A Reader Bonus Scene
Off the Clock
A bonus scene from The Save
Note from J.S. Bates: This bonus scene takes place in Cole and Nora’s world after they have already learned how dangerous pretending can be. It is soft, private, and a little stolen.
Off the Clock
Nora Shaw had learned a lot of things since agreeing to fake date Cole Mercer.
She had learned that hockey players could be terrifyingly good at pretending they were not tired when they were clearly held together by caffeine, stubbornness, and athletic tape. She had learned that her brother’s best friend had a habit of listening with his whole face, which was deeply inconvenient for a woman who preferred to hide behind sarcasm and clean argument structure. She had learned that Cole Mercer’s smile was bad enough from across a room, but up close, with his hair still damp from the shower and his mouth curved like he knew exactly which rule he had broken, it was almost criminal.
But tonight she learned something worse.
Cole Mercer knew how to keep a secret.
Not a suspicious secret. Not the kind that made her stomach fold in on itself and her body go still before her mind could catch up.
A sweet one.
Which, frankly, was worse.
“You are kidnapping me,” Nora said, standing outside Whitmore Hall with her coat half zipped and her backpack sliding down one shoulder.
Cole leaned against the passenger side of his truck with his hands in the pockets of his black jacket, looking entirely too pleased with himself for a man who had refused to tell her where they were going.
“I texted you first.”
“Your text said, and I quote, put on something warm.”
“Which is helpful information.”
“It is vague information.”
“You like mysteries.”
“I like knowing enough facts to decide whether the mystery is going to end with me needing legal representation.”
His grin did the terrible slow thing. “You are legal representation.”
“Pre-law. Not the same thing.”
“Future legal representation.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “That kind of confidence is how people end up in depositions.”
Cole opened the passenger door. “Get in, Shaw.”
There was a time when that tone would have annoyed her on principle. It still did, a little. But now there was another layer underneath it, something warmer and steadier. He never said her name like he was trying to win. He said it like he was coming back to something familiar.
Nora hated that she liked it.
She got in.
“For the record,” she said as he shut the door, “I am documenting this.”
He walked around the front of the truck, climbed in, and started the engine. Heat poured from the vents, carrying the faint smell of leather, winter air, and the peppermint gum he kept in the console. “Document away.”
“Time of abduction, nine forty-two p.m.”
“Abduction seems strong.”
“Victim was lured outside by vague text message.”
“Victim walked voluntarily.”
“Under emotional coercion.”
Cole glanced at her as he pulled away from the curb. “Emotional coercion?”
Nora looked out the window, watching the campus lights blur against the dark. “You sent a second text with a hockey stick emoji.”
“Brutal of me.”
“Predatory.”
He laughed under his breath, low and pleased, and Nora turned her face further toward the window so he would not see what it did to her.
Hartley at night looked softer than it had any right to. Snow rested along the edges of the sidewalks. Dorm windows glowed in scattered squares. Somewhere near the student center, two girls walked arm in arm, laughing into their scarves. The world had not gotten less complicated. It had not become suddenly safe. But there were moments now when Nora could sit beside Cole in the warm cab of his truck and not feel like she was bracing for impact.
That still startled her sometimes.
Trust, she was discovering, did not arrive like an argument won. It arrived in small pieces. A text that did not demand an answer. A look that did not push. A hand offered, not taken. A man who waited long enough for her to choose him back.
“You are thinking loud,” Cole said.
“That is not a thing.”
“It is with you.”
“I do not think loud. I think efficiently.”
“You get quiet in a very organized way.”
She turned to him. “That is either the most accurate thing you have ever said or the most annoying.”
“Can be both.”
“You are getting dangerously comfortable.”
His hand rested loose on the steering wheel. His profile was shadowed by passing streetlights, all sharp jaw and tired eyes and the kind of quiet that did not feel empty. “With you? Yeah.”
Nora’s chest tightened.
She hated when he did that. Dropped something honest into the middle of normal conversation like it cost him nothing, when the truth was that Cole had spent years being careful with every real thing inside him.
