Offside Hearts: Chapter 12

“How’s it look?” Noah asks a few minutes into the warmup, skating over to me as I review the footage. “Can we use that take, or do we need to try it again?”

“I think this will work,” I tell him, glancing up from the camera. “It actually looks pretty damn good. I’m going to edit it a little, add the music, then post it to the Aces’ TikTok account. Do you want to watch it before I post it, to make sure you like how it looks?”

“Nah, that’s okay.” He gives me a cocky smile that somehow manages to be endearing as well. “I’m sure we both look great.” He glides a bit closer and looks over his shoulder, presumably to see if the rest of the team is still around, but they’re all on the other side of the ice. “Sorry about the guys showing up early. I hope they didn’t embarrass you too much.”

“It’s fine,” I murmur, tucking some hair behind my ear and avoiding looking directly at him. “Nothing to be embarrassed about. I’m just doing my job.” I offer him a little smile before putting the camera back in the bag and slipping my coat back on. “Now, I’ll let you do your job and get to practice. Thanks again.”

“Don’t mention it,” he says, lifting two fingers to his forehead in a little salute, then pivoting and skating away.

I nod to a couple of the other players who look my way, then walk out of the practice rink, pulling my coat tighter around me. Not that I need it. My cheeks are still warm. In fact, my entire body seems to be several degrees hotter than usual, and I know exactly why.

I can still feel the warmth from Noah’s body, the feeling of his fingers wrapped around my waist. He’s so fucking strong, so confident in the way he handled me. I can’t help but think about what it would feel like to have him touch me like that again, but in other circumstances. Someplace where we weren’t in any danger of being interrupted…

No. Stop it, Margo. You know why that’s a bad idea.

Shoving the increasingly dirty thoughts out of my head, I focus on why we made the video in the first place, recalling what’s at stake and how important this job is to me. I try to forget about the moment we had on the ice and head straight to my office to focus on making our raw footage picture perfect.

Which doesn’t take much time, actually, since Noah was right—we both look great.

The video totally blows up.

I put it up a little before ten a.m., and by noon, it has more than a million views. I’m feeling very proud of myself, and can’t help but walk around the Aces’ offices the rest of the day with my head held high. In the early afternoon, while I’m grabbing a snack from the breakroom, Ted comes in to pour himself a fresh cup of coffee. He grins when he sees me.

“There she is,” he says, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “The social media wizard! I have been keeping an eye on that video all day, and it just keeps getting more and more views. Well done.”

“Thanks,” I tell him, my chest swelling with pride. “I had a feeling it would make for good content.”

“Not good, great content!” he amends. “In fact, I was on my way downstairs to congratulate Noah as well. Would you like to join me? He’s been on the ice for most of the day, so I don’t think he knows just how big this thing has gotten.”

“Oh, uh…” I hesitate, wondering if it’s a good idea for me to go talk to Noah right now, but Ted waves a hand in the air and basically makes it impossible for me to say no.

“Don’t worry about leaving the office for a bit,” he says. “You’ve already had a slam dunk today. I think everyone would be fine with you taking a little break and basking in the glory.”

So I smile and nod. “Sure, why not?”

And that’s how I end up back on the main floor of the complex around the time that Noah and the rest of the team are packing up and getting ready to call it a day. Ted goes into the locker room to talk to them all, but I hang back. Seeing Noah is one thing, but facing the rest of the team after all their hooting and hollering from earlier? That’s just too much.

Ted walks out of the locker room five minutes later, with his arm around Theo’s shoulders. They’re talking about something Theo said to a reporter a few weeks back, and Ted is coaching him on how to answer probing questions in the future. Ted smiles at me as they walk by and says, “Great job again! Noah will be out soon. I decided to let you tell him the good news.”

He and Theo disappear down the hallway, and shortly after, Noah walks out of the locker room, fresh from the shower. His dark brown hair is still wet, and he smells like the aftershave that I secretly want to wrap myself in like a blanket. His handsome features light up when he sees me.

“Well, well. What a lovely surprise.” He adjusts his bag on his shoulder, walking over to where I’m standing. “What are you doing down here?”

“I came to tell you that the video we made went viral,” I say. “And to thank you for agreeing to do it in the first place. Not everyone would say yes to that kind of request.”

He laughs and runs his hand through the damp strands of his hair, pushing them back from his forehead. “It was nothing. Really. If you’d asked me to wear a tutu and twirl around to the soundtrack of a Disney princess movie, I would’ve said yes to that too.”

