Meet Your Match (Kings of the Ice)

The amount of times I yawned throughout the day was impressive, but even as tired as I was, it was fascinating following Vince around on a day off.

It surprised me that we went straight from the park to the stadium, where he changed and headed to the team’s private gym on the top floor. There were only a few other players in there, and they goofed off a bit before each settling in to their various workouts. They weren’t lifting weights, though. It seemed to be all cardio, a couple of them jogging on the treadmills while Vince spent almost an hour on the bike.

When he was done, he spent a lot of time in what he told me was recovery. One of the trainers did an intense cupping session with him before a long massage, and he finished it all off with a twenty-minute sauna session. I had followed him in long enough to take a photo before quickly exiting, because being in a literal hot box with shirtless Vince was a sure-fire way to test my professionalism.

Afterward, he ate another meal prepared by the team’s chef before we headed back to his condo. His housekeeper had come while we were gone, and the place was now spotless.

He spent a long time meditating, which surprised me, and then he journaled, which about put me on the floor with shock. When I thought about having one day off, I imagined him bingeing Netflix, or going out with the guys. And he admitted that sometimes, he did just that. But most of the time, he had a routine he stuck to, especially during the season.

While he was journaling, I stepped onto his beautiful balcony to call Reya and Camilla. They were losing their minds over the content. Between the game and all the footage from his day off, our followers were feral. And so were my bosses.

“All of this is gold,” Reya told me. “And don’t worry about your garden, your plants, or your house. We’ve hired someone to take care of all of it for the month.”

That brought me as much relief as it did anxiety, because caring for my home and my garden was something I wanted to do — not have someone else doing.

Still, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t having fun, that this assignment wasn’t exciting. I decided to take my dad’s advice and live in the present. What were the odds I’d ever do anything like this again?

Answer: slim to none.

With the end of that phone call, I committed to throwing myself completely into the experience and getting the most out of it. And when I quietly stepped back inside, Vince glanced up at me from where he was journaling with a crooked grin.

I ignored the way my heart skipped a beat when he did.

Throughout most of the day, he was silent, and I just took photos and videos and observed from the outside. I’d told him to pretend like I wasn’t there, and after the park, he’d been incredibly proficient in adhering to my request. I almost missed it — his playboy attitude, cocky lines, and quick banter. But there was something magical about watching him from the outside, being a little fly on the wall during a professional hockey player’s day off.

I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, exactly, but it likely involved women and drugs and spending money like it would never run out. I definitely hadn’t expected him to be so focused on the season, to work on his body and his mind, to stick to a routine that would help him recover from the games this past week while also gearing up for the ones to come.

There was a reason he was one of the best rookies in the league. Maybe luck and talent had something to do with it, but this? His dedication to what he did? That played a part, too.

I thought I’d be ignored until I excused myself from his apartment, but when the afternoon bled into evening, and the sun began to sink over the city skyline, Vince grabbed two local IPAs out of his fridge. He cracked the top on one of them before arching a brow at me to ask if I wanted the second one.

And usually, I was not a beer girl.

But I thought what the hell — part of the experience, right? and nodded.

“Is it Netflix time?” I asked him as I took the first sip.

He smiled the way the Cheshire cat would, rounding the kitchen island and walking past me and across the room.

“Not quite,” he said.

And he placed his beer on the end table by his pottery wheel.

“Wait,” I said excitedly, hopping off my barstool and all but skipping over to him. “Am I going to get backstage access to the making of a Vince Tanev ceramic masterpiece?”

“I can’t tell if you’re being sincere or sarcastic.”

“A bit of both.” I grabbed one of the spare rolling stools in the area and took a seat, wheeling up to where he was. “So what are you doing? What are you making? Tell me everything.”

I couldn’t explain it, but Vince was the most relaxed I’d seen him all day when he stepped into that little corner of his home. It was like watching someone kick their shoes off after a long, hard day.

“This guy is going into the kiln because it’s finally dry enough,” he said, picking up a wide, shallow bowl. It was sage green and looked like one you might use for pasta or a salad. “And I’m going to fuck around with some designs on these guys,” he said, motioning to a set of tiny glasses.

“What are those, anyway?”

“I had Japanese teacups in mind when I made them,” he said. “Mainly for sencha. But we’ll see how they turn out.”

