“That seems like a lot to turn down,” I manage.
“It would’ve been insane to take it.”
His whole face has lit up, gone bright. He sits next to me on the bed and looks at me.
“Linwood. We’re going to win it.” He says it in complete confidence. “The whole thing. The national title. This is the year — this is the team. Benson is the best captain in the country. Blue’s having the season of his life. Percy’s standing on his head every night. We are going to win the natty, and I have been chasing that since I was eighteen years old. Halifax’ll still be there in the spring — they’re not going anywhere, I’m not going anywhere. But you think I’m leaving my brothers a man down mid-season to go be somebody’s rental? With the title right there? Are you out of your mind? I’d never forgive myself. I want the ring with my brothers. I’m getting the ring with my brothers.”
He’s grinning at me, lit all the way up, sure of himself in the golden way that only ever reads as charming on him, and I’m watching him tell me the full truth. I think he already made up his mind all those years ago.
He is a man who does not walk out on the things he loves mid-run.
That’s my read. He has no idea he’s telling me that. He thinks he’s bragging about hockey. But I’m the analyst in the room. He’s staying, even when something shinier opens a door right in front of him, he stays. He told me in the hotel, I’m not a leaver, whatever else I am, and I wanted to believe him and couldn’t quite get there, but now I do. He’s loyal down to the bone and even has the nerve to be cocky about it. And I like him even more for it.
Especially the part that he’s not staying because of me. That means more to me than he would ever know. I would never want to be the reason he didn’t go after his dream, but he’s staying for his brothers, his own reasons, and to catch the title. Somehow that’s worth more than if he’d told me he did it all for me, because a man who’d rearrange his whole life around a girl he’sbeen kissing for a week is a man I would never trust. This, I trust. This is real. He stayed for the things that are his.
But there’s a nagging feeling in my chest now, blooming brand new under my skin. Because why would he turn it down? I get the dream of his brotherhood here. He’s clearly obsessed with all the Hawthorne House boys, but this is his dream. I look at him. If he stays, what does that mean for us?
“So it was all about the team,” I say. I don’t know why I say it. It’s out before I can stop it — fishing, scared, wanting the other thing, the thing I have no right to go looking for.
He looks at me, and the grin shifts. He doesn’t take the bait, and he doesn’t deny it either.
“Mostly the team,” he says.
Mostly.
He lets the word sit there in the air. He doesn’t hand me the rest of it. Doesn’t say and you. Doesn’t mention what we did last night. Doesn’t say the thing we can both feel taking up all the oxygen. He just holds my eyes.
His phone goes off in his hand. He glances down at it, and his mouth does a small, fond, helpless thing, and he turns it so I can see — Dad, and a text underneath, too many exclamation points, a thing about how they’d be lucky to have him, a thing about give that girl of yours a hug from me. The kind of message a man sends when he believes, all the way to the bottom of himself, that his son is about to sign and that his son has a girlfriend. He hasn’t told them yet. I can see it on the screen that his dad still thinks the answer’s going to be yes.
“He’s going to call later and want a full report,” Stanley says. “He’ll ask about you. He always asks about you now.”
The first cold thread through all the warmth. Because lying here in my own room with the realest thing I have ever felt, I notice that the lie didn’t get lighter when the rest of it turned real. It got heavier. It’s still wrapped around all of it— his father’s pride, both families, the whole world of people who believe a story that started as a panic-grab in a stranger’s kitchen. Everyone thinks this was real from the first day. And now there’s something real to protect, and it is sitting on top of the fraud like a house built across a fault line.
He’s smiling down at his phone, at his dad, at me, and I keep every bit of it to myself.
He stays a while. He can’t stay the night. There’s a game tomorrow, his body belongs to the team again, and at some point, he hauls himself up off my bed and kisses my forehead. I look up at him, grabbing him before he can leave. He looks at my lips and then my eyes. I lean up and kiss him on the lips.
“Good night, Ermington.”
He kisses me deeper this time. “Good night, Linwood.”
My chest tightens when he kisses me again and then pulls back just a few inches.
“Will I see you at the game tomorrow?”
I nod, not mentioning that my dad wants another report written on him. I guess word got out about Halifax, so my dad knows all about the offer. I wonder what kind of grief my dad will give Stanley when he finds out that he didn’t take the offer. I wonder how Robert will take the news. Now I’m scared. Two NHL families that are close and intertwined, and I know in my bones, they’re not going to take it well.
“I’ll be there,” I tell him.
He pecks my lips once more and heads for the door. “Come over after the game.”
“Is there a party?”
He shakes his head. “No.”
I try to hide the way my whole chest lifts. “Okay.”
“Sweet dreams, Aspen.” And then he’s gone, and the warmth follows him.
