“Don’t.” She stepped closer, closing the space just enough. “Don’t do that thing where you pretend it’s nothing. It’s not nothing.”
The wind kicked up between us, sharper this time, lifting a piece of her hair and dragging it across her cheek. She didn’t fix it. “You’re out there breaking people’s faces,” shecontinued, her voice tightening just slightly, “and then you show up here like—like some?—”
“Saint?” I offered, because she was clearly searching for it.
Her eyes flashed. “Yes,” she snapped. “Exactly. You’re a monster and a saint. Pick a damn lane, Müller.”
There it was. I exhaled through my nose, something quieter settling under my ribs, something I didn’t bother naming. “I’m good where I am.”
That only made it worse. I saw it land—saw the way it irritated her, the way her brain tried to sort something that didn’t want to be sorted.
“You can’t be both,” she pushed.
“Sure I can.”
“That’s not how people work.”
I stepped closer this time. Just enough that she had to tilt her head back a fraction to keep eye contact. “They do,” I growled. “You just don’t like it.”
Her breath hitched. Small. But I felt it. And that—more than anything else tonight—was dangerous.
My gaze dropped for half a second. Her mouth. Close enough now that I could see the way her lips parted just slightly when she inhaled again, the cold catching in the space between us. I dragged my focus back up before it could go anywhere worse.
“You’re deflecting,” she muttered.
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
I nodded once. “Good.”
That earned me a look. Sharp. Frustrated.
I stepped past her before I could do something stupid—like stay there long enough to find out what she’d do next.
“Come on,” I barked, already moving toward the car. “It’s cold.”
CHAPTER 16
BEA
A FEW WEEKS LATER
Minnesota wind that morning was unrelenting. Unforgiving in a way I had never experienced in Brazil. Not even in hurricane season.
It charged off the lake in sharp, slicing gusts that found every opening in my coat and slithered beneath the wool, needling my skin hard enough to make my eyes water before we even reached the courthouse steps. Northbend in November had turned cruel overnight—gray sky, frozen sidewalks, wind that smelled faintly of snow and exhaust and the bitter burn of a city already bracing for winter. My boots struck the pavement in quick, clipped beats, leather slick against old salt and slush, and for one stupid, disjointed second, all I could think about was the first time I’d worn proper boots around Alois Müller and how impossibly far away that version of me felt now.
Then the noise found us. It broke over the sidewalk in a violent wave the second our SUV door opened—voices rising over one another, camera shutters snapping in relentless bursts, questions hurled with all the precision and mercy of stones. My pulse kicked hard enough to make the base of mythroat ache. Security moved first, legal close behind them, a wall of dark coats and practiced urgency cutting a narrow path toward the courthouse entrance, but it didn’t matter. There was no real shielding from this. Not with cameras stretched overhead. Not with microphones shoved forward like weapons. Not with half the city apparently waiting outside to see whether the NHL’s resident monster was finally going to look like one in daylight.
A hand closed around mine. Not tentative. Not searching. Certain.
Alois’s fingers laced through mine with a pressure that left no room for hesitation, and just like that I was moving, pulled into motion beside him, my shoulder brushing the hard line of his coat as the crowd surged toward us. The contact should have startled me. A month ago, maybe even two weeks ago, it would have. Now it only sent a different kind of awareness skidding down my spine—hot and sharp and immediate, my body recognizing him before my brain had a chance to catch up.
“Restez avec moi.” His voice was pitched low enough that it barely existed beyond the space between us. Completely steady. No crack. No strain. Nothing to suggest the storm closing in from every side.
Stay with me.The words—simple, wrapped in his perfect accent—pulled my attention up anyway. To the hard line of his jaw. The fixed, unyielding set of his stare. The darkening of his irises from crystal or deep ocean blue. The slight knitting of his brows.
And then I saw it.