I frown. “What? Why?”

“Because I like you. I think you’re amazing, and I want you to succeed in this job.” He clears his throat, looking suddenly almost a bit nervous as he adds, “Which is why, if you really want to thank me for the video… you should let me take you out to dinner.”

I’m still reeling from the fact that Noah just confidently and unabashedly told me that he likes me. Not that he wants me, not that he thinks we’d be a great hookup. Just that he likes me. It wasn’t a pickup line, and it didn’t have the same cadence as the way he usually banters with me. It sounded completely… honest, and it throws me for a loop.

All this time, I’ve figured he’s just interested in me because he’s never met a girl who told him no before. Because he wants to add me to the long list of women he’s slept with.

But the way he’s looking at me right now?

It feels like something else entirely.

And I have no idea what to do with that.

“I—uh—well, I mean, we can go out and celebrate all our hard work,” I finally manage to say. “But just so we’re clear, this wouldn’t be like a date or anything.”

A wide smile blooms across his face, making my heart skip a beat.

“Who said anything about a date?” He holds up his hands innocently, although a teasing gleam lights in his blue eyes. “I never said the word date. Although I find it interesting that that’s where your mind went right away.”

I press my lips together, doing my best to keep a stern expression on my face. “I’m serious.”

“I know. I’m just messing with you,” he says with an easy laugh. “But seriously, this doesn’t have to be a date. Just two colleagues going out to dinner to reward themselves for a job well done. Should I pick you up at seven?”

“No. I’ll meet you at seven thirty. No picking me up. We’ll take separate cars.”

“Okay.”

He doesn’t seem daunted at all by my insistence on keeping this as non-date-like as possible. He takes it in stride, suggesting a place I’ve never heard of and giving me the address. Then I turn to head back to the offices before the rest of the team emerges from the locker room, not wanting to be caught talking to Noah alone again.

As I walk away, I can feel his gaze burning into me, and a little shiver runs up my spine. I’m starting to get used to it, I realize—to the way his gaze always seems to gravitate toward me whenever we’re in the same space together, the way I can look across a room and his eyes will automatically lock with mine.

But even more worrying than the fact that I’m growing accustomed to it?

I’m starting to like it.

The restaurant Noah picked is actually very cute and cozy. It’s exactly the kind of place I would’ve chosen if I had known about it beforehand. As he takes my coat and pulls out my chair, he tells me that he’s a regular at this place, and that it’s one of his favorite spots to go when he wants good food and a homey atmosphere.

Once we get settled and the waiter comes back with the bottle of wine Noah ordered, he smiles at me from across the table. But it’s not his cocky smile, or his flirty smile. He’s looking at me like he’s genuinely happy to be here, and the earnestness of that look sends a little shock of electricity down my spine. I take a sip of my wine and lean back into my chair.

“So,” he says, tipping his head to one side a little. “Tell me how you got interested in social media.”

“You don’t want to hear about that.” I brush him off with a laugh.

“No, I really do,” he assures me. “You seem very good at your job. Particularly good at anticipating what sort of thing will catch people’s attention. I’m interested to know where that all started.”

I put my glass down and think for a moment. I’m not sure anyone has ever asked me that before. Most people just assume I got into social media because everyone my age is into social media. But there’s actually more to the story than that, and I’m sort of surprised that Noah was the one who looked past the surface level and realized there might be a deeper calling that led me to where I am now.

“I’ve always really liked photography,” I tell him. “My parents gave me this old polaroid camera when I was a kid, and… I don’t know, I just fell in love with it. I loved documenting things, and much to my family’s dismay, candid photos were like a drug to me. I thought it was so cool, being able to capture a moment of someone’s life like that. When I got my first smartphone, I was one of those people who would fill up all her storage space with photos in like, a month.”

I laugh as a memory floats to the forefront of my mind.

“What?” Noah lifts his brows. “What are you smiling about?”

“There was this one Christmas,” I say, still grinning as I recall it. “Everyone else my age asked their parents for new video games or clothes. Makeup. Music. That sort of thing. You want to know what I asked for?”

“Of course I do.”

“I asked for an external hard drive,” I tell him, shaking my head. “I had so many pictures saved on my phone and my computer that I was running out of space. I was afraid of losing any of them, so I asked for an external hard drive so that I’d have a place to save them all. Is that not the most boring Christmas present a kid could ask for?”