“They look okay to me.”

“Now,” he said. “But I could screw them up in the design process or in the kiln. Especially since we live in Florida.” He shook his head. “The moisture here fucks everything up.”

I felt like a little kid in Santa’s workshop, an excited smile spreading on my lips as I leaned forward and took it all in.

“And then,” he said, reaching for a plastic container on one of the shelves behind his wheel. He set it on the table and popped the lid, revealing multiple sealed bags of clay of all different colors. “I’ll start something new.”

“What do you do with all of them?” I asked. “When you finish?”

He shrugged. “Depends. I keep some, give some away as gifts, throw some right into the garbage where they belong.”

“Use some to make ten grand for charity.”

“Someone’s gotta make the rich assholes of the world feel good about themselves,” he said pointedly, and we shared a knowing smile.

I continued peppering Vince with questions as he got started, and he had the patience of a saint as he walked me through everything he was doing, step by step. I had just as many questions about this as I did about hockey, except this was more exciting to me because it was something I had personal interest in.

I loved tending to my garden with my hands, loved cleaning up the earth with my hands, too. The thought of creating something with them, of taking something from the earth to make something beautiful and useful… it was enticing.

“How did you get into this, anyway?” I asked after he had placed a few pieces into the kiln. He grabbed a bag of clay next, adding pieces of it to a scale until he had the right weight of what he wanted to work with.

“I don’t really know, actually,” he confessed, covering his workspace with a large piece of plywood. He plopped the clay onto it before taking a seat, readjusting the stool and table until they were at the perfect height. Then, he dug his hands into the clay and began to knead it. “I kind of stumbled upon it.”

“How does one stumble upon pottery?”

“I was a freshman at Michigan, my first year playing hockey at that level. And I knew it would be tougher than when I was in high school, but I didn’t realize how much of a toll just being a college athlete would have on me. It’s not just hockey,” he said, molding the clay with long, smooth presses of his fingertips. “And it’s not high-school-level classes. It’s grueling practices, high-pressure games, and getting a degree, a career. I mean, of course we all want to go pro, and most of us know we’ll play in the circuit in some way, at least for a while.” He shrugged. “But what if you get a career-ending injury? What if you only play a few years and then get let go altogether? We can’t all play pro forever. There are too many players with the same dreams.”

“I never thought of that,” I admitted softly, mulling on all he’d said. I’d always assumed college athletes had a free pass, that they were the lucky ones who didn’t have to try as hard as the rest of us.

I felt a little guilt at that assumption now.

“Anyway, I was stressed, to put it lightly,” he continued, and I marveled at how his hands spread and shaped the clay, how gracefully his fingertips and palms worked in sync to wedge it.

I’d never stared so much at someone’s hands, and I found myself appreciating the makeup of his, the large knuckles and smooth, bronze skin that stretched over them.

“When I wasn’t in class or studying, I was at the rink, either practicing or playing in games. We partied, of course, but that was stressful sometimes, too, because one night of partying too hard could mean a shit game performance the next day.

I needed something for me,” he said after a pause. “Something that wasn’t goal-oriented, that didn’t have any pressure tied to it. One night when I couldn’t sleep, I was scrolling on my phone, and this time-lapse video of a vase being made came up. I must have watched it a dozen times.” He smiled as if he were back in the memory. “And then, I signed up for a class.”

“And you loved it so much, you made yourself a home studio?”

“Not until I got my signing bonus,” he said. “This shit’s expensive. But, yeah. I knew I’d need it now, in the NHL, even more than I did in college.”

He seemed to be satisfied with whatever he’d done to the clay to prep it, and he balled it up in his hands before rolling over to his wheel.

“When I’m in here, in this space,” he said, looking around at the shelves of clay, at the finished and half-finished and completely unfinished projects. “I’m… free. Free of expectations, free of the pressure I put on myself in every other aspect of my life. If I fuck up,” he said, wetting the wheel a bit before firing it to life. The clay spun centered and beautiful for just a moment before he pushed too hard on it and it warped, nearly flying off before he cut the power on the wheel. Then, he quickly reshaped the clay and put it back in place again, as if it’d never happened. “I just start over.”

