Missed You

SLOANE

“Wait.”

The word hooked me mid-step.

I turned slowly, satchel strap digging into my shoulder, notebook pressed to my ribs like armor. Chase stood just outside Room B, one hand loose at his side, the other still half-curled—as if he’d almost reached for me and caught himself in time. The fluorescent lights turned everything harsh: the cinderblock walls, the scuffed floor, the raw intensity in his eyes that had no right to exist here, in public.

“What?” I asked. My voice came out steady. A small miracle.

He glanced down the hallway. Staff lingered at the far end. A student reporter slipped out of the press room, phone already glowing in her hand. A cart rattled somewhere deeper in the building. Too many eyes. Too much air. Too much reality.

“This way,” he said quietly.

He didn’t touch me. Just tilted his head toward the side exit and started walking.

I should have gone the other direction. Found Ethan, grabbed the photos, filed my notes in the car, and driven the three hours home clinging to whatever scraps of professionalism I had left.

Instead, I followed him down the service corridor that smelled of bleach and old ice.

The door at the end opened onto the back of the arena.

Cold slammed into me first—sharp, cutting through the press-room heat. Then the quiet. Not silence; the crowd still poured out the main exits on the other side, but their noise felt distant. Muffled cheers. A car horn. Laughter echoing across the parking lot. The low drone of the refrigeration system inside the walls.

The back lot was nearly empty. A team bus idled down by the loading dock. Security lights spilled pale circles across the pavement. The air carried wet asphalt, exhaust, and the first bite of winter.

Chase stopped beside the concrete wall and faced me.

For a second, neither of us spoke.

He looked taller out here, bigger, stripped of the crowd. Shirt collar open, hair still damp at the edges, face still carrying the sharp edges of game adrenaline and the answer he’d given me in that room—the one I’d asked because it actually mattered.

“What are we doing out here?” I asked.

“Talking where half the building isn’t listening.”

I folded my arms, mostly to give my hands something to do. “That implies we have something to talk about.”

His mouth curved, but there was no smile in it. “Don’t we?”

I looked away first—toward the loading dock, the bus, anywhere but his face.

“I should find Ethan.”

“Is he waiting?”

I hesitated. “Probably.”

Chase nodded once, slow. “Right.”

The word carried more weight than it should. Sharp. Familiar. I’d been carrying my own version of it all night.

“You don’t get to sound like that,” I said.

“Like what?”

“Like you have a problem with Ethan.”

“I don’t.” A beat. “He’s just always there.”

I laughed, soft and bitter, because it was absurd and unfair and still exactly the kind of thing he’d say while circling something bigger. “He’s the photographer.”

“And Tommy Reeves was just your ex.”

The name landed like a slap.

I went still. The lot felt colder.

Chase swore under his breath and dragged a hand over his jaw. “That came out wrong.”

“It came out exactly how you meant it.”

“No.” He took one step closer, then stopped himself. “It didn’t.”

I should have let him twist. Should have thrown the name back at him.

Instead I asked quietly, “Then what did you mean?”

He looked at me for a long second—the real look. Not the interview one. Not the arena-light one. This was stripped down, tired, and too honest for the space between us.

“I meant,” he said, voice low, “that I don’t like the idea of anyone else getting your attention when I’ve spent the last three weeks pretending I can function without it.”

My breath caught.

My body knew before my mind did. Pulse first. Throat tightening. That sick, plunging drop in my stomach—the one that always hit when Chase dropped the sarcasm and just said the thing.

I hated it.

I loved it.

“That sounds like a you problem,” I managed.

“Probably.” His eyes didn’t leave mine. “Still true.”

The bus engine rumbled. A metal door slammed somewhere. For one dizzy second I remembered the first time I saw him shirtless at that dinner table—arrogant, shallow, easy to dismiss. Then he’d become the man who answered my questions like I was the only person in the room. Who remembered my coffee order. Who said I missed you in a hallway and made the whole world tilt.

“I missed you,” he said again.

Not louder. Not more dramatic. Just the same words, because I hadn’t run the first time and he was reckless enough to try them twice.

The cold burned in my lungs.

“Chase.”

“What?”

“You can’t just say things like that.”

His expression softened at the edges. “Why?”

Because they mattered. Because I didn’t know how to survive things that mattered coming out of his mouth in that voice. Because I’d driven three hours telling myself I could sit in the press box and keep the walls up, and now here I was, professionalism in pieces.

“Because I have to drive home tonight,” I said.

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was the kind that forms when two people say different things that mean the exact same thing.

He looked down briefly, then back up. “That’s not the real reason.”

“No?”

“No.” He stepped closer—close enough that his body heat cut through the cold. “The real reason is that if I keep saying things like that, you’re going to stop pretending this is casual.”

