“And if anything gets worse—anything—you tell me immediately.”
“I will.” He smiled slightly. “You done being bossy?”
“No. But I'm done arguing with you about this.”
He kissed me then, quick and soft, and I felt some of the tension drain from my shoulders. “Thank you,” he said quietly.
“Don't thank me. I still think this is a terrible idea.”
“Noted.” He pulled back, and I watched him process what he'd just committed to. “What do we do now?”
“Now we stay here. And we let the world wait.”
“That's not going to solve anything.”
“I know.” I kissed him again, softer this time. “But maybe we deserve a few more days before we have to face it.”
He nodded slowly, and I felt him relax slightly. “Okay. A few more days.”
We went back to the couch, and he curled up against me again, and we sat there in silence while the world outside kept spinning. My phone buzzed a few more times—June, probably, or Paul, or someone else demanding answers I didn't have—but I ignored it. Let them wait. Let them think whatever they wanted. For now, it was just us in this cabin, pretending we could pause the machine and hold onto something good before it got ripped away.
I knew it wouldn't last. Knew that eventually we'd have to go back to Toronto and face the consequences. Knew that my job was hanging by a thread and Jace's career was still months away from recovery and everything we'd built here was too fragile to survive in the real world.
But for now, I let myself have this. Let myself hold him and feel his weight against me and pretend that caring about someone more than the game wasn't the thing that would destroy us both.
Outside, the snow kept falling. Inside, the fire kept burning. And for a few more hours, we let ourselves believe that was enough.
CHAPTER 21
CAMPFIRE
JACE
By day three in the cabin, I was ready to crawl out of my own skin.
Not because of Grant—having him there had been... good. Better than good. The mornings waking up tangled together, the lazy afternoons where we didn't have to perform for anyone, the nights where we fell asleep to the sound of wind in the trees instead of arena noise. It was the most peace I'd had in years, and it was driving me insane.
Because peace meant stillness. And stillness meant thinking. And thinking meant confronting every decision I'd made that had led me here: injured, benched, hiding in the woods with my coach-turned-whatever-the-fuck-we-were, trying to figure out how to go back to a life that suddenly felt too small for what I wanted.
I needed to move. Needed fresh air and trees that weren't framed by a window. Needed to prove to myself that my body still worked even if it was slower, weaker, more broken than it used to be.
“I need to get out of here,” I said.
Grant looked up from the book he'd been reading—some dense thing about hockey systems that made my brain hurt just looking at it. “Out where?”
“Outside. A walk. A hike. Something.” I gestured toward the window where afternoon light was filtering through the pines. “I've been sitting on my ass for three days and I feel like I'm dying.”
“You're recovering.”
“I'm going stir-crazy.” I stood up, testing the leg automatically. Still sore, still tight, but manageable. “Come on. Just an easy trail. I promise I won't do anything stupid.”
Grant closed the book and studied me with that look—the one that catalogued every tell, every weakness, every risk before making a decision. “Okay. But we do it my way.”
“Okay.”
“The second you feel pain we turn back.”
I wanted to argue that I knew my own limits, but the truth was I'd spent months ignoring those limits and look where it had gotten me. So I swallowed the automatic pushback and said, “Deal.”
