"Finnish treats, more like." Chase came in behind Ro, dropping their bags by the door. "He gets table scraps every meal. Ro can't say no to him."
"I can say no."
"You've never said no to that dog in your life."
Ro shrugged, unbothered, and pulled me into a hug that lifted my feet off the ground. He still had the arms of an NHL defenseman. When he set me down, he held me at arm's length and studied my face.
"You look tired," he said.
"It's my birthday. I'm allowed to look tired."
"You look old."
"Fuck off."
He grinned, and it was the same grin from the locker room, easy and warm and impossible to stay mad at. But the tension he'd carried in Vegas was gone.
Chase was already in the kitchen, greeting Sarah and admiring Thomas on her hip. He moved through my brother's house like it was the most natural thing in the world, pausing to shake Derek's hand and comment on something about the backyard. He laughed at something Sarah said, his whole body loose in a way it had never been at the arena, back when he'd been team staff and Ro had been a secret he couldn't afford to have.
Ro's eyes followed Chase across the room. His face went soft and stupid with it, the kind of expression that would have gotten him chirped relentlessly in the locker room. He didn't seem to care.
They'd lost everything. Ro's career, his team, the life he'd built in Vegas. Chase had lost his job. They'd been exiled to Finland, traded and dismissed and publicly humiliated. And now they moved through the world like none of it mattered, like finding each other had been worth every single thing they'd given up.
Owen came barreling down the stairs with Lily trailing behind him, and the moment broke. Ro crouched down to accept Owen's tackle while Lily hung back, too old now for that kind of greeting but still watching Ro with something like awe she was trying to hide.
"Where's Ukko?" Owen demanded.
"Kitchen," Ro said. "Being a menace."
Owen took off. Lily rolled her eyes and followed, probably to make sure her brother didn't feed the dog anything that would kill him.
The house filled up the way houses do when people are trying to celebrate something. Sarah had made a cake, three layers with buttercream frosting, she'd been fussing over since yesterday. Derek had picked up beer from the craft brewery Owen kept calling "the place with the weird goat on the sign." The kids orbited around the adults like small, chaotic planets, and through all of it, Ro's hand kept finding the small of Chase's back.
He did it at the kitchen counter while Chase was talking to Sarah. He did it again in the doorway to the living room when they paused to watch Owen demonstrate Ukko's newest trick, which was mostly just sitting and looking pathetic until someone gave him food.
Chase handed Ro a beer without being asked, their fingers brushing on the bottle. Ro took it and leaned into Chase's space, said something low that made Chase's mouth curve. Chase leaned back into him without looking.
Joel was in Colorado. It’d been four months since the storm, four months of phone calls and texts and the occasional stolen weekend when our schedules aligned. We were back together, technically. We were trying. But I still introduced him as my friend. I still checked the room before I touched him. I still did the math every single time.
Ro caught me staring and raised an eyebrow. My phone buzzed, and I looked away.
Joel: happy birthday old man
The text had a timestamp from twenty minutes ago. He was probably at the rink, phone balanced on his knee betweensessions, thumbs moving fast. He had Skate America in six days. He shouldn't be thinking about me at all.
Red: fuck off
Joel: that's no way to talk to someone who got you a present
Red: you got me a present?
Joel: maybe
Red: what is it
Joel: you'll have to wait and see
I grinned.
