Page 40 of Playing it Safe

"There." Cameron points at the screen and rewinds three seconds. “See your positioning after the face-off? You cheat toward the boards."

I lean forward on the couch. He's right. On the replay, I can see myself shift half a step too wide after the puck drops, leaving a seam in the middle of the ice that Minnesota's center nearly exploits.

"I'm anticipating the dump-in," I say.

"You are. And you're right eighty percent of the time. But when the center keeps it —" He waves the remote at the screen. "There. You're a full stride behind."

I sink deeper into the couch beside him, frowning. He’s so observant. “So what do I do?"

He smells amazing here beside me. He’s warm from his shower, and his firm body is pressed close to mine as he leans toward me, gesturing toward the television. ”Delay the read by half a second. Stay centered until you see the release. You're fast enough to recover either way."

I look up at him. He's in a T-shirt and sweats, one leg folded under him, with Puck nearby, supervising. Cameron has been in it with me for forty minutes — pausing, rewinding, and pointing out things about my game with a clinical eye. He’s not bored. Quite the opposite, it seems. Like he’s fascinated by a peer.

"Run it back from the second period," I say. "I want to see the penalty kill in action."

He nods and scrolls. His arm extends to operate the remote, and when he finishes, it doesn't return to his side. It rests on the back of the couch behind me. Then, as the clip plays, his hand drops onto my shoulders.

I stop breathing.

His thumb starts moving. Small, slow circles on the outside of my shoulder, right where the muscle meets the joint. I don't think he knows he's doing it. His eyes are on the screen, tracking the formation, while his thumb traces lazy loops against my skin through the fabric of my T-shirt.

"See how their power play sets up?" He points with his other hand. "They overload the left side. If your weak-side defender cheats up six inches⁠—"

I hear none of this. My entire nervous system has rerouted to the three square inches of my shoulder where his thumb is drawing circles. The heat from his arm across my back. The weight of it. The casual, unconscious intimacy of his body blending into mine.

I want to turn my head and kiss him. I want to climb into his lap, press my mouth against his, and feel his hands glide from my shoulder to everywhere else. I want to know what happens when we stop calling this pretend or data collection.

But I don't know how to behave around him anymore. Before I stumbled into his solo sexy time, I knew the rules. We were fake dating. We kissed in public or for practice. The lines blurred a little when I told him about my issues from before … and now the whole thing is a messy snarl as I sit here with his arm around me.

Come for me, Briar.

"You okay?" He's looking at me. The thumb has stopped.

"Yeah." I clear my throat. "Just thinking about the formation."

He studies me for a second, then nods and turns back to the screen. The thumb resumes. I'm going to die on this couch.

The Fury play their final game of the season in Chicago on Saturday, so Cameron packs a bag Friday night. I sit cross-legged on his guest bed — the bed, the one where we…collaborated — and watch him fold shirts into his road-trip duffel. He must have worked retail or been in the military, the way he gets the fabric creases so crisp.

"You fold your shirts like that for a two-day trip?"

He tucks a pair of socks into his shoes. “Do you not crease your slacks?”

I laugh. “I shove it all in a bag. Maybe they should call me Mayhem.”

“I can’t help if I’m civilized.” He grins at me, zips the toiletry bag, and sets it on top. "There's stew in the freezer. And Puck's food is in the cabinet above the fridge. You sure you’re good with him here? I can board him…”

He's already handled everything, I realize, watching him. Before he packed a single shirt he called the contractor about his flooded house, talked his brother down from quitting another job — I heard the tail of it through the bathroom door, that patient voice he uses, you got this, D, two more weeks — and stocked my fridge. He does all this the way other people breathe. I've never once seen him ask anyone to do a thing back. So obviously, I’m going to take care of this man’s cat while he’s away.

“Puck is an honored guest.” I smile as the menace in question hops up on my lap. “And he likes me.”

Cameron shakes his head. “He definitely does. He’s not going to like it when we move back home.” Cameron bites his lip, like he has more to say, then shrugs and smacks the top of the zippered bag.

I watch his hands as he moves toward his garment bag. I think about how those hands looked on his body, on the bed where I’m sitting. I need to change the subject immediately. "I'm going to walk the face gems over to Deen's tomorrow," I say.

He looks up. "Good. Let me know what she thinks."

"You know she's going to want to know who bought them."