We pull into his garage without speaking. He taps his key fob, and the metal gate rises like a slow eyelid. I park where I did last time, in the corner that pretends to be shadow. He sits with his hands on his knees, tux immaculate again except for the place my night just touched it.
“Do you wanna stay for dinner?”
“Here? Made by you?” I ask, testing.
He blows out a breath that shakes the tiniest bit. “Yes. If you promise not to set anything on fire.”
“I make no promises,” I say, grinning. “I can help in the kitchen, though.”
He rolls his eyes and gets out of the car. “You’re not touching my knives.”
“Afraid I’ll steal them?”
“Afraid you’ll love them and the next time you’re mad at me, you’ll text me a photo of you using them wrong.”
“I would never,” I say, absolutely the kind of person who would.
In the elevator, the mirrored walls throw back versions of us I’ve never seen: the rival in a tux with the top button undone, the asshole forward leaning against polished chrome like he belongs. The doors open on his floor. The hallway swallows sound like wealth.
At his door, he hesitates. “Last chance to run.”
“From you?” I ask. “Not a chance.”
He unlocks the door and lets me in.
His condo glows low—lamps like constellations, the city beyond like a second sky. He kicks off his shoes with immaculate aggression and scrubs a hand through his hair, ruining it just enough to make me ache.
“I need to get out of this jacket,” he mutters, tugging at the sleeves. The words are nothing; the tone is everything: brittleloosening into real. He drapes the tux coat over a chair and moves to the kitchen like a man who lives there only in flashes.
“You hungry?” he asks. “I didn’t eat.”
“Starving,” I admit. “For food. And other things. But food first.”
His eyes flicker—need, gratitude, a joke he swallows. He opens the fridge, pulls out salmon, an indecent amount of butter, a bunch of asparagus tied with twine. He moves with that quiet precision again—oil, salt, heat—like control is a language he speaks when his heart is loud.
“Hand me the lemon,” he says, and I do, fingers brushing. He doesn’t pull away.
The sizzle calms something feral in me. We talk—safe at first. Travel. The weeks ahead. The way the ice in our arena has a micro-groove on the north end that screws with your first stride, how he compensates for it without thinking. The team. Leander’s ridiculous pregame rituals. Phoenix’s captain voice that can stop a brawl at twenty paces.
Then we run out of safe and stand at the edge of true.
“I don’t know what to do about Kyle,” he says finally, plating salmon like an apology. “He’s my friend. He’s… kind. And I’ve been letting him stand where you... I’ve been leading him on.”
“Do you want him?” I ask, because I am done with almosts.
“I want to want him,” he says, eyes on the plate. “I don’t. Not like this.”
“Then tell him.”
He flinches. “He doesn’t deserve the fallout.”
“Neither do you,” I say. “But that won’t stop it.”
We eat at the counter. The food is ridiculous—of course it is—but that’s not what I’ll remember. I’ll remember his bare feet on cold stone, the way he leans on his elbows when he forgets to perform, the tiny lines at the corners of his eyes that only show up when he’s deciding to be soft.
An hour later, the plates are empty, and we’ve both gone a little warm from the wine. He sits curled into one end of his couch, barefoot, glass in hand. I take the other end, slouched, watching the skyline through the wide windows.
Silver City glows below us — clean and untouchable, like it belongs to him. It probably does.