He smiles, lifting his wine glass to his lips. “Nah, I think it’s cute. Did your parents buy you the hard drive?”

I nod. “Yup, they did. They were always very encouraging of my hobbies and passions.”

He frowns at this and takes a big swig of wine. I watch a little line appear between his eyebrows, aware of the fact that whatever I just said affected him somehow.

“What about you?” I ask. “Were your parents supportive? The ‘go with the flow’ type? Or…”

I trail off. I sort of already know the answer to my question, or at least, I have a guess. Based on the comment he made when I was interviewing him for the player bios, I already know that he doesn’t think his parents are proud of everything he’s accomplished, but I want more details.

Noah doesn’t respond right away, pursing his lips to one side as he sets his glass down. He studies me with a scrutinizing look, then asks, “Is this on the record?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, are you asking me this as the team’s social media manager, or are you asking me as Margo?”

“Just me. Just Margo,” I say quietly. “I swear, it’s all off the record. I won’t use anything you say tonight in a future post. Cross my heart.”

I run my finger across my chest in an X shape just to make sure he knows I’m serious.

“Alright then.” He sighs. “Off the record, no my parents are not supportive, and they are definitely not the ‘go with the flow’ type. They’re more like the ‘do what we say or we’ll disown you’ type.”

“Your parents disowned you?” My mouth falls open in disbelief.

“Not formally. It’s not like they wrote me out of the will or anything.” Then he grimaces. “At least, I don’t think they did. Not that I need their money anyway. Regardless, we’re not close anymore. They might as well have disowned me. That’s what it feels like sometimes.”

I bite my lip, resting my elbows on the table. “Noah, that’s terrible. I’m so sorry. What happened?”

He sighs. “I chose hockey.”

“You…” I blink. “What?”

He laughs and picks up his glass again, swirling it around without taking a sip. “I’m not surprised you’re confused. That probably sounds like I’m oversimplifying things, because who disowns their kid just because he chooses to play hockey? But really, that’s pretty much what happened. I grew up in a very wealthy family. Not to sound like I’m bragging—because I swear, I’m not—but the Blakes are one of those rare families that are both old money and new money.”

“Old money and new money?”

“Yeah,” he says. “My parents were raised wealthy, so we’ve got that old family money, but we’ve also got this family business that just keeps growing and expanding, and bringing in all sorts of new money. I was supposed to join said business. That’s what was expected of me and my brother. We were supposed to get into Ivy League schools, study business and finance, and then work at the company until my dad retired, at which point, we’d take over and keep it going.”

He looks out the window for a second, and I can tell this isn’t an easy subject for him to talk about.

“Brent, my brother,” he goes on. “He toed the line. Did everything my parents wanted him to do, and he did it on their schedule. He’s the golden child who can do no wrong. I, on the other hand, seemed to do nothing but disappoint them. When I chose to pursue hockey instead of the world of investment banking, that was the last straw.” He smirks and finally looks back at me. “They think hockey is beneath them. That it’s a barbarous sport for simple-minded, low-income brutes. And that’s a direct quote, in case you were wondering.”

“Oh my god,” I say, my eyes widening with both shock and dismay. “That’s awful. And so insulting.”

“You’re telling me.” He lifts a shoulder, as if he’s trying to shrug off the weight of what he just told me. But I want him to know that I truly am sorry, so before he can gloss over any of the pain he may be feeling, I reach over and put my hand on his arm for a second.

“Really,” I murmur. “That sucks.”

Noah seems surprised by my touch, and he perks up even as I pull my hand away. When he smiles again, some of the tension in his expression dissolves, and his blue eyes are warm as they meet mine.

“It does suck, but you know, at the end of the day, it’s okay,” he says. “I’ve got the team. I’ve got a career I love. I don’t need the approval of my parents or my brother.”

Something flutters in my chest, and I swallow as I nod. Noah’s optimism is nothing short of magnetic, and I find myself unable to look away from his handsome, masculine face. He doesn’t seem to be putting on airs, either. He just seems to be one of those people who can find a silver lining no matter what, who can pull themselves out of a dark cloud and back into the light.

I’ve always been close to my family, and my parents would never treat me the way the Blakes treated their sons, so it’s hard for me to wrap my head around what Noah went through as a child. But still, he’s managed to keep his chin up and find happiness when others might get lost in their own despair and self-pity.

