Chapter 108 The All-Star Game Selection

Chapter 108 The All-Star Game Selection


The text came through right as I was taping my stick.

I glanced at my phone, expecting another schedule update or a message from Danton about travel timing, but the screen showed something better.

All-Star selection.

I stared at it for a second before the door to the locker room swung open and Cassian walked in with his bag over one shoulder, hair still damp from practice and that same sharp look on his face he got when he was tired but still wired enough to look unfairly good. He saw my expression immediately and stopped.

“What?” he asked.

I held up the phone.

He crossed the room in two strides, looked at the screen, and then let out a breath that sounded suspiciously like relief. “Third straight year.”

“Apparently.”

He looked at me, and the grin that started on his mouth was the kind I had missed all day even though it had only been a few hours since we’d seen each other on the ice. It had been a good week, better than good actually. The last game had given us something back. Not everything, not yet, but enough to make the room between us feel less damaged.

Cassian leaned against the stall beside mine and studied my face. “You got it too?”

I turned the phone around.

He read it, then looked up at me with that same bright expression that always made it hard to remember what I had been doing before he walked into the room. “Good.”

I snorted. “That is your reaction?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “What, I’m supposed to be surprised?”

“You are supposed to pretend you are humble.”

He gave me a flat look. “I am humble.”

I looked him over. “You absolutely are not.”

He smiled then, brief and easy, and the whole room seemed to loosen around it. 

Danton made the announcement to the team ten minutes later.

The All-Star selections were up; both of us got selected, again.

The locker room reacted the way it always did, which was with a mix of applause, groans, and the kind of teasing that came from a team that had stopped pretending our chemistry was subtle.

Raffi clapped once and said, “Three in a row. You two are getting obnoxious.”

“Jealous?” Cassian asked.

Raffi pointed at him. “Deeply.”

The younger guys laughed.

Danton cut through the noise with a pointed look and said, “If you two bring that energy to the actual game, I’ll be thrilled.”

Cassian threw me a look from across the room, and I had to look away first because the expression in his eyes had absolutely no business being that hot in a room full of sweaty hockey players and melted water bottles.

The flight to the All-Star city was the next morning.

Cassian sat beside me on the plane.

That alone made the day better.

We had gone through so much travel by then that the routine felt normal, but something about flying together for a showcase like this made the whole thing feel a little more public than usual. 

He leaned into the window and closed his eyes for the first half hour, but I could tell he was not asleep. 

About an hour into the flight, he opened one eye and looked at me.

“What?”

“You’re staring.”

“I am not staring.”

He gave me a look.

I glanced down at the magazine in my hand, which I had not turned a page on in ten minutes. “Fine, a little.”

His mouth curved. “Thought so.”

I folded the magazine and set it aside. “You look too comfortable.”

“That sounds like a complaint.”

“It is.”

He turned fully in his seat then, one arm draped over the tray table, and looked at me in a way that made me immediately suspect he had been planning to start trouble before takeoff. “You love me looking comfortable.”

My pulse kicked.

I gave him a dry look. “On airplanes, Cassian.”

He smiled like that was exactly the answer he wanted. “Still counts.”

The flight attendant passed by with drinks and gave us the same polite, knowing smile people had started giving us more often these days. I took the coffee and Cassian took water, then we settled back again.

The city they were hosting in was packed with fans before the weekend even started. The hotel lobby had cameras, the arena had banners and the press room was worse. Everybody wanted comments, predictions, hints, reactions. We gave them all the same careful answers and saved the real conversation for later.

The skills competition was where things loosened up.

It was hard not to laugh at the whole setup at first. Team-issued jackets, names on the boards, pucks flying. The constant sound of people trying to make a spectacle look effortless, but the more the night went on, the more it felt like the best kind of pressure. 

Cassian watched the fastest skater lineup with the kind of focus he usually saved for game nights.

I looked over at him from the bench and raised a brow.

He noticed. “What?”

“You look nervous.”

“I am not nervous.”

“That is the nervous answer.”

He opened his mouth to deny it and then stopped, probably because there was no point lying to me over something this small. “Fine. I am a little nervous.”

I snorted. “About fastest skater?”

“No,” he said, glancing at the ice. “About losing to the speed guys in front of all these people.”

I leaned in slightly. “You are fast.”

He looked at me like I had just insulted him. “I know I am fast.”

“You are very fast.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You are enjoying this.”

I was.

A little.

He took his turn not long after that, and the arena erupted the second he cut clean through the lap and beat his own best by a fraction. The scoreboard flashed his time, he took first place. The crowd cheered, but our bench was louder.

Cassian turned toward us, then towards me, and I felt the grin on my face before I could stop it. He saw it and lifted a fist in a tiny celebration that looked almost too pleased for him to hide.

I shook my head.

He mouthed, still smiling, “Told you.”

When it was my turn for hardest shot, I could feel him watching before I even stepped onto the ice.

I rolled my shoulders once, took the pass, and let the shot go.

The puck left my stick hard enough to make the building react before the radar gun even flashed. There was a beat of silence and then the number lit up.

First.

I heard Cassian make a noise behind me, something between a laugh and a shout.

When I turned back, he was already standing with both arms up like I had won the whole night just by shooting a frozen piece of rubber past a speed gun. I shook my head at him and almost lost my own grin.

He looked ridiculously pleased for someone who had not taken the shot.

When the event ended, the officials handed us our medals and called us back for photos. The photographers wanted us side by side, medals out, smiles on, we did exactly what they asked, because there was no point fighting it.

Cassian stepped up beside me for the first set of photos, shoulders squared, medal hanging at his chest, grin already halfway in place. The cameras flashed nonstop. 

He tilted his head toward me between flashes and muttered, “You look too serious.”

I kept my expression fixed for the camera. “You look too amused.”

“I am amused.”

“By what?”

He glanced at me from the corner of his eye. “By you pretending you do not like this.”

I looked at him then, and he knew immediately that I was done pretending. 

The photographer called, “A little more toward each other.”

Cassian shifted.

So did I.

That put us close enough for the edge of his sleeve to brush my wrist. Close enough for me to feel the warmth of him without doing anything about it. Close enough for the cameras to catch the way I looked at him and the way he looked back.

It was probably not subtle.

It had not been subtle in a long time.

“Good,” the photographer said. “One more.”

Cassian leaned in a fraction, just enough that only I could hear him over the camera shutters. “You are staring again.”

I kept my eyes on the lens ahead of us. “You keep making it hard not to.”

That got the smallest shift in his mouth. 

They took another burst of shots.

Then the photographer finally waved us off and told us we were done.

Cassian let out a breath the second we stepped away from the backdrop. “That was torture.”

I adjusted the medal around my neck and gave him a look. “You loved it.”

“I loved winning.”

“That is not what you were smiling about.”

He turned toward me fully then, and the expression he gave me was lighter than it had been all day, all the way down to the quiet heat in his eyes. “Maybe a little.”

I let my gaze move over him once before returning to his face. 

“Come on,” I said.

He fell into step beside me immediately.

The hallway outside the event area was loud with people and cameras and staff and people trying to get one more photo before the moment ended. Somebody called out for us to stop and pose again. 

Instead, when we reached the quieter stretch near the service corridor, Cassian slowed just enough to brush his hand against mine.

Not enough for anyone to call it out.

Enough for me to feel it.

I looked at him.

He looked back.

The rest of the night was still waiting, with dinners and interviews and appearances we would have to get through before we could finally go back to the hotel and breathe. But for that second, walking side by side with our medals catching the light and our names already circulating through the arena again, all I could think was that this still felt like ours.

Not the cameras.

Not the headlines.

Us.