Kai stared at my chest until I got uncomfortable, so I looked down. I was wearing a Buffalo Warriors hoodie. Pack had given it to me weeks before, at the end of a weekend, right before he zipped his suitcase closed.
“Wear it if you get lonely,” he’d said.
The cuffs were frayed at the wrists, and the fabric was thin in places. It smelled like him, warm and familiar.
“You’re sitting here wrapped in his clothes,” Kai said. “I wouldn’t call that ‘pathetic’.”
“What would you say, then?”
“Hopelessly in love. Which is fine.Super-duper fantastic, even. But it sucks extra when the other guy is also stupidly in love and terrible at talking about it.”
For some reason, that caught me off guard. “You think he is?”
Kai made an odd noise, part sigh and part snicker. “I’ve watched him watch you on the ice for years, noticed how he looked at you even when you were beating the shit out of each other. And now I’ve seen you together in about ten thousand photos and edits.”
“So? That’s no?—”
“And I’ve seen how you look at each other when you think no one’s watching. This has been happening foryears, Nico, not months. Do you honestly believe you’re that easy to walk away from?”
“Yeah,” I said. “People have done it before.”
“Those people were fucking idiots. Paquette isn’t. He’s scared. Remember all the gossip about how that woman played him for a fool and walked out? She sent him a breakup text like they were in seventh grade. That kind of shit leaves scars.” He paused and picked up the bag of cookies, then set it back down and looked me in the eye. “Fear doesn’t mean lack of feelings. Sometimes, it can mean too many of them.”
I tried to answer, but my vision blurred again. Weeks of stress and days of pretending to be okay had worn me down. I took a shaky breath that caught halfway, and then I was crying. The sobs shook me all over. I covered my mouth, but the ragged sounds cut through anyway.
“I… m-miss him,” I muttered between gasps. “So much.”
Kai caught me before I slid off the couch and pulled me against him. “I’ve got you, buddy,” he said. “Let it out.”
All the things I hadn’t said in Buffalo came back. How had I not told Pack I loved him? Begged him to figure out our future? I’d been afraid of pushing too much, but I was a fool. I should have pushed harder.
When the crying finally stopped, I stared at the floor and struggled to find my voice. “I should’ve told him. At least he’d know.”
“It’s never too late to tell someone how you feel.”
“Yeah.” I peeled myself off Kai and slumped back against the cushions. “I hate not knowing. I went there to fix things but blew it all up instead. Now they’re in the middle of a series, and I can’t even tell him I’m pulling for him. He hasn’t called, so I don’t feel like I should. I don’t know how he’s doing or what he’s thinkingabout us. It’s—” My voice broke again. “Every time I start to text him, I stop myself. I’m afraid I’m being too much, that it’ll push him further away.”
Kai slid an arm around my shoulders. “I get it.”
“Do you think this was him letting me down easy? What if he wanted to say he couldn’t do this, but didn’t know how to tell me? If I’m forcing myself into somebody’s life when they don’t want me there… Fuck. That never ends well.”
“Look at me, Nico.”
I turned my head and met his gaze. His eyes were dark, more serious than usual.
“You’re not too much,” he said. “You’re easy to love, and you’re allowed to want a future. If Paquette can’t say what he feels right now, that’s on him, not you.”
Too exhausted to cry anymore, I leaned into Kai. For once, I let myself be held instead of being the one holding everything together.
“I don’t know how to fix this,” I said. “I can’t fly back there and blow up his playoffs. Maybe that’s for the best, because I can’t pretend I’m okay with never talking about what comes next.”
Kai rested his chin on top of my head. “You don’t have to fix it tonight. Sometimes, all you can do is wait without disappearing.”
“Isn’t that doing nothing?”
“No. It’s choosing not to make things worse.”
The idea made me uneasy. “If I stay away, I’m scared he’ll think he’s better off without me.”