“Where are we going?” she asked, because sometimes a woman had to survive by changing the subject.
Cole smiled.
Ten minutes later, he pulled behind Hartley Arena.
Nora stared at the building through the windshield. The main lights were off, but the emergency lamps glowed over the back entrance, turning the snow along the pavement a pale, bluish white.
“Cole.”
“Before you start, I have permission.”
“From whom?”
“Coach.”
“Coach gave you permission to bring a civilian into a locked arena after hours?”
“He said, and I quote, do not be stupid.”
“That is not permission. That is a warning.”
“I interpreted it broadly.”
“You should never go to law school.”
He turned off the engine and looked at her. “Good thing I have you.”
It was unfair, how quickly those five words disarmed her.
Inside the arena, the cold was different. Cleaner. Sharper. The kind of cold that lived in the lungs before the body could decide whether to object. Their footsteps echoed through the back hallway, past equipment rooms and framed team photos and a bulletin board covered in schedules, taped notices, and one crooked flyer advertising a campus blood drive.
Cole walked like he belonged there.
Of course he did. The arena had his name in it, even where it did not. In the scuffed floor. In the smell of ice and sweat and rubber. In the quiet reverence of a place that had watched him become the version of himself everyone cheered for.
Nora followed him through the tunnel until the rink opened up in front of them.
She stopped.
The ice was empty.
Not empty the way it looked before a game, waiting and loud with anticipation. Empty in a way that felt private. The overhead lights had been lowered, leaving the rink washed in a silver half glow. The stands disappeared into shadow. The boards gleamed. At center ice, a single puck sat waiting.
Beside it was a folded blanket, two paper cups with lids, and a small brown bakery box.
Nora turned slowly toward Cole.
He rubbed the back of his neck.
“Do not look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I did something.”
“You did do something.”
“Barely.”
“Cole.”
He looked at the ice, then back at her. “You said once that you had never been on the rink when it was quiet.”
Her throat tightened.
She had said that. Weeks ago. Maybe longer. It had been an offhand comment after one of his games, when the crowd was still wild and the glass was still vibrating from the last check, and she had stood beside him in the corridor pretending not to notice the bruise forming along his cheekbone.
I wonder what it feels like when no one is watching.
She had barely remembered saying it.
He had not.
“You remember everything,” she said softly.
Cole’s gaze settled on her face. “Not everything.”
“Enough.”
“The important stuff.”
Nora looked away first, because she had learned many things from being loved by Cole Mercer, and one of them was that eye contact could become an event if she was not careful.
“Are we allowed to be on the ice?”
“In shoes? No.”
“Then how exactly are we getting to the center?”
Cole pointed toward the bench. A pair of skates waited there. Small ones.
Nora stared at them.
“Absolutely not.”
“Absolutely yes.”
“I have never skated in my life.”
“I know.”
“That sounded ominously prepared.”
“I brought knee pads.”
“I am going home.”
She turned, but Cole caught her hand. Not tightly. Never tightly. Just enough to stop her if she wanted to be stopped.
She did.
“I’ve got you,” he said.
It should not still undo her, how easily he said it. How carefully he meant it.
Nora looked down at his hand around hers, then at the impossible stretch of ice beyond the boards. “If I die, I want Priya to prosecute.”
“Priya is pre-med.”
“She can pivot.”
“Noted.”
Ten minutes later, Nora was on the ice, clinging to Cole Mercer like dignity was a fictional concept invented by people who had never been betrayed by frozen water.
“I hate this,” she said.
Cole skated backward in front of her, both hands holding hers, his grin so bright it should have been illegal. “You are doing great.”
“Do not lie to me in the place where you are most powerful.”
“You are upright.”
“Under duress.”
“Still counts.”
“If you let go of me, I will haunt you.”
His thumbs brushed over her gloves. “Not letting go.”
The words landed differently than the banter deserved.
Nora looked at him.
His grin softened. The arena was quiet enough that she could hear the scrape of his blades, the faint hum of the lights, the sound of her own breath catching in the cold.
