Page 21 of Take Two

He glances at me, one eyebrow arching just slightly. “You’ll be fine. It’s probably just some promotional material. A few photos, maybe a sit-down interview. You’ll be out of here before lunch and back at your parents’ pool before you know it.”

I nod, because it’s the easier thing to do, but the tension sitting low in my gut doesn’t ease. I should be at my parents’ house right now, sitting in the backyard with a plate of my mother’s pancakes and a cup of coffee going cold beside me in the sun. I should be helping Tazja map out potential locations for her new shop, listening to her talk about layouts and lighting and the precise shade of cream she wants for the walls. I should be sitting across the kitchen table from Jacques while he complains loudly and at length about his upcoming senior year and all the ways it’s already threatening to ruin his life. Instead, I’m here, walking toward a room full of people who have already decided they need something from me.

The conference room door is already open when we arrive, the low murmur of overlapping conversations spilling out into the corridor. I step inside and let my eyes move across the room automatically, team executives in their usual cluster near the windows, PR staff with their laptops already open, a handful of unfamiliar faces I clock immediately as production people. I’m mid-scan, already cataloging exits and calculating how quickly I can extract myself from whatever this is, when my gaze lands on him and stops dead.

Cyaire Reed.

He’s sitting near the head of the table, one long leg crossed loosely over the other, his posture the particular kind of relaxed that takes conscious effort to maintain. He’s dressed in dark jeans and a simple black Henley, the fabric fitted enough to suggest the lean muscle beneath without announcing it. His hair is freshly cut, edged with the kind of precision that costs money and looks effortless, and he’s clean-shaven, his jaw sharp in the overhead lighting. Those eyes, those particular, infuriatingly familiar brown eyes, are fixed on something across the room, giving away exactly nothing.

For a moment, the entire room goes quiet in my head and I forget how to breathe properly.

Two months. Two full, deliberate months of hockey and focus and the careful, methodical work of convincing myself that the man from New York was nothing more than a memory. A moment in time that had existed in a specific context, mattered only within that context, and had no business following me into the life I’d built since. I’d moved on. I’d won the Stanley Cup, celebrated with my teammates until my voice gave out, spent proper time with my family for the first time in years. Cyaire had receded, if not entirely forgotten, then at least filed somewhere I didn’t need to access regularly.

Now he’s here. Sitting at the head of a table in the middle of a meeting that apparently involves me directly, looking like he belongs in this room more than I do.

I force my attention back to the room, to the handshakes and introductions cycling around the table. The production team is here to discuss a film called Blue Line, greenlit and scheduled to begin shooting throughout the summer. The story centers on hockey, on the sport itself, on the culture surrounding it, the weight of it, the life inside it and they need someone from the organization to provide real insight. Locker room dynamics, training schedules, the particular rhythm of a professional athlete’s life. The things that make it feel true onscreen rather than approximated.

I listen, my mind working faster than my expression lets on. This isn’t a quick photo opportunity. This isn’t a single afternoon. This is a sustained, summer-long commitment, one that will pull time and energy and focus from the first real off-season I’ve had that actually means something to me personally.

When they get to the specifics, when they reveal they want me to serve as Cyaire’s hockey liaison and primary on-set consultant, my stomach drops cleanly to the floor.

Of course they do.

I push back immediately, keeping my voice level despite the noise in my chest. “I appreciate the offer. But my summer is already spoken for. Family obligations, prior commitments. I can’t dedicate that kind of time to this.”

I don’t look at Marcus, even though I can feel the sharp intake of breath he doesn’t quite manage to suppress beside me. I don’t look at the Vipers’ executive team either, whose collective discomfort I can sense without needing to confirm it. I have every right to say no here. I’ve done everything asked of me contractually. This is a favor dressed up in professional language, and we all know it.

The room goes quiet. Cyaire’s gaze shifts to me, just briefly, just for a single beat, but it’s enough. Enough to make the back of my neck prickle. Enough to make the air between us feel like something with weight and temperature.

Jasper, who I recognize as Cyaire’s agent from two years’ worth of vaguely tracked industry news I never meant to absorb, leans forward. “We understand completely, Jamie. We’re not asking you to sacrifice your summer. We need someone who can guide Cyaire through the technical side, make sure the performance feels genuine. He hasn’t been on the ice in years, and we’d rather not have the hockey community tear the film apart in the first ten minutes.”

Cyaire’s mouth curves, just fractionally. “I’d rather not fall on my face in front of several million people, if it’s all the same.”

The room laughs. I don’t.

I look at him directly for the first time since I walked in. His eyes meet mine fully this time, and there’s something sitting in them that I can’t quite name, something careful, something that isn’t quite neutral but isn’t pressure either. He doesn’t lean on me. Doesn’t assume. Just says, quietly and without performance, “I’d appreciate the chance to learn from someone who actually knows what he’s doing.”

It’s the restraint that does it. The fact that he doesn’t push.

I exhale and drag one hand slowly over my tender scalp. “Fine. But my family comes first, without exception. My schedule is non-negotiable. Any training sessions, any meetings, any of it, it all works around what I’ve already got planned. That’s the deal or there’s no deal.”

The production team agrees before I’ve fully finished the sentence, their relief visible and slightly undignified. The meeting wraps quickly after that, the room breaking into the usual noise of handshakes and exchanged cards and vague pleasantries about logistics to follow. Cyaire rises from his chair in one unhurried motion, moving with the kind of unconscious ease that cameras have always known how to find.

He extends a hand toward me. His grip is firm, his palm warm, and the contact lasts exactly as long as is appropriate and not one second more.

“Looking forward to working with you, Jamie,” he says. His voice is pitched low enough that it doesn’t carry to the rest of the room, and my name in his mouth sounds different than I expected. Deliberate. Like he’s placed it carefully.

I nod once. Don’t trust myself to produce anything more than that. He called me Jamie. Not Mr. Maxwell, not number seventeen, not any of the dozen impersonal things a person says to someone they’ve just been formally introduced to in a professional context. He called me by my name, like he’s been holding onto it, and something about that does things to my chest I’m not prepared to examine in a conference room with dozens of other people in it.

I get myself out of there while I still have the presence of mind to manage it.

Walking back down the corridor toward the player exit, Marcus half a step behind me and wisely saying nothing, I turn the morning over in my head and find I can’t get any purchase on it. What was supposed to be a quiet summer, time carved out deliberately for family, for stillness, for the life I’ve been slowly, carefully building here, has just become something else entirely. Something I don’t have a clean word for yet.

Cyaire Reed has stopped being a recollection I could hold at arm’s length.

He is now attached, irrevocably, to my entire summer.

Chapter 7