“Is busy counting the ways he can save a season.” The faintest smile ghosts across his mouth. “He won’t see what he isn’t looking at.”
I want to say that my father sees everything, that there has never been a time in my life when the man didn’t register my smallest change in temperature. But it’s also true that grief has made him blind to anything that doesn’t look like danger on the ice. He protects in the language he speaks best. I am not sure he knows how to speak this one.
I do what Triston tells me to do. I drink water until my pulse stops trying to climb out of my throat. I set the cup down carefully, as if trembling will betray more than nerves and slip into the back hallway that has always been a place to breathe between rooms. It is smaller than I remember. Maybe I’m larger with wanting than I used to be.
He is there a moment later, the sound of him arriving not footsteps but a shift in the atmosphere that recognizes him as the cause.
“You’re quiet.” He says, studying my face like a map.
“You told me to be.” I say, and watch the edges of his control soften, like he files that away with all the other things he’s learning about me tonight.
He moves closer until the wall is against my shoulder and there is nowhere for me to go that isn’t him. He doesn’t touch. He traps. It works the same.
“What are you thinking?” He asks.
“That I should be better at lying.” I answer, and it makes him huff a sound that might be a laugh if the night were kinder.
“Don’t.” He shakes his head, small. “You don’t lie well. I don’t want you to start.”
The words land in a place just below my ribs and spread warmth. No one has asked that of me before, the truth of myself, not the version that makes everything easier.
“I can’t be what you want in the daylight.” I say before I can stop myself. It’s not fair. It’s not the whole shape of the truth. But it’s the jagged piece cutting my tongue.
One slow breath, then another. “I don’t want daylight from you.”
The hallway holds that sentence like a secret. It changes the color of the air. I am not sure I breathe for a second.
“Then, what?” I ask, and even I can hear the fray at the edges of the question.
He takes that half-step closer that feels like being pushed and caught at the same time. “I want you to be honest.” He says. “I want you when you stop pretending that good and safe are the same thing.”
“I don’t pretend.” I say, but it’s gentle, devoid of bite. I don’t have the energy for defense and desire at once.
His eyes leave my face just long enough to map the hallway; exits, angles, who could see if they turned the corner and then his gaze returns. “You gave me the word outside.” He says. Nothing moves in his expression, and still everything inside me moves. “I heard it. I’m not giving it back.”
Something low in me loosens. Owning it isn’t the jail I expected. It feels like the key in the lock of a door I didn’t know I built.
“Okay.” I tell him.
He inclines his head as if we’ve signed something no one else will ever read. “Good.”
For a long beat we stand there with breathing as the only movement, an elastic quiet that could snap if either of us twitches. Then a peel of laughter staggers down the hall andbreaks against us. Voices. The storm of the party turns and sends a wave in our direction.
“Go.” He growls in a low command made softer by the way his gaze lingers. “Before he thinks to ask where you are.”
“Will you—” I don’t finish because the question admits more need than I’m ready to hear out loud.
His mouth curves. “I don’t leave rooms you’re in.”
The ridiculous comfort of that lodges in my chest. I nod and step past him, and even though we don’t touch, the sleeve of his jacket grazes my arm and sets off a chain of sparks that travel all the way to my fingertips.
Back in the living room, the volume has shifted from wild to dense. People have sunk into conversations in corners, laughter at a lower pitch, music stubborn and relentless. I move through it with a steadiness I’m not sure I own. My dad is by the mantel now, one hand on the edge like the house might tip without him holding it up. I angle toward him because that is what I’ve always done. He sees me coming and someone, one of the guys peels away, leaving my father a clear path to me.
“Hey.” I say, and it is ridiculous how the single word shakes.
He hears it. Of course he does. “Tired?” He asks, like he’s offering me a story to step into. My father has always been goodat that. I almost take it because I am soft for him in a way that has nothing to do with tonight.
“A little.” I find a smile. “It’s a lot.”