“You know,” she said, “you are very annoying when you are sweet.”
“Good to know.”
“It complicates my position.”
“You have a position?”
“Several.”
His eyes darkened in a way that made the cold around them suddenly less effective.
Nora realized what she had said approximately half a second too late.
“Do not,” she said.
Cole’s mouth twitched. “I did not say anything.”
“Your face did.”
“My face is innocent.”
“Your face has never been innocent a day in its life.”
He laughed, and the sound moved through the empty arena, soft at the edges. Nora hated the part of herself that wanted to keep it. To fold it into some private place and take it out on bad days.
By the time they reached center ice, her legs were shaking, but she had not fallen. Cole guided her to the folded blanket and helped her sit on it with the solemn care of a man lowering glass onto a shelf.
“You are enjoying this too much,” she said, tugging at the laces on one skate.
He dropped down beside her and handed her one of the paper cups. “Hot chocolate.”
“This feels suspiciously like bribery.”
“It is courtship.”
Nora almost dropped the cup.
Cole looked entirely too calm.
“I am sorry,” she said. “Could you repeat that for the official record?”
“No.”
“Coward.”
“Strategic.”
She took a careful sip. It was rich and warm and unfairly perfect, which was becoming a theme with him tonight. “You brought pastries too, didn’t you?”
He opened the bakery box without comment.
Inside were two cinnamon knots from Moxie’s. Her favorite.
Nora stared at them for a long second.
“You are making this difficult,” she said.
Cole went quiet beside her. “Making what difficult?”
She looked out across the rink. From center ice, the arena felt different. Bigger, but less intimidating. Like standing in the middle of something that usually belonged to everyone and realizing, for a few stolen minutes, it could belong to only them.
“Staying unaffected,” she said.
Cole did not answer right away.
When she finally looked at him, he was watching her with an expression that made her chest feel too small for the air inside it.
“You are still trying to do that?”
“Occasionally.”
“How is it going?”
“Poorly.”
His smile was small. Almost relieved.
That was the thing about Cole. The public version of him wore confidence like a second jersey. Easy grin. Golden boy charm. A roomful of people believing they knew exactly who he was because he let them have the version that asked the least from them.
This Cole was quieter. Better. More dangerous.
This Cole remembered a sentence she had tossed away weeks ago and turned it into a night on empty ice with hot chocolate and cinnamon knots and no audience. This Cole waited for her to say things on her own. This Cole looked at her like patience was not a sacrifice.
“What?” he asked.
Nora shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Shaw.”
She looked at him over the rim of her cup. “I am just deciding whether to be emotionally honest, which, as you know, goes against several of my core operating principles.”
“Take your time.”
That made her laugh, but it came out softer than she intended.
She set the cup down between them.
“I like this,” she said.
Cole’s face did not change much, but she saw the words hit him. Saw them settle somewhere under his ribs.
“The rink?”
She rolled her eyes. “Do not be deliberately dense. It is unbecoming.”
“I just want the record to be clear.”
“You are enjoying this.”
“A little.”
Nora reached over and took his hand. “I like this,” she said again, quieter. “Being here. With you. When no one is watching.”
His fingers closed around hers.
“Yeah?”
“Do not make me say it more than twice. I am still adjusting to being emotionally accessible.”
“Twice is good.”
His thumb moved over her knuckles. Slow. Careful. Familiar enough to feel intimate, gentle enough not to ask for more than she was giving.
She looked at their hands. “You make it difficult to be cynical.”
“I apologize.”
“You do not.”
“Not even a little.”
She smiled before she could stop herself.
Cole went very still.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Cole.”
He looked down at their joined hands. Then back at her.
“You smile differently here.”
“On ice?”
“With me.”
The words were so simple that they slipped past every defense she had.
Nora inhaled. The air smelled like ice and chocolate and him.
“That is because I am happy,” she said.
The silence after that was not empty. It was full of everything they had taken too long to say, everything they had pretended around, everything that had started as a contract and become something neither of them had been brave enough to name until it was already living between them.
Cole lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles.
