Just… happy.
The realization hits me harder than I expect. Because I’m starting to understand how rarely Owen probably gets to feel this way.
He straightens slowly, still damp-haired from his postgame shower at the arena, dressed in gray sweats and a black T-shirt that stretches tightly across his chest. There’s a faint pink mark along his jaw from where somebody caught him with a stick earlier during the game.
Without thinking, I reach up and brush my thumb lightly across it. Owen goes completely still. Instantly attentive in that way he always gets when I touch him gently.
“You okay?” I ask quietly.
His mouth curves slightly. “Yeah.”
But his eyes soften in a way that says the real answer is: Better now. The intimacy of that nearly undoes me on the spot. Sliding my hand slowly down the center of his chest, I feel the steady rise and fall beneath my palm. His heartbeat feels calmer tonight. Grounded.
“You were incredible out there,” I tell him. “I might have screamed a time or two.”
A faint flush creeps into his cheeks immediately. That still surprises me sometimes. Owen can stand in front of twenty thousand screaming hockey fans without blinking, but sincere praise turns him shy in under three seconds.
“You don’t have to say that.”
“I know.” I step closer. “I mean it. Seeing my man excel at what he loves trips my trigger. Who knew?”
His throat works hard. The vulnerability in that tiny movement pulls at something deep inside me. Because for all his size and intensity and strength, Owen still reacts to kindness like he’s slightly suspicious of it.
Before I can overthink it, I take his hand and guide him backward toward the couch.
His eyebrows lift slightly. “Remy?”
“Sit.”
A slow smile pulls at the corner of his mouth as he drops onto the cushions. “That sounded dangerous.”
“Good.”
The warmth in his expression grows immediately, but there’s uncertainty underneath it too. Like he’s trying to figure out what I’m doing. All I know is that tonight I don’t want to hold myself apart from him anymore. I don’t want to analyze him, manage him, or protect myself from feeling too much.
I just want him.
Owen spreads his knees slightly as I step between them, his large hands settling automatically on my hips. Heat curls low in my stomach immediately at the familiar weight of them there.
“You’re looking at me weird,” he says.
“I’m thinking.”
“Dangerous.”
I smile faintly and slide my fingers into his hair. “You take care of everyone else all the time.”
His expression shifts instantly at that. Softer. More guarded somehow. “Remy—”
“No.” I stroke my thumb lightly along his jaw. “Tonight I want to take care of you for a change.”
His breathing changes first, then his grip tightens slightly against my hips while something raw and almost overwhelmed flickers across his face. For a second, he looks like he wants to argue. Or maybe like he doesn’t quite know how to accept being wanted this gently.
“Owen,” I say quietly, “you don’t always have to hold everything together.”
His eyes close briefly. The reaction is small, but it feels enormous somehow. When he opens them again, there’s somuch emotion sitting there naked and unguarded that my pulse stumbles hard in my chest.
Then he looks up at me and says, very softly, “You have no idea what that does to me.”
