I didn't say the rest of it. The rest of it was the thing that lived under everything, the thing I didn't take out and look at directly. That Rob and Linda Morrison were going to be in section 112 of the arena tomorrow night watching their two sons, and the weight of that was its own kind of pressure that I had been carrying since I was three years old and hadn't found the bottom of yet.
Nathan's hand found mine on the bed.
Not reaching. Just moving, finding it, holding it.
"They'll see a good game," he said.
"Yeah," I said.
I looked at him sitting on the edge of the bed.
Nathan looked different here. I had been in close proximity to this man for two years and had somehow still not fully prepared myself for Nathan Cross in a hotel room at eleven p.m. looking like that.
"Hey," I said.
"You said that already," he said.
"I know," I said. "I'm saying it again."
I closed the distance.
Kissed him.
Easy, the way it had been getting easier—not the corridor desperate, not the first time urgent, just—easy, my hand at his jaw and his hand coming up to my face the way it always did,the thumb, the same thumb, and the hotel room was quiet and Toronto was outside the window and Nathan Cross was kissing me back on his bed like it was a thing we did.
Because it was.
Because we did this now.
His hand slid to the back of my neck and I made a noise I wasn't going to examine and shifted closer, and Nathan pulled back just enough to look at me, those blue eyes very close, and something in his expression that was open in a way I was still learning to read.
"You have press tomorrow," he said.
"I know," I said.
Neither of us moved.
"You should sleep," he said.
"Probably," I said.
His thumb moved at the back of my neck. Just once. Just slightly.
"Nathan," I said.
"Mm."
"Stop being responsible."
"One of us has to be," he said.
"It doesn't have to be you tonight."
He looked at me for a moment. Something moving through his expression—the calculation, the wall checking itself, finding the wall was not particularly load-bearing at this exact moment in this exact hotel room.
He kissed me again.
Longer this time. His hand still at my neck, mine at his jaw, and we were horizontal at some point without deciding to be, which was fine, which was more than fine.
