When I returned home two days later, it was to a sleeping Théo, Aspen curled at his feet. We’d taken a red eye from Nashville and flying home straight after a game was a different kind of exhausting. At least, we had won tonight.
The apartment was dark when I let myself in, just the glow of the city through the windows and the soft hum of the refrigerator. I set my bag down as quietly as I could, wincing when the zipper scraped against the hardwood.
Aspen lifted his head from his position at the foot of the couch, ears pricked. But he must not have felt threatened because he only watched me for a moment before settling back down, his tail giving a single lazy thump against the cushion.Good boy. Don’t wake him.
Théo was stretched out on the couch, one arm tucked under a pillow, the other hanging off the edge. He was wearing a faded gray henley with fraying cuffs and had the throw blanket thrown across his middle. His feet were bare, pale against Aspen’s merle fur.
I stood there like an idiot, just watching him breathe.
His face was different like this. Soft in a way I’d never seen when he was awake, all that watchful edge smoothed away. Thefurrow that usually lived between his brows was gone. His lips were slightly parted, his breathing deep and even. He looked young. He looked peaceful.
He looked like someone who wasn’t carrying the weight of something I couldn’t name.
I wanted to stare. I wanted to memorize him like this—unguarded, unaware of being studied. But I also wanted him to sleep. He worked harder than anyone I knew and I played professional hockey for a living. The hours he kept, the relentless discipline, the way he pushed his body past what seemed reasonable or safe—it was almost pathological.
And for what? He wasn’t competing anymore. He wasn’t training for anything specific, as far as I could tell. He was doing all this for... fun? I couldn’t even tell if he was enjoying himself. It seemed almost the opposite. Like punishment. Like penance for something I didn’t understand.
I couldn’t figure him out.
I made myself move, finally. Crept past the couch and down the hall to my bedroom. Changed out of my travel clothes. Brushed my teeth. Lay in bed staring at the ceiling, hyperaware that Théo Beaubien was asleep 20 feet away on my couch.
Sleep came eventually, though I couldn’t tell you when.
When I woke up the next morning, sunlight streaming through the blinds I’d forgotten to close, he was already gone. The couch had been straightened, the throw blanket folded neatly over the arm. Aspen was sitting by his food bowl, looking at me with the particular expression of a dog who was starving.
A Post-it note was stuck to the coffee maker in neat, precise handwriting:Already took Aspen out for his morning walk and fed him. Don’t let him trick you.
My eyes scanned it three times, studying his handwriting.
Then I grabbed Aspen’s leash and went out anyway.
The apartment smelled like him—something clean and faintly evergreen, like fresh ice and winter air. It had gotten into everything. The couch cushions. The throw blanket. My hat, which he’d left hanging on the hook next to the door.
I needed fresh air.
18. Théo
I had bolted from Derek’s apartment before dawn like the coward I was.
The thought of waking up and making small talk—or worse, sharing a car ride to the arena—had been enough to get me out the door while it was still dark. I’d barely slept. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him. Watching me from the stands. Eyes dark and intense, following every line of my body across the ice like he couldn’t look away.
Now I was cranky, sleep deprived, and taking it out on the ice.
I was on the ice by 7 a.m., the building still quiet, the overhead lights doing their slow warm up from dim to full. I had a system. Edges first, then turns, then spins, then jumps. The triple axel was coming back in increments so small they were almost imperceptible, which was both encouraging and maddening depending on the hour.
When I came up for air, Derek was sitting in the last row. He was always in the last row. Like sitting further back made it less obvious. Like I wouldn’t notice him up there in the shadows.
Normally, it didn’t bother me. Today, it made my skin itch.
The triple axel wasn’t landing. Twenty minutes of the same sick drift—my centre off by a fraction that I couldn’t correct no matter how clean the entry was. My body knew what to do and refused to do it. And I could feel him watching.
When I finally skated to the boards for water, my chest was heaving, my breath coming in sharp bursts that fogged in the cold air. Sweat had soaked through my training shirt, plastering it to my back. I grabbed my bottle with shaking hands—the particular tremor of muscles pushed past fatigue—and tried to steady myself.
He came down like he’d been waiting for the opening.
“You left without saying goodbye this morning,” he said.
“I had shit to do.” I unscrewed my bottle. Didn’t look at him. My lungs were still burning, each inhale a conscious effort.