My chest tightened as a smile found my lips. “That’s kind of beautiful.”

“That’s not what you said the first night we met,” he teased.

“Yeah, well, I thought I had you pegged.”

He arched a brow. “Is this you admitting that you were wrong?”

“I didn’t say that,” I said quickly. A flash of James struck me so hard I held my next breath for a moment.

He had been just as charming as Vince, just as surprising. He’d made me laugh, made me hot with desire, made me feel safe.

And then he’d broken my fucking heart.

“But…” I added, almost regretful in my admission. “You’re definitely testing my beliefs.”

“How so?”

He settled in at the wheel then, and I lost myself watching him mold the wet clay with his fingertips.

“I dated a guy like you once.”

That made him pause, and the clay warped before he cursed and started over again.

“Rich, I mean,” I clarified. “An athlete. Someone cocksure and popular with the whole world in his hands. And let’s just say he and his entire family showed me that I don’t belong in their world.”

Vince was quiet for a moment, focusing on the clay. I thought I saw the muscle in his jaw tense. “What did he do?”

I sighed. “Well, we were in love. Like… stupid in love. And he made me feel like it didn’t matter that my family was poor and always had been, or that his had more money than God. He lit up when I shared stories about my past with him. He loved introducing me to things I’d never experienced, like fine dining or spending a day on a boat bigger than every house I’ve ever lived in put together. And when he met my parents? He charmed them. He had that power, the ability to make any and everyone fall in love with him.”

For a long pause, I just watched Vince shape the clay, watched him work to get the perfect thickness on all sides.

“He gave me a promise ring.” My voice cracked a bit with that. “It was… stupidly expensive for a promise ring. And gorgeous. And it meant something to me. I was living inside the fairytale where Cinderella gets the prince.” I chuffed out a laugh. “Until I went to his brother’s wedding.

I was… completely out of place,” I said, the memory making my skin burn with a mixture of embarrassment and rage. “Wearing a dress I’d found on the rack at Goodwill while everyone else had on ballgowns and tuxes. From that season, of course, because wearing anything from a line released the year before would have been atrocious. I hadn’t graduated from college yet, didn’t have a job where I could afford even the modest clothes I have now. I was living on loans and scholarships.

James assured me it was fine, but he broke up with me not even a week later. And his parents then called me to explain why,” I said, laughing again. “As if I couldn’t already piece it together.” I straightened my back, mimicking his mother’s voice that was so prim and proper. “You’re a sweet girl, Maven, but this just isn’t the world for you. You have to understand that James has a very promising life ahead of him. He needs someone who understands that, and what their role in his life will entail.”

Vince was quiet, but his nostrils flared, his hands working a little too aggressively. The clay folded in on itself and he had to start over again.

“And I know it’s not fair,” I said before Vince could speak. “But I listened to his stories about his family, and I watched them with their friends. I heard everyone at that wedding talk about how charitable they were, how much they gave to this organization or that one. Meanwhile, they had no idea what it was like to be someone like my parents, to sacrifice time and money and truly give to others.” I shook my head. “It’s hard not to have a sour taste in my mouth when I was so close to both sides. Add in the fact that James was able to so easily lie to me, to be with me for years and give me a fucking ring and then just… change his mind, all because…”

I couldn’t finish that sentence, but the words I didn’t say hung in the space between us.

Because I was poor. Because I wasn’t good enough. Because I didn’t fit in.

Vince finally looked at me, his eyes flicking between mine like he wanted to say something as his hands paused over the wheel.

“What?” I asked.

He opened his mouth, then shut it again. Then, swallowed and asked, “What’s his last name?”

“Why?”

“Just think I should know his last name before I wipe him from the face of the planet.”

I blinked at him, and then I laughed, tilting my head back and letting it bark out of my chest. “Shut up.”

Vince smirked in victory, like his only goal was to lighten my mood and make me laugh about a situation that had so permanently marked me.

He went back to molding the clay, and with his eyes on his hands, he said, “All jokes aside, he’s an idiot. And I’m sorry his family made you feel that way.”

“It’s fine.”

“You should meet mine,” he added, and I was thankful he wasn’t looking at me when my eyes bulged out of my skull. “I think we could change your mind.”