It’s not only an admirable quality, it’s attractive as hell.

I finish off my glass of wine and graciously accept when Noah offers to pour me more, and the two of us continue talking about our lives before we met each other. We chat our way through the appetizers and the main course, and when the waiter comes around to see if we want dessert, we both say yes very quickly, even though we’ve already eaten quite a lot of food.

Honestly, I think we’re both trying to drag the dinner out a little longer. I can hardly eat another bite, but I’m not ready for this night to end. Noah seems to be having an equally good time, so I’m happy when he orders us a slice of cheesecake to share and two espressos.

“Mmm,” I moan, taking a bite of the desert and closing my eyes. “That’s delicious.”

When I open my eyes again, Noah is staring at me, heat burning in his irises.

The blue color seems to darken, and his Adam’s apple visibly bobs as he swallows. He clears his throat, his fingers toying with the stem of his wine glass, and suddenly, the air in the restaurant seems too hot and too thick. My thighs clench, and I push the little plate across the table toward him in an attempt to relieve the building tension.

“Try it,” I say. “It really is good.”

He digs his fork in, and we share the rest of the cheesecake while sipping our espressos. A few minutes after we finish, the waiter comes by with the bill, setting it down on the edge of the table.

“Here you are,” he tells us politely. “No rush.”

Noah picks it up immediately, and after the waiter comes back to collect the check, we walk out together toward the parking lot. At my car, I unlock the door and then pause before turning to face Noah. The parking lot is dimly lit, but I can still pick out the angular lines of his face in the shadows.

“Thanks for dinner,” I say.

“Thanks for letting me take you to dinner.”

I smile at his phrasing, letting out a quiet laugh as I tug my bottom lip between my teeth. Noah groans softly, stepping closer to me and reaching up to tug my lip free with his thumb. The pad of his thumb brushes over my lower lip, and a shuddery breath escapes me.

“God, I wish this was a real date,” he murmurs. “I know I said before that we were just two colleagues grabbing a bite to eat, but… dammit, I wish you were my date tonight.”

I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help myself. I take half a step toward him and ask, “What would you do right now if this was a date?”

“You want to know what I’d do?” he says, closing the gap between us even more as his fingers tilt my chin up.

“Yes,” I whisper, my voice barely audible.

“Well, first…” He leans down, his breath stirring my hair and his cheek just barely touching mine as he whispers in my ear. “I’d put my hand around your waist and pull you in close. Then I’d kiss you like you’ve never been kissed in your life. I would run my hands through your gorgeous hair and press you up against the side of your car, so that there wasn’t a single part of your body that wasn’t touching mine.”

I close my eyes and envision everything he’s describing, letting out a shaky exhale as he goes on.

“Maybe I’d lift you up and wrap your legs around my waist. I’d let you feel how fucking hard you’ve got me, how damn badly I want you. I’d want to take you home, but to be honest, I don’t know if I’d be able to wait. I might just have to see if I could make you come for me right here in this parking lot, just to hear that sexy as fuck noise you make. I haven’t been able to get it out of my head.”

My heart is beating so fast that it feels like a hummingbird’s wings, and the burning ache between my legs that started up inside the restaurant has blossomed into a full-on throbbing. I can barely drag in a full breath, and he seems to know how much he’s affecting me, because his eyes darken as he adds, “And that would be just the start. Because, Sunflower, if you’d let me, I’d worship you all fucking night.”

For a moment, I’m so wildly tempted to tell him to do everything he just described that I almost can’t think straight.

I want him to stop telling me and show me.

I feel like I might die if he doesn’t.

But just as I’m about to go up on my toes and find his lips, to lean in for the kiss I know I shouldn’t want—Noah pulls away and smiles at me with a cocky glint in his eyes.

“Maybe someday we’ll go on a real date,” he murmurs. “And I’ll get a chance to do all that and more. But for tonight, we’re just colleagues celebrating a job well done.” He takes a step back and holds one hand out for a shake. “So, Margo, my colleague, good work.”

I slide my palm against his, and he shakes my hand once before letting go.

“You too,” I tell him, hoping my voice doesn’t betray what’s going on inside my head.

Or between my legs.

“Goodnight,” he says, flashing me another flirty grin.

Then he watches as I get into my car and drive away, feeling dizzy, flustered… and outrageously turned on.