Christ. Thatcher’s a damn magnet and I need to stop touching him.
We take our drinks outside fast. The air’s cold but easier to breathe.
“You okay?” Thatcher asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I’ve been gossip before, but not like this. It’ll pass.”
“Yeah.”
I sip my coffee. “You good?”
“I’m not the one who used to be in the NAPH. I didn’t have a whole city following my love life.”
“That was never love,” I say quietly. “This isn’t . . . exploits.”
Thatcher doesn’t answer. He just walks beside me, shoulder brushing mine like that’s answer enough, and I see that smile again. When I drop my shoulder to be even closer to him, he doesn’t shy away, and his mouth hitches to one side as if he’s trying not to smile.
Dinner at their place is easy. Thatcher grills salmon and then places it on top of rice mixed with some kind of green leafy vegetable I can’t identify. It tastes amazing and I hope Jamie realizes how lucky he is to have a dad who makes sure he eats clean and healthy.
Jamie chatters through the meal and tries to trade me his math homework for help with his wrist shot. I laugh and tell him he has to work on both—but I’ll help with the latter if he promises not to grow up into a defenseman.
By the time he heads off to bed, the house has gone soft and still. I work on the few remaining dirty dishes, since Thatcher cooked and Jamie had cleared the rest but then he’d had to start yet another load of hockey-scented laundry.
“You’re good at this,” I say.
He glances over his shoulder. “At what?”
“This. Being a dad. Having a rhythm. It’s steady.”
“I had to learn.” He gives me a little smile. “Still learning.”
“Well, you did—are.”
We fall into a quiet routine. He hands me a beer and has one for himself as we make our way to the couch. It’s too cold for outside tonight.
I slide a folded piece of paper out of my pocket and hand it to him with two fingers.
“What’s this?”
“Contract,” I say. “I bought the bar.”
His eyes snap up to mine. “You’re serious? The old bakery on the square?”
“Yeah. The closing’s next week.”
Thatcher studies me like he’s trying to find the punchline, but I keep my face steady.
“Are you going to keep it a bar? You know they started converting it into one but it never even opened, I hear.”
I chuckle at the new rumor about the place—one I hadn’t heard yet. My understanding was that it had been converted from a bakery and then opened as a bar but only for a short time. Unless you asked Stan, who claimed it was open for years.
“I think so? I figured . . . I should have some plan for the future. Plant roots. Build something.”
“The Knights—“
I place a hand on his chest and watch his eyes darken as his body shifts to accommodate me closer to him.
“I’m done making plans based on what could be, Gabe. If something moves in my career, we both know it’s not going to be forever. My knee could tell you that. I’m not the most pragmatic guy, God knows, but I’m not delusional. Playing good hockey, at most, gives me a shot to end my career on my own terms.”