I should have denied it. Laughed. Rolled my eyes. Called him arrogant.

Instead I whispered, “What if I already can’t?”

His whole body stilled.

I felt it like a touch.

The bus door hissed open down the lot. Voices drifted across the pavement. None of it reached us.

His gaze dropped to my mouth, then lifted.

“Sloane.”

The way he said my name should have been illegal.

I looked away. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Do that.”

“What am I doing?”

I laughed once, quietly, because the alternative was admitting out loud how he was looking at me, and I still had a few lines left.

He understood anyway. He always did.

He lifted one hand slowly, giving me every chance to step back.

I didn’t.

His fingers brushed the loose strand of hair at my cheek and tucked it behind my ear with a gentleness that nearly undid me.

“You came,” he said, softer. “Tonight. You drove all the way up here. Sat in that press box pretending you weren’t looking for me every shift.”

“That is not what I was doing.”

His thumb grazed my jaw. “Sure.”

I should have pulled away.

Instead I leaned into his hand the smallest fraction.

His exhale shook.

“I had to come,” I said. “It’s the story.”

“No.” His voice dropped. “That’s what you told yourself.”

I swallowed.

The space between us shrank to one breath.

One disastrous, loaded breath.

And then I looked at his mouth.

Game over.

He saw it.

His hand slid from my jaw to the back of my neck—warm, steady, not gripping, just holding. The other slipped under my open coat to my waist, fingertips pressing through my turtleneck like he needed proof I was real.

“Tell me to stop,” he said.

I stared at him.

He meant it. Clean exit. One chance to choose the safer version of tonight.

I didn’t want safe anymore.

“I missed you too,” I whispered.

Something in his face cracked open.

And then he kissed me.

Not like the kitchen—violent and colliding. This was desperate, hungry, but slower. His mouth found mine like it had been starving for weeks and had finally stopped pretending. The first brush was hot enough to buckle my knees. The second went deeper, intentional, like he was memorizing me.

I gripped the front of his shirt with both hands and kissed him back before my brain could protest.

He made a low sound in his throat that shot straight through me.

My back hit the cold wall. One hand stayed at my neck, the other flattened at my waist under my coat, burning through the thin fabric. I tasted postgame coffee, clean soap, the faint salt that never fully washes off after a game.

My fingers slid into his hair.

He kissed me harder.

It wasn’t just want. It was relief—so sharp my body went weak. Every suffocating day without him collapsed into this single moment of being found.

I broke the kiss just long enough to breathe.

He followed anyway, mouth brushing my cheek, my jaw, the corner of my lips like any distance was an insult.

“Jesus,” he muttered against my skin.

I laughed, breathless. “That bad?”

“Shut up.”

He kissed me again—deeper, open-mouthed, tongue sliding against mine until the cold vanished completely. I arched into him; his hand tightened at my waist in answer.

When we finally broke apart, it was only because breathing had become necessary.

He rested his forehead against mine.

Neither of us moved.

“I should go,” I whispered.

“You say that a lot.”

“I mean it this time.”

“Liar.”

I smiled anyway.

His thumb stroked the side of my neck in that unconscious soothing way he did when I got quiet.

That small intimacy—the one that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with how well we already knew each other—hurt the most.

“Ethan’s probably looking for me,” I said.

His attention snapped back. “Is he?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want him to?”

I stared at him.

He stared right back.

The corner of his mouth lifted, but there was nothing light in it. Just something raw and possessive and exhausted.

“I hate that question,” I said.

“Answer it anyway.”

A sane person would have said yes.

Instead I said, “Not right now.”

His eyes darkened.

For one terrifying second I thought he might kiss me again right there against the arena wall and finish what was left of my judgment.

Instead he took one slow step back.

The space felt like falling.

He looked me over—tangled hair, crooked satchel, kissed mouth—then said quietly, “Come with me.”

I froze.

“What?”

“My dorm.” His voice stayed low and steady, like this wasn’t the most dangerous offer he’d ever made. “Come with me.”

My pulse hammered.

“Chase.”

“What?”

“I have to drive home.”

“You don’t have to. You want to. Different thing.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

He watched every flicker of indecision without pushing, without crowding. He just stood there in the cold, postgame still clinging to him, looking at me like he already knew this had never been casual.

The bus rumbled louder. Players would be coming out soon. Reality was circling back.

I should have walked away.

Instead I said, “You’re making this very hard.”

His mouth curved, small and wrecked. “I’m aware.”

I looked down at the cracked pavement between us. At my boots. At every part of me already leaning toward yes while my brain scrambled for no.

Then I looked back up at him.

He was waiting.

Not smug. Not certain.

Just waiting.

And that was the most dangerous thing of all.