Fuck, it was hot enough to peel skin from bone. The kind of oppressive, choking heat that wrapped around your throat and pressed down on your chest like a weight you couldn’t lift. You sat there, towel clutched tight across your body, sweating bullets and pretending not to notice the way Patrick’s own towel clung for dear life around his hips, a flash of white against the endless stretch of cedar planks.

He looked like something out of a fever dream—skin slick and shining, every cut of muscle a sharp contrast against the lazy swirl of steam. His curls, normally immaculate and perfect enough to make a grown man weep, hung damp and wild across his forehead. Your fingers itched to touch them, to tuck them back like you had a hundred times before—across motel bedsheets, across the cracked leather seats of his car, across the expanse of his bare—

You swallowed hard. Old habits, old cravings. They didn’t just die—they rotted inside you, stubborn and festering.

Patrick shifted, slow and unhurried, reaching for the ladle. The towel dipped lower. Too low. Your breath hitched, a short, sharp sound you couldn’t bury fast enough. His eyes—hooded, unreadable—caught the noise like a bloodhound catching a scent. A muscle ticked in his jaw, the barest tell in a face otherwise carved from stone.

He was watching you now, like he had all the time in the world. Watching you squirm.

The silence stretched, thick and heavy and crawling with electricity. You didn’t dare move. Didn’t dare breathe. You sat there and burned.

When he finally spoke, his voice cut through the thick air like a blade—low, rough around the edges, threading straight into your veins. “That Swedish player,” he said, lazy, careless—like the words didn’t mean anything at all. “You two sure had a lot to say to each other at the reception.”

A pause. Measured. Calculated. His eyes didn’t leave yours.

“Is there…something going on there?”