I offered a pathetic smile, but didn’t respond. I didn’t want to tell him I was pretty sure that was impossible. Part of my job was researching who Vince Tanev was, and I knew he came from a family maybe even more affluent than the one that had dismissed me. His parents had a mansion in East Grand Rapids, a cabin in the Rockies, a beach house here in Tampa, and a yacht on Lake Michigan that they were known for hosting private parties on. They both came from wealthy parents who had wealthy parents, too.

Maybe they weren’t exactly like the Long Island and Hamptons crew James was a part of, but they were one in the same.

“What about you,” I asked, eager to change the subject. “You ever have anyone break your heart?”

He blew out a breath. “Oh, boy. Did I just walk into an interrogation?”

“You don’t have to answer, if you don’t want to.”

Vince smirked, shaking his head a bit as he worked the clay. “I guess you can’t really have your heart broken if you’ve never dated anyone seriously.”

I snorted internally.

I was not the least bit surprised.

“It’s not because I don’t want to,” he said, glancing at me like he knew the assumptions I was making about him. “I just haven’t found the right person yet.”

“Interesting, because from the many photos I’ve seen posted of you online, you seem to find multiple right ones pretty frequently.”

“To warm my bed,” he clipped, his eyes finding mine. I shrank a bit under his gaze. “That’s different.”

“Meaning you couldn’t take those women home to Mom?”

His eyebrows jumped up a bit, as if to say, “Your words, not mine… but yes.”

I held in my unsurprised laugh. That alone told me his mom was just like the one who had told me I didn’t belong with her son, that I didn’t measure up. Moms like that, who had money and an athletic son with prospects, had high expectations for who their daughter-in-law would be.

Glancing down at my unpolished nails, I swallowed past the knot in my throat when I said, “It’s good to have standards.”

“I guess,” he said. “I just want someone who challenges me, who fires me up and makes me want more. Someone who makes my life better.” He swallowed then. “Not someone who just wants me because of what I do, of who I am, of what they think they can get from me.”

That response surprised me a little. It seemed the theme of the day. “I’m sorry you have to deal with people like that.”

The corner of his mouth crooked up. “Careful. You said that almost like you care about me.”

We both fell silent after that.

My head was spinning from the one-eighty from the day before. I’d gone from having him seething in my face with my chin clutched in his hand to being front row and center to the softest parts of him.

I didn’t know what to think anymore.

And I damn sure didn’t have a box to put him in.

But one thing I did have was the climbing numbers on our social media channels to remind me that this was all a job. There was only one reason why a man like him and a woman like me were in the same place — because it was an assignment. For both of us.

I could think about my subject all I wanted, and I’d even give myself the pleasure of appreciating how unfairly good looking the man was. But that was where it ended.

There wasn’t a time that existed where the two of us mixed past this one we’d found ourselves in by happenstance.

The night crawled on, and Vince put on that music I’d heard the first morning I’d walked into his condo. It was a cross between French and Arabic, and it set a vibe unlike any other, especially paired with the views of him creating.

I had expected it to be beautiful, watching Vince mold that clay into a vase.

I had not expected it to be erotic.

But there was no better word for it. Watching this beast of an athlete work with something so fragile and delicate with his massive, calloused hands was sexy as hell. The clay covered his fingers and knuckles and palms, and he moved each muscle in his hand with perfect precision to turn a lump of terra-cotta clay into something sensational.

I pulled out my camera, taking a long video of him when he was halfway through. I started zooming out, catching a smirking Vince as he glanced at me and shook his head before focusing on his work again. Then, I carefully walked closer, zooming in the camera to focus on his hands.

On only his hands.

And to add a little cinematic touch, I slowed parts of it down in post, editing the video so that for ten seconds of it, the viewer saw Vince Tanev’s hands and fingertips dancing around that wet clay and shaping it in super slow motion.

Watching it playback before I posted it made my throat dry, like it was almost too hot to post, like I was about to push a sex tape into the world instead of an innocent video of a man molding pottery.

I wrote out a long caption, one that detailed a little bit of the story Vince had told me about how pottery came into his life, and I highlighted one quote in bold.

This is the one thing in my life that isn’t goal-oriented, the one place where I can be free.

By the time I woke up the next morning, the video had gone viral.

With over eight-million views.