I barely made it through morning practice.
My stomach churned with nausea I couldn't explain, and twice I had to grip the boards to steady myself when dizziness hit. I'd skipped breakfast—the thought of food made me gag—and now I was regretting it.
Stress, I told myself. Just stress from everything that's been happening. The whispers. The tension with Ashton. The strange meeting with Donovan. My body was simply reacting to the pressure.
That's all.
Practice ended and I was packing up my clipboard when Ashton appeared beside me. Closer than he'd been in nearly two weeks.
"We need to talk." His voice was low enough that no one else could hear. "There's a park about ten minutes off campus. Meet me there in twenty minutes."
He walked away before I could respond.
I found him waiting on a bench near a small pond, far from prying eyes. He looked tired—more tired than I'd ever seen him. Shadows carved deep hollows under his eyes, and tension lined every angle of his face.
I sat on the opposite end of the bench, leaving space between us, and waited.
"I need to apologize," he began, staring at the water rather than at me. "For what happened at the party. I crossed a line I never should have crossed." His jaw tightened. "You were drunk. You were upset. And I took advantage of that. I'm supposed to protect you, not—"
He stopped. The silence filled with everything he couldn't say.
Something cold settled in my chest. Rejection. Of course. He regrets it. He wishes it never happened.
"So that's what this distance has been about," I said flatly. "You're disgusted with me."
His head snapped toward me. "No. God, no." The words came out rough, almost desperate. "Lyra, I'm not disgusted with you. I'm disgusted with myself. There's a difference."
He dragged a hand through his hair, and for the first time, I saw something crack in his composure. Vulnerability. Uncertainty. He looked almost lost—nothing like the controlled, dangerous man I'd come to know.
The honesty in his words melted something inside me. I shifted closer on the bench, closing some of the distance between us.
"Why haven't you told my father?" I asked quietly. "About what happened between us. You could have confessed. Let him pull you out. Isn't that what you're supposed to do?"
Ashton was quiet for a long moment, his jaw working like he was chewing on words he didn't want to say.
"You don't understand." His voice came out rough. "Your father saved my life. Fifteen years ago, I was nothing—a kid with too much anger and no future, about to get myself killed over something stupid. Kian pulled me out of that. Gave me purpose. Gave me a place in his world when no one else would have looked twice at me."
He stared at the water, his reflection rippling in the breeze. "Everything I have, everything I am—I owe to him. This assignment, protecting you, it's not just a job. It's me paying back a debt I'll never fully repay." His hands clenched on his knees. "And instead of honoring that debt, I touched his daughter. I took something I had no right to take from the one person he trusted me to protect above all others."
The self-loathing in his voice was palpable. Raw. This wasn't just guilt about crossing a professional line—this was a man who felt he'd betrayed the only family he'd ever known.
"So you can't tell him," I said slowly, understanding clicking into place. "Because it's not just about losing your job. It's about losing everything."
"He would kill me." Ashton said it simply, like stating a fact. "And I would deserve it. But that's not why I haven't told him."
"Then why?"
He turned to look at me, and the intensity in his eyes made my breath catch. "Because I don't want anything to happen to you. If I confess, he pulls me out. And I know there's no one else your father could hire who would protect you the way I do. No one who would care the way I—" He stopped himself, jaw tightening.
"The way you what?"
He shook his head, refusing to finish. But I heard it anyway, in everything he wasn't saying.
"It stopped being just a job." The admission hung in the air between us, dangerous and honest. "In all the time I've known you, Lyra, you've become... special to me. If something happens to you, it won't just be a failed mission. It will be my personal failure. The kind I'd never recover from."
I stared at him, trying to process his words. My heart was doing something strange—racing and stuttering at the same time.
"Since I left for campus," I said slowly, "no one has been as interested in my safety as you're describing. No one cared whether I was okay or not. My father certainly didn't seem to. Things only changed when I came here."
Ashton shook his head. "You've always been looked after. Even when you didn't know it."
"What does that mean?"
"Your father and I—we know the college administration personally. We made sure you'd be safe here." He met my eyes. "For years, there was no danger. You could live your life, go to classes, join the hockey team, and we knew nothing would touch you. You were protected without needing to feel protected."
A chill ran down my spine despite the afternoon sun. "And now? What changed? What's threatening me now that's worth sending you to campus?"
I crossed my arms, a defensive gesture I couldn't help. "Is it Nate? Because a manipulative ex-boyfriend with a revenge video isn't exactly the kind of situation that requires a professional bodyguard pretending to be a hockey coach."
Ashton's expression darkened. "Nate is a problem, but he's not the reason I'm here."
"Then what is?"
He paused, choosing his words carefully. "There's a danger greater than him. Something your father has been tracking for a long time. I can't tell you what exactly—not yet—because I'm still trying to figure out the enemy's motives myself." His voice hardened. "But trust me when I say the threat is real. And it's closer than you think."
I felt the ground shifting beneath me. Everything I thought I understood about my life was rearranging itself.
"So all this time," I said quietly, "I thought I was free. Independent. And really, I was just... being watched. Protected without my knowledge."
"Yes." He didn't apologize for it. "And I know that makes you angry. But I'd rather you be angry and alive than happy and vulnerable."
I should be furious. I should scream at him about privacy, autonomy, the right to make my own choices.
But looking at him now—tired, honest, more human than I'd ever seen him—I couldn't summon the rage. Instead, I felt something dangerously close to understanding.
"So what happens now?" I asked quietly.
"I keep protecting you. That doesn't change." He met my eyes, and I saw the steel return to his expression. "But we need to keep our distance. At least publicly. The whispers around campus are getting worse, and the last thing either of us needs is more attention. We stay professional. We stay careful. And we figure out who's really threatening you before they make their move."
I nodded slowly, processing. "Professional. Careful. No more backseat encounters."
A ghost of a smile crossed his face—the first I'd seen in weeks. "No more backseat encounters."
We sat in silence as the sun began to set, painting the pond in shades of orange and gold. The tension between us had shifted into something new. Not resolved. Not simple. But honest.
We'd agreed to distance. To professionalism. To keep up appearances while hunting shadows.
But as I glanced at him in the fading light, I knew the truth neither of us was saying aloud.
Distance wouldn't change what had already happened between us. And it wouldn't stop whatever was still building.