I silence her with my mouth, partly because I can’t last another second without kissing her, and because she’s wrong. She just doesn’t realize it yet.
She sinks into me, her fingers tangling into my hair, her soft body melting as my tongue runs along the seam of her lips, tracing and tasting. But then she’s pulling away, her blue eyes gleaming as she glares down at me. “Stop trying to distract me.”
“I’m not, baby.” I chuckle and sweep back a piece of silky hair that’s fallen into her face.
Maisie frowns. “You are. Wilder, I know how much hockey means to you. How important it is. You can’t give up something that means everything to you. Especially not because of me.”
“It used to be everything to me.” I study her expression as I say it. “Beforeyou.”
I’m surprisingly calm about the realization that’s begun to settle in me. Not because I have an attachment to my position atOU, but because it feels like I’m finally making my own decision instead of someone else making it for me.
“I only came back to OU because I thought that taking this coaching job would allow me to get back to the NHL, so that I could end my career on my own terms. But somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling as important as it used to, and now I know it’s because of you. Becauseyoubecame what’s most important.”
She softens at that, but I still see that defiance that I love so much, that stubbornness blazing in her eyes.
I know she wants me to be happy, but I don’t think she realizes that without her? I’m a fucking shell with broken pieces.
“Wilder…” she starts, shaking her head, sitting back on my thighs. “There has to be another way.”
There’s not.
In the span of this conversation, I’ve come to that realization.
“If I keep coaching at OU, then we’d constantly be looking over our shoulders, waiting for the other shoe to drop, someone to discover our relationship. We’d never be able to be together in public without risking the same things that are at stake right now.” I swallow, sweeping my thumb along the bare skin of her back that’s peeking out from the shirt she’s wearing, grounding myself in her, always. “If I go to Taylor and explain that I’m in a position where I have to make a choice, and the choice I’m making is us, and I quit… then the school wouldn’t have to open an investigation, and it wouldn’t be this huge fucking thing. I resign and go quietly.”
I can see the wheels turning behind the blue pools of her irises, but I continue. “If I resign, it’s becauseI’mgoing to make that choice. It might not be what I envisioned when I came back to OU, no, but itisme doing the one thing I wanted to do. Ending my career on my terms and no one else’s. No one forcing me into accepting something that I had no control over.And then we have nothing to hide. But this is also your decision, Maisie. It’s not just mine.”
I tilt her chin back up when her gaze drops to her lap, her lip between her teeth as she gnaws on it.
I can feel her nerves and the way her mind is spinning. Maybe mine should be too. It’s finality in a way that’s never been before for my career, my future.
But it’s no longer the only future I see.
She is.
“I don’t want to hide either. I just…” Maisie says with a shake of her head, brow furrowing tightly. “I hate that you’re sacrificing this, Wilder.”
“It’s a decision that’ll affect us both, baby. You’ll have to deal with the gossip on campus and the fact that there might be blowbacks that we’re not expecting. I’ll lose my job, but you’ll still be on campus, having to hear people talk. So no, I can’t make a decision like this without you. And I don’t want you to feel like you have to do anything you don’t want to do. We’re in this together.”
I know how much it matters to her to be in control of her decisions, of her life.
If anyone understands that shit, it’s me.
I’m not taking that choice from her.
Or any choices from her.
Of all the things I will likely do to fuck up, all the mistakes I’ll make, all the times I’m not going to get it right, one thing I can do is never take her agency.
Never make choices for her.
Never decide things that affect both of our lives.
Tears are tracking down her cheeks again as she exhales. “If this is what you want, if you’re sure… a hundred percent that you’re not just making this decision for me but foryou, then okay. I’m standing with you.”
“That’s all I could ask for, Maisie. This is me choosing you. And choosing myself. The rest we’ll figure out as we go.”
Her forehead presses against mine again, and she laughs, her tears wetting my cheeks. “Are we really doing this, Coach?”
