“And in the meantime?”
“I thought we could . . .” I gestured toward the living room. “Sit and talk? I have beers if you want one.”
“A beer sounds great.”
I grabbed two bottles from the fridge, popped thecaps, and handed him one. Our fingers brushed during the exchange—intentional this time, or at least not actively avoided—and the brief contact sent a spark up my arm.
Jacks leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine, not a hungry thing, a gentle contact that said more words than we’d spoken thus far. When he pulled back, my eyes were closed, and I almost forgot to open them again. When I did, he was staring, his grin now pensive but pleased, his eyes wells of hope I wanted to drown in.
We migrated to the living room.
I sat on one end of the couch; Jacks sat on the other, a full cushion of space between us. That was ridiculous, given what we’d done on this exact couch yesterday, but somehow the formal structure of a “date” had reset things, made every gesture feel loaded with significance.
“This is weird, right?” I said. “And it’s weird that it’s weird. Yesterday we were—” I gestured between us. “And now we’re sitting three feet apart like strangers at a bus stop.”
Jacks laughed, that full-body laugh that creased the corners of his eyes. “A little weird, yeah, but I’m getting used to your weirdness.”
I snorted. Jacks could make me laugh in the middle of a fight on the ice.
“It’s the date thing, I think,” I said. “Calling it a date made it formal, and formal makes me nervous.”
“You captain a professional hockey team in front of twenty thousand people and God knows how many more on TV.Thatdoesn’t make you nervous, but a date does?”
“That’s different. Hockey I understand. This”— I waved my hand between us again—“I have no playbook for.”
“Well.” He shifted closer, closing the gap by half a cushion. “How about we throw out the playbook? No scripts. No expectations. Just us.”
“Just us.” The words made my heart unfurl in ways I didn’t think I’d ever felt before. It was as though some foreign being had inhabited my chest and lit a fire. I had no idea who—or what—he was, but I was glad he’d moved in.
“Yeah, like the Taco Bus. No agenda, no plan, merely two people eating good food and talking.”
“I remember.” I remembered everything about the Taco Bus. Every word. Every laugh. Every second. “Okay. No playbook.”
“No playbook.” We clinked bottles as though we’d achieved Middle East peace.
The tension broke like a wave.
I felt my shoulders drop.
Jacks must have felt it, too, because he smiled andsettled deeper into the couch, his posture relaxing.
“So,” he said. “Tell me about the road trip. The stuff you didn’t put in texts.”
“Like what?”
“Like . . .” He thought for a moment. “Was there a moment where you knew that you were going to do what you did yesterday?”
The question was careful but direct. Classic Jacks.
I took a long pull of my beer, considering.
“Erik’s speech,” I said finally. “At dinner, after he told the team about his proposal. Someone asked him how he knew Linnea was the one, and he said . . .” I trailed off, the memory still sharp and vivid. “He said she made him forget everyone and everything else, just by walking into a room. That she was home, not a place or a person. She was his home.”
Jacks was watching me, his beer forgotten in his hand.
“And I was sitting there listening to him describe that feeling, that certainty, and something clicked, like a lock turning.” I stared at the bottle in my hands and began picking at the label with my fingernails, unable to look at him. “Because I knew that feeling. I’d been feeling it for weeks and calling it something else. Friendship or admiration or, fuck, whatever. I don’t know. Hearing Erik say it out loud, hearing him describeexactlywhat I felt every time youwalked into a room . . .”
I forced myself to look up.
