"We're sitting in second place—hard to believe."
"Then you'd better rest up. You've got a championship to chase."
A championship. The shop. This man in my bed is discussing the future like we'd both be in it.
My phone buzzed somewhere in the pile of discarded clothes—probably Jake with an inappropriate question about my evening.
I didn't check it.
Instead, I pulled Rhett closer, feeling his solid warmth against me. His breathing started to even out—not quite asleep yet, but getting there.
"Rhett?"
"Mmm?"
"Thanks. For showing up tonight. For the hot chocolate. For—" I gestured at my disaster of an apartment, at us tangled in sheets that smelled like sex and his cedar soap. "All of it."
"Thanks for letting me." His thumb traced my knuckles—the split one from last week's fight, the bruised one from catching a puck wrong in practice. "And Hog?"
"Yeah?"
"Your neighbor definitely heard us."
I groaned. "I'm never going to be able to look Mrs. Johnson in the eye again."
"You already avoid her."
"Now I have a better reason."
He laughed—quiet and warm against my chest. Within minutes, his breathing deepened into sleep.
I lay there staring at my ceiling, listening to the sounds of Thunder Bay at night—the distant horn from a ship on the lake. Wind rattling my windows. Rhett's steady breathing.
I thought about Gram's hands teaching me to cast on. About Margaret's offer and Edith's fierce certainty that I was enough. About the Storm fighting their way toward the playoffs, and Rhett making space for all of me without asking me to choose which parts to keep.
My ribs ached—they constantly ached now, old bruises and new ones layering like sediment. My hands were scarred, split, and still steady enough to knit lace.
I was thirty years old with a body that was starting to keep score, and for the first time, I wasn't terrified of what came after.
Chapter fourteen
Rhett
Hog checked the GPS for the third time in ten minutes.
"Still an hour," I said.
"What if there's construction? What if we hit a moose? What if—"
"Then we improvise." I rested my hand on his thigh. The muscle jumped. "It's dinner with my sister, not a performance evaluation."
"Your sister who's gonna decide if I'm good enough for you."
"My sister who hasn't slept properly in three weeks and is running on spite and cold coffee." I traced the edge of the tape on his knuckles. Fresh blood seeping through. "You're still bleeding."
"Bouchard's fault. Crosschecked Pickle so hard I heard it from the bench." He flexed his fingers on the wheel. "Kid's got no instinct for self-preservation. Someone's gotta—"
"Take the hit instead. Yeah. I know." The job was eating his body one fight at a time. "You're thirty. How much longer are you planning to do math on how many hits you've got left?"