Not dramatic. Not performative. Just his mouth against her glove, warm breath through wool, reverent enough that Nora forgot how to make a joke for once in her life.
“I wanted that,” he said.
“The skating disaster?”
“You happy.”
Her eyes burned before she could stop them.
“That is a dangerous thing to say to a woman with unresolved tenderness issues.”
“I’ll risk it.”
“Of course you will. You throw yourself in front of flying rubber for fun.”
“For the team.”
“Heroic.”
“Occasionally.”
Nora shifted closer on the blanket. It was not much. A few inches. But Cole noticed. Of course he noticed. His gaze dropped to her mouth, then lifted back to her eyes, asking the question before his hands did.
That was another thing he had taught her. Desire did not have to feel like being cornered. It could feel like being met at the door and handed the key.
“You can kiss me,” she said.
His expression changed.
Not into surprise. Not exactly. Into something more devastating. Gratitude, maybe. Hunger held carefully by both hands. The look of a man who could have taken a hundred easy things in his life, but wanted this one because it had been offered.
“Yeah?” he asked.
Nora leaned closer. “If you ask me that every time, I am going to develop a complex.”
“A good one?”
“Jury is still out.”
He smiled.
Then he kissed her.
Soft at first. Because Cole Mercer, for all his reputation, knew how to wait. His hand came to her cheek, cold fingers gentle against warm skin, and Nora tilted into him with a sigh she would deny under oath if necessary.
The arena disappeared by degrees.
The boards. The lights. The empty stands. The old ache of being watched, judged, wanted for the wrong reasons. All of it moved to the edges until there was only Cole’s mouth, his breath, the steadying pressure of his hand at the back of her neck.
Nora kissed him harder.
His control slipped for half a second. She felt it in the way his fingers flexed against her coat, in the quiet sound he made against her mouth, in the way his whole body leaned toward hers before he checked himself.
She pulled back just enough to look at him.
“You are thinking loud now,” she whispered.
His laugh came out rough. “Yeah.”
“What are you thinking?”
He rested his forehead against hers. “That I have wanted you here for longer than I know how to say without embarrassing myself.”
Nora’s fingers curled in the front of his jacket. “Here on the ice?”
“Here with me.”
Her heart did something ridiculous.
“That was very smooth.”
“It was the truth.”
“Worse.”
He kissed the corner of her mouth. “You like the truth.”
“I like evidence.”
“And what does the evidence say?”
Nora pretended to consider this. It was difficult with his mouth still close enough to ruin her objectivity.
“The evidence suggests,” she said, “that you are alarmingly good for me.”
Cole went still again.
Not the careful stillness of a man holding back. Something else. Something struck.
“Nora.”
“Do not make it a thing.”
“It is a thing.”
“A small thing.”
“It is not small to me.”
She had no defense for that.
So she kissed him again.
Later, they lay side by side on the blanket at center ice, shoulder to shoulder, looking up at the dim rafters. Nora’s skates had been abandoned nearby. Her hot chocolate was half gone. Cole’s hand was wrapped around hers beneath the edge of the blanket, warm where the rink was cold.
“I understand the appeal now,” she said.
“Of hockey?”
“Do not get ahead of yourself.”
“Of the rink?”
“Of this version of it.” She turned her head toward him. “Quiet. Empty. Yours.”
His gaze moved over her face. “Ours tonight.”
Nora smiled.
No flinch. No second thought. No cold-calm waiting behind it.
Just the smile.
Cole noticed. Of course he did.
“There it is,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“The happy one.”
Her throat tightened again, but this time it did not hurt.
Outside, the campus was asleep. Her brother had no idea where she was. Priya would absolutely have opinions in the morning. Coach probably knew more than he had admitted and would pretend otherwise because hockey men had their own strange emotional support system made of grunts and rink access.
Nora would deal with all of that later.
Right now, she was off the clock.
No case brief. No contract. No rules.
Just Cole Mercer beside her on empty ice, holding her hand like it was something worth being careful with.
And for once, Nora let herself believe that maybe it was.
Thank you for reading.
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