,” I say, quieter. “When I wasn’t doing anything impressive.”
Her eyes narrow, like she’s trying to read between the lines.
“You looked like you were trying to prove something tonight,” she says finally. “Not to the crowd. Not to the team.”
I lean in, my elbows resting on the table. “Who, then?”
She just holds my gaze. It’s steady and clear. “You tell me.”
The noise around us blurs; laughter, glasses clinking, Danny singing something off-key. But this moment, this look, it sharpens everything. It grounds me.
“I don’t know how to stop trying,” I admit. “I don’t know how to just be enough.”
Mia’s expression softens. “You were enough tonight.”
I swallow. “Thanks to you,” I say. “For the tape. For the rehab. For showing up.”
She looks down at her hands. “It’s my job.”
“But you don’t do it like it’s just that. You make it feel like it’s so much more.”
Her breath catches and I hear it, even with all the noise. And for one fragile second, she doesn’t put the wall up. She lets it crack open.
“No,” she murmurs. “I don’t.”
There’s something in that silence. A hum. A thread pulled too tight. I want to reach across the table. I want to touch her hand, lace my fingers through hers. But I don’t. Not here. Not yet.
Murphy barrels over with a tray of shots, completelyoblivious to the moment he just bulldozed through. “Celebration time! Mia, you’re doing one whether you like it or not.”
She rolls her eyes. “I’m driving.”
“Water shot, then,” he says, already sliding her a glass with a wink. “Symbolic peer pressure.”
She takes it without arguing and we clink glasses, laugh, and drink. But as the night rolls on and the table erupts into chaos again, her leg brushes mine under the table, and it stays there.
She doesn’t move it. And neither do I.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MIA
The first thing I notice when I wake up is the weight in my chest.
Not the kind that makes you gasp. The other kind, the quieter, heavier one that hums beneath your ribs like a secret. It’s not anxiety, exactly. But it’s close. That weird feeling of knowing something’s shifted, and you’re still not sure whether it’s for better or worse.
The second thing I notice is my phone buzzing on the nightstand.
Sunlight filters through the blinds, painting stripes across my duvet. I blink blearily at the screen, and swipe it up without checking the sender. I’m still not fully awake. Still floating somewhere between the warmth of sleep and the memory of his leg pressed against mine under the table.
