"I didn't know," I whispered.
The confession felt necessary. Essential. Like he needed to hear that I understood the magnitude of what he'd sacrificed even if I'd never asked for it.
His eyes opened. No anger burned in them. No resentment at my ignorance or my role in his destruction. Just honesty. Pure, devastating honesty. And a fear he would never admit to the team. Would never show Coach Edwards or Hades or any of the men who depended on his strength to anchor theirs.
"I didn't care." The words emerged quietly. Steady despite everything. "Not when they had you."
I went completely still. Every muscle locked. Every thought scattered. My breath caught somewhere between my lungs and my throat, trapped behind the understanding crashing over me in waves too large to process.
Because I knew what he was saying.
What he was really saying beneath the simple words.
He chose me over his career. He risked everything—his future, his identity, the only thing he'd ever built that was truly his—for me.
Not because the contract demanded it. Not because I'd begged or bargained or offered him anything in return. Just... because. Because something inside him required my safety more than it required his own survival.
My heartbeat pounded painfully in my ears, too loud, too fast, drowning out everything except the weight of what he'd just given me without asking for anything back.
I stared at him—this man who'd blackmailed me, who'd controlled me, who'd broken me down piece by piece until I couldn't remember who I'd been before him.
This man who'd just shattered his own hand to keep me whole.
My vision blurred. Not from fear this time. From something infinitely more dangerous.
"Gideon..." His name broke apart on my tongue.
He watched me with those dark, unreadable eyes. Waiting. Not demanding a response. Not forcing me to acknowledge what stood between us now—too large to ignore, too terrifying to name. Just waiting. Like he had all the time in the world. Like breaking bones and losing games and risking everything meant nothing if it kept me sitting here beside him.
My chest ached with the weight of it.
I didn't know what to say. Didn't know how to carry this new knowledge without collapsing beneath it.
So I did the only thing I could.
I kept holding the ice against his broken fingers. Kept touching him gently when everything else between us had been rough and violent and wrong. And tried not to think about how much I needed him to heal.
Not for hockey.
Not for the team.
For me.
My throat tightened until breathing felt impossible. I tried to focus on the ice pack. On the swelling spreading across his knuckles in dark, ugly blooms. On the clinical reality of broken bones and torn ligaments and all the mechanical damage I could catalog instead of feeling.
It didn't work.
My voice cracked when I finally spoke. "Why... why would you do that?"
The question hung between us—raw, confused, desperate for an answer that made sense. That fit into the version of him I'd been clinging to. The monster. The manipulator. The man who took what he wanted without caring who it destroyed.
Gideon watched me for a long moment. His expression remained steady. Unguarded in a way that made my chest ache. "Because you're mine."
My breath shattered. Broke apart into jagged pieces I couldn't put back together.
My eyes stung—hot and burning and threatening to spill over despite every wall I'd built to keep him out. Not because I believed I belonged to him. Not because the contract made it true or the money gave him rights or any of the thousand justifications he could've hidden behind. But because I realized—with stunning, terrifying clarity—that part of me was starting to want to belong to him. Want this broken, dangerous man who fed me and bathed me and destroyed himself protecting me. Want the gentleness that emerged when he thought I wasn't looking. Want the version of him that held me through nightmares and bought me pajamas and asked about my mother's favorite books.
The realization hit like a physical blow